This Black Friday, Blu-ray player was on my agenda, I have a 46" Samsung LCD HDTV with internet options. I did not want to go for internet enabled Blu-ray player to play netflix or Picasa or Youtube as I already have it in my TV. I wanted a best to the price and awesome quality Blu-ray player which has a brilliant blu-ray as well as DVD upscale conversion for HDTV resolution.
I bought this LG BD530 and Sony BDP-530 at the same time because Sony had the highest ranking in terms on voting on many sites including bestbuy,com. After connecting both players to my TV i used Bly-ray and it played very well on both player, I tried same Bluray disc on both player couple of times alternatively and could not see the difference. Bluray played brilliantly
When i came to DVD playing, after couple of runs with same DVD on same TV (with same settings) I found that LG has a excellent DVD upconversion as compared to Sony, Sony pics were a little more blurr as compared to LG BD530. I tested 2 different DVD movies (lord of the rings and American beauty) to check the DVD quality and I have to admit, LG was awesome. Also somehow I felt the LG remote is much user friendly than Sony remote, but that's a matter of individuals preference.
After carefully reading Sony's review I figured out that it;s sony blu-ray players internet abilities which took it;s rating so high and not the DVD upscale conversion qualities. If you have an old TV with no internet on it and want internet connectibility to watch netflix online, then probably Sony is your candidate. But if you have a new internet enabled TV and have a huge collection of DVD which you wanna keep it for a while and wanna enjoy over and over again, then LG is your best candidate.
I am returning back my Sony BDP-370 player tomorrow to Bestbuy. I hope this review helps to reader.
Santosh Gaikwad LG BD530 1080p Network Blu-ray Disc Player
I got this at sears when it was $65, it will be on sale again, try walmart if amazon doesn't lower price. It plays all my discs and most of my multimedia files. It will not play wmv files and doesn't seem to like my AAC files (plays MP3's okay), but will play H264/mov files if you rename them as .mp4, a common trick with these cheaper players. It powers my two external portable hd's and will play one of my two pen drives, but not both. Its upscaling of 420p material from the usb side not as good as my WD or my PS3, but plays native 1080i/p files with very impressive results.
It does have the BD live function if you want to plug a pen drive into it since it needs external storage. It has limited internet options right now, who cares about accuweather? LG updates their firmware online and my other LG equipment has seen third party hacks that improve it so I look forward to when this is hacked to provide either Netflix, or better yet Playon support.
It did freeze on me at least once as other reviews have noted, have to pull the plug to reset it.
Only 4 stars since it did freeze for no good reason, and I too will need to keep my WD Media player for awhile, but it this had netflix would have given it 5 stars, as for the price it just can't be beat. I will update when I have played with it a bit more, only had it the week so far.
I have used this Blu Ray player for more than a week and it plays the following without any issues directly from Blue Ray disc as well as DVD, CD and USB:
DivxHD (Divx HD 720p and 1080p profile that create files with Divx extension) NOTE: DivxHD Plus profile creating mkv files seems not working
AVI ( I haven't tried all codecs but whatever I tried worked without any issues)
MKV
AVCHD
I was successfully able to play couple of 720p 4.35 GB mkv files with that's encoded with H264 & DTS audio with subtitle without any issues. Subtitle worked perfectly fine.
Files with DTS audio plays flawless directly on TV speakers without requiring any additional DTS receiver.
Very responsive remote control.
Played lots of MKV files of size 8GB and greater with h264 and DTS audio from an external USB drive and they all played very well. Subtitles were supported and no jitter in playback.
MKV playback is awesome and Up-conversion works great.I can clearly see the difference between regular playback and upconversion (the files I have used were IMAX HD documentaries and Disney Pixar movies i.e. quality of the original file was good to start with).
I tried Verbatim LTH some very cheap media from Meritline and Optical Quantam BD-R burned using IMGBURN in my LG WH10LS30 Blue Ray burner and everything worked flawless.
I tried about 20 of dirt cheap DVD media Dynex, Teon, Playo etc. which had avi files with variety of codecs recorded about 5-6 years ago and they all played without any issues.
Blu Ray disc loads really fast the picture quality is crystal clear. Also quality of You tube and picasa is great.
Overall, it's great inexpensive player that played many media from various sources. It played various file formats not even supported by Philips 5982 Divx player but I still can't retire my WD Live as its picky about codecs i.e. not all mkv files plays flawless and MOV doesn't work at this point.
UPDATE: I was successfully able to play Blu-Ray video files (m2ts) directly from hard drive via. USB connection. Menu is not supported but the files played successfully. - Blu-ray - 1080p - Wireless Network - Netflix'
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