Samsung DVD-HD841 Up-Converting DVD Player
where to begin...
This is a frustrating piece of gear. Setting up DVI is not a problem as other reviewers have noted, however. It *is* documented in the manual (on the bottom of the \\"choosing a connection\\" pages). Samsung is also now including a large card that describes how to set up DVI. <br /> <br />That's the end of the good news. The remote is as unresponsive as everyone has said it is. Virtually unusable. Even if you can adjust to pointing the remote in a magic direction (directly level at the player, straight up off the ceiling, and off the wall opposite worked for me, but 20 degrees off horizontal pointing right at the thing did not), the machine responds slowly to track changes, does not respond to every key press, does not give on-screen indication of what chapter it's thinking about selecting, etc. All scan modes in reverse are choppy at best, and once it is moving in reverse it's impossible to resume play at a predictable time, and only slightly better behaved scanning forward. You *will* over-shoot your target. Step mode does not operate in reverse at all. Turn the jog/shuttle wheel backward and you'll get a circle-slash icon. <br /> <br />I never did figure out how to change chapters with the number buttons, short of going into chapter mode using the display function. To do that, press the info button, press the down arrow, press enter. *Then* you can select a chapter. Simply pressing the '5' button while you are whatching chapter 12 will not switch to chapter 5. It will instead give you the circle-slash icon, indicating you tried to do something not allowed. Not allowed to change chapters with fewer than five button presses, apparently. <br /> <br />I bought this player to use with the DVI connector in progressive scan mode using upconversion, thinking this would give me a better picture than my cheap non-progressive Sony. It doesn't. In fact, the Samsung looks better in interlaced mode than it does in progressive scan mode. It does fine with anamorphic mode wide-screen movies, and with standard 4:3 content, but looks no better in progressive than in non-progressive. Perhaps this is because my TV de-interlace just works really well, but I thought this would work better with the DVI connector. It doesn't. And if you want to use one of the zoom modes to view non-anamorphic widescreen content on a widescreen TV, it looks *worse* in progressive than in non-progressive mode. In all modes but vertical fill (standard 4:3) it looks out-of-focus. <br /> <br />Some discs will not let you skip FBI warnings, logo screens, etc, but some will. On the Samsung, some discs that seem to allow skipping these things (you don't get a circle-slash icon) it simply does not respond to track changes. For example, the ST: First Contact disc will not let me skip the copyright warnings, not even the French ones that I can't read. On the Sony I get a \\"not allowed\\" message and on the Samsung I get a circle-slash icon. Okay, but on a Buffy disc in the Sony I'm able to skip through all the introductory nonsense, while on the Samsung I don't get the circle-slash, but it also ignores the track skip button. It says it's skipping but doesn't. So the disc seems to allow it but the Samsung doesn't do it. Pretty annoying.