Samsung DVD-HD841 Up-Converting DVD Player
Some thoughts in defense of the player...
This is from my own experience with the player as I have had it for about 8 months now. I have only used it to watch DVDs and have not used the DVD-A features. I have it connected with both component and DVI cables to my Hitach 57\\" RP HDTV model 57G700 and do not use the optical out.    I purchased this DVD player for 3 main reasons:    1.) My Panasonic S35 crapped out after 4 months    2.) It was the only player in this price range that had 1080i and 720p outputs that I could find as the HD-941 with DCDi is apparently not coming out.    3.) I did not want to spend 1000~2000 on the denon players that I really wanted and figured this would be an okay holdover.      When I initially setup the player I was able to get the DVI connection to work fine following the instructions in the manual and did not have the reported problems of the player losing the settings but this may have something to do with the fact that I have the components and DVI connected all the time, I am not sure. In the 8 months that I have used it (and I watch DVDs on this pratically everyday) I have had to redo the DVI settings twice probably from the issue that everyone else is reporting.    There is a noticeable difference in the 480p, 720p and 1080i modes that I can see especially in certain DVDs on my setup but since this is the first time I have seen 720p and 1080i pushed across on my TV I have nothing else to compare it to so I cannot comment on the quality of the upconversion. I did notice that TV quality DVDs ie, friends and X-files look best in 480p mode whereas movies with a a lot of motion look best in 720p ie, Superbit Spiderman 2 and LOTR:ROTK. All modes show a definite increate in quality over my last DVD player but again that was a Panny S35 which is not that great and only did 480p.    According to the DVD Shootout guide the player appears to have better picture quality through the components as opposed to the DVI but I have not tested this extensively yet.    The remote does have afinicky angle but once you get used to it it works fine and the jog dial works especially well for stepping.     After reading about the problems people are having I am wondering if cetain features were broken in a later firmware release? How do we check for the firmware versions on the player?    Overall I an satisfied with the player as it is much better then my previous one that suffered from disc read errors and stalls all the time whereas the samsung has gone through so many DVDs without a single read hitch. I am about to test the player with a full 5.1 sound system so I will comment again when I test with the sound features.    Would I pay 200 bucks for this again? No,not really but with a limited selection this player suits my needs for now.    UPDATE:    I hooked up a set of Logitech Z5500 to the player to test DTS sound. DVD-A and SACD discs. One thing I immediately noticed was that there was skipping during the dts playback as noted by Psymon JC in a an earlier review. This was easily remedied by turning off the PCM downsampling option. This sends the audio data at 96KHz instead of the default48KHz which seems to cause skipping in the tracks. Doind this easily eliminated the skipping, so if your Dolby decoder can accept 96KHz make sure to turn this option off.    I am purchasing some DVD-A and SACD units to test.