Listener Mike provided an excellent review of the Samsung BD-UP5000 combo Bl-ray and HD-DVD player. Here is his conclusion on the unit.
The Samsung BD-UP5000 is one of the few high definition disc players that can play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs. Its MSRP is $999 but is usually available for $799 or somewhat less. I have owned one now for almost a month. Ironically I got it about two hours before the Warner Blu-Ray exclusive decision became public.
The BD-UP5000 has some very good things going for it and a few caveats.
The pluses:
It does play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs very well. You only need one player to play both formats plus all your standard DVDs. I have played a number of both types and they all looked great. It supports all of the HD-DVD features and all of the pre-Profile 1.1 features of Blu-Ray.
Great picture quality for HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and standard DVD. The unit has the Reon processor for video processing and looks as good as any player on the market, better than most of them. Even when fed to component, all discs types look great, even without the Reon operating. The standard DVD performance is as good as any I have seen.
It is one of the few players with 7.1 analog audio out connections which is important to someone with an older surround processor, like me.
It loads high-def discs reasonably quickly, at least compared to other players.
It has a very simple, easy-to-understand user interface
It has a built-in Ethernet connection and is Blu-Ray Profile 1.1 ready (but not yet enabled)
The unit is very sleek looking with its piano black finish and blue lighting
The remote is good and sleek looking, though not illuminated.
The minuses:
There are a handful of high-def discs that don't play or don't play correctly, even after one firmware update. More firmware updates are promised.
Some people have reported video and audio dropouts with standard and high-def DVDs. I haven't seen this problem but it might indicate unit-to-unit variations.
It only handles Dolby TrueHD in stereo and DTS-MA not at all at this time. Future updates are supposed to come that will address this for both internal and external decoding but they are rumored as not happening until May.
Profile 1.1 has not yet been enabled. Profile 2.0 cannot be done with this player because there is not enough onboard memory and no way to add external memory
Response to the remote can be very slow sometimes
4:3 standard DVDs are always stretched if you are upscaling them. To watch 4:3 properly you have to switch to 480i or 480p.
Some might consider the price a little steep though it is pretty comparable to buying one each of a high-end HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player.
Finally, there are a huge number of rumors floating around about this player and Samsung's commitment to it. There are many who doubt that the promised audio updates will come or that there may be chip problems that prevent the updates. If you're a doubter or worrier, this is probably not the player for you. This doesn't bother me since I am happy with what it does right now and the future updates will only be pluses.
Overall I am glad I bought this player as a one-box solution to watching all currently available discs, without having to wait for Blu-Ray replacements for HD-DVD exclusive titles. The video performance is spectacular and the audio issues are minor for my purposes.
