2009 has been a great year for Blue Ray players. Finally Blue ray players have come down substantiality in price and more importantly to me, have finally gotten fast. There was no way I was gonna get a player that took 1-4 minutes to play a blue ray disk. Fast play times and solid picture quality, were my priorities, and IMO there are four solid choices this year. The Lg BD390, Samsung BD-P3600, JVC XVBP1 and Oppo BDP-83 are all great fast players and all worthy of consideration.
All of these players are fast, generally within seconds of each other speed wise, and all offer great picture quality for both standard DVD's and Blue ray.
I choose the 390 in part due to good reviews and the fact the I got an LG TV. The 390, looks nice, and features some great menus that are color and easy to use. The player is fast and will play a standard DVD in about 10 seconds or less, and an average blue ray in 20 seconds or less. This is also the only blue ray player with a built in wifi tuner and the only one to use the wireless N standard, versus the slower G. You can also hook it up directly through an ethernet cable, which is how I did it.
You can plug your flash drive into the usb port, for vids, pics and mp3s. Pictures and music worked fine, but I've yet to be able to play any vids, and that's one of the knocks I have against this player. This other is not including a second usb port in back, to allow the flash drive to remain plugged in, like the Samsung and Oppo player do.
The biggest flaw of this unit is the remote, which is one of the worst I've seen for any product. It's adequate for just using the 390, but completely sucks otherwise. Too many of the buttons are small, and there is no backlighting. Worst of all is the bottom part that slides down, with difficultly, to review a bunch of tiny TV buttons that are way too small and cramped together to use. You would not want to use this remote for your TV.
Flaws aside, this is one of the fastest players, has good picture quality, good easy to use color menus, sports an ethernet and usb port, a built in wifi tuner, and features Netflix, Cinemnow and Youtube.
My first choice though was actually the 3600. It can be had for about $50 cheaper then the 390 and I like the slim profile and sleek glossy black look better then the other 3 players. The Samsung also features two usb ports, one in front and in back. The back one is useful for either plugging in the wifi dongle or a flash drive, for pics, vids, and mp3s. The Samsung also features, Netflix and Pandora. Unfortunately Samsung has a history of problems every year with its Blue Ray players, and there are a number of complaints about problems connecting wirelessly and disk compatibility issues.
The XVBP1 is a good player, and very similar to the LG without the wireless, and the Netflix, Cinemanow, Youtube. This player actually looks quite similar to the 390 and even features similar menus, though not as good. The XVP1 is about 200 cheaper and if you don't care about wireless and Netflix, this is a solid fast player and a great buy.
The Oppo is of course the videophiles player, and the best player for both Blue Ray and standard DVD's, with it's Anchor Bay processing. It plays the most formats, and also features 2 usb ports like the Samsung. It doesn't however include wireless, or features like Netflix and it costs about 200 more.
UPDATE 9/5/2009- I have yet to be able to play videos of any format from my flash drive using the USB port. Despite menus indicating it will play videos, the feature either doesn't work as advertised or is extremely limited in function. Pictures and mp3s still work fine.
The remote is so frustrating I would drop this review to 4 stars, especially since the Samsung and Oppo units have far superior ergonomic remotes. The Oppo remote is also backlit. I haven't seen JVC's remote.
So far the 390 has only glitched once on a disc, by not letting me choose between the different episodes. The problem quickly corrected itself.
None of the players I mentioned have a built in TV tuner, and I'm not sure any Blue Ray players do; which is a little disappointing cause my old DVD and VHS players both had them.
The 390 for some reason does not always hold it's place when you stop or pause the DVD. I'm not sure why, but you will have to start over half the time. The unit automatically turns off after a short time, if you aren't watching anything. The simpulink function is nice if you have an LG TV, as it will automatically switch inputs for you. However, this can also be a little bit of an annoyance if you wanted to put in the DVD, but not watch it immediately.
I updated the firmware with a wired connection. Still haven't tried the wireless connection and in hindsite probably won't have need for it. Youtube is a little clunkly to use with the remote, and gets boring pretty quick. Since I probably won't use Netflix and Cinemanow either, (I don't like monthly subscriptions), I should have probably either saved a few bucks and gotten the very similar and cheaper XVBP1, or sprung for the Oppo which has the extra USB port in back, (which would probably play my USB videos) has slightly better video processing, is slightly faster and has a far superior remote.
Overall though, I am happy with the 390. It's a very fast player and has excellent video quality.
Get more detail about LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player.
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