Samsung DVD-HD860 DVD Player

I purchased my this horrible piece of equipment from ebay as an open box item. I thought my bad luck was due to a defective player, so I purchased one from one of the "big box" retailers and found it acted exactly the same as the one I bought from ebay. To triple check, the store had one set up on one of their displays. It too acted the same, so I have to conclude that my experiences are not an isolated incident.

I became interested in this particular model, as I liked the fact that it had HDMI ouputs, 720p and 1080i upconversion via HDMI, easy set-up and a nice fit-to-screen adjustment for displaying the various different formats on a big screen television. Also the fact that Samsung has been producing affordable priced DVI/HDMI compatible DVD players almost as long as anyone, so I assumed they had the ability to produce a low cost, high quality product. My theory here is that if a company produces regular yearly updates of a product they have produced for years, usually the bugs are worked out within the first year or two at most.

After setting up the DVD-HD860, I was incredibly diappointed by the fact that it was very slow to respond to the remote control. Most commands from the remote took at least 3-4 seconds to respond. While it may not seem very long, those of us used to modern electronics have become used to instantaneous action. Also the player would freeze up frequently when changing the resolution from 480P to 720P or 1080I. Sometimes it would just lock on the Samsung screen, othertimes it wouldn't show anything at all. Unfortunately you can't set the resolution and forget having to adjust it again, as you have to set it to upconvert every time you turn it on, as it doesn't hold the setting. I had to either turn off the power and start it again, which worked most times but often times I would have to unplug it to get it to work again. When it did work, the picture was very clear and vivid, but suffered from ghosting issues, the halos around light objects on dark backgrounds. No amount of adjustments would get rid of this without ruining the contrast. The fit-to-screen function was also nice.

I spoke to one of the people at the "big box" store that I returned the second one to, who said that my bad experience with this model was not at all unusual, and it had the highest return rate of any DVD player they currently sold. As far as he could remember the only DVD player that had a higher return rate were Samsung's first generation of DVI/HDMI players. He said they sold tons of them because people wanted them because they matched their Samsung televisions. He went on to say that the reason you see so many places selling refurbished Samsung DVD players on the web.

His last nugget of advice was to try the Panasonic DVD-S53K, which was only $10 more than the Samsung. Let me tell you the Panasonic works and acts like a real DVD player. Everything responds quickly, and in three weeks has never locked. Also the upconversion feature of the Panasonic works fine and remembers what settings you made. It also has a very good fit to screen setting and is built more solidly.

In short try to stay away from this one. If you think you must have one, make sure you have the store hook it up for you to try before you buy it. Maybe you won't mind the slow response to commands from the remote, but also make sure you have them hook it up via the HDMI outputs to make sure that it doesn't lock when adjusting the upconversion, which can only be done via HDMI. As I said earlier for a few dollars more, you can get a Panasonic that doesn't suffer from all the problems this one has, and you'll be much happier.