Back in October 2009, I had written about the confusing, and generally less-than-ideal set of options for streaming Netflix to a HDTV. Earlier this year, I purchased a BD-C550 Blu-ray player along with a Samsung LN32B460 (32 inch) HDTV. With nearly six months of experience behind me, it is time to grade this setup.On the plus side, I can use a single well-integrated remote to operate both the TV and the Blu-ray player. While this may seem to be a minor thing, from a usability perspective it is great - no more keeping track of multiple remotes and figuring out which remote to use in which situation. Second, the stream displays quite well on the TV - especially for the titles streamed in HD (720p). Third, the setup is not particularly expensive, relative to the competition - I payed $765 at the local Fry's, including a well built high-end HDMI cable to connect the TV to the Blu-ray player and taxes.
In addition, the Blu-ray player has a Pandora app that turns the TV, which has a good audio system, into an internet radio station. Very useful if one is trying to maintain a computer free living space. Finally a $40 Terk HDTVa antenna receives most of the over-the-air TV broadcasts in the area (including HD) allowing me to disconnect the basic-cable feed from ATT Uverse ($20/month).
The setup does have a couple of negatives however. The main one is the lack of a full-function Netflix browse and movie selection interface, that I have written about before. It is more than a bit cumbersome to fire up a computer to browse movies, put them in the Netflix queue and then watch the movie. Fortunately, with my recent purchase of an iPad, this particular "friction" has reduced significantly as I can now load the queue from the iPad instead of a laptop.
I also find the Blu-ray player to be a bit sluggish in responding to the commands from the remote. Perhaps my particular unit is defective. Then again, it could as easily be an underpowered CPU at fault. Finally, the Blu-ray player seems to have a software glitch whereby occasionally a DVD in the player does not play unless I open/close the DVD tray. Fortunately I can do this remotely without fumbling through multiple remotes.
Overall, I gave this set up a B+. A solid workhorse solution at a reasonable price. If only the Netflix interface worked better, I would be handing out an A.
0 comments:
Post a Comment