Shop For LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player

This player is everything I had hoped, and the Internet streaming is actually better than my Series 3 TiVo, which is pretty good for our needs. I suspect that is because the LG software is somehow more effective than the TiVo's.

But this unit was nearly on a truck back to Amazon (I was actually on the refund page at one point) before I discovered how to get it to connect to the Internet. After hours of frustration, with the LG player reporting connection to my (Gigabit) D-Link DIR-655 router and the router reporting connection to both the LG and the Internet, I Googled a comment somewhere that reported solving the same problem by simply updating the DIR-655 router firmware to level 1.31NA.

Although my router handles over 20 clients flawlessly and has done so for years, I went to it and found it reporting that firmware version 1.21 was the latest available; as I check this often, it was no surprise. No luck at D-Link, either. So I went to Google again and finally found the new version 1.31 firmware URL on a blog somewhere; the reason for this difficulty in discovering a new version of router firmware eludes me. But it also explains why anyone with a DIR-655 router may end up returning the LG player in despair.

After updating the firmware (to 1.32NA as it turns out), the LG player streamed YouTube, Netflix and all the other built-in Internet video sites flawlessly at "HD" quality (but who can tell with YouTube?). I use a coax-cable modem pair to provide 400-MHz hard-wire Ethernet upstairs to the LG player and have not tested the LG Player using WiFi. But during the struggles, it certainly connected to each of my three WiFi networks easily enough, just not to the Internet.

I have no idea why the new D-Link DIR-655 version 1.3 firmware is needed; and find no help from either manufacturer, so I leave the question to those among us more technically expert. But anyone who encounters the Internet connection problem is well-advised to consider router firmware issues (no matter which manufacturer) before fooling with the LG player itself.

UPDATE: I bought a second LG BD390 Player for the downstairs entertainment center, but I picked up an open-box deal that proved to be an Apr09 Build instead of the Aug09 build I got earlier. As some have complained when using the earlier builds, I had lip-sync problems on the first BluRay disk I tried (Jennifer & David Lynch's "Surveillance"). But changing the HDMI Audio setting to DTS Re-Encode instead of Pass-Through ended the problem entirely. A Google search turned up some guesses as to why this may be, but no matter to me.

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