Nice design. Good remote. Plays MP3 and CD-R without problems.

SKIPPING - FREEZING - THE WHOLE PLAYER JUST CRASHES and needs to be turned off to come back to life.

I bought the N504 (in the US it is the N501) DVD player 11 months ago. It replaced my (beloved) Toshiba DVD player that was taken by my evil ex-girlfriend. I don't know why I chose Samsung. Usually I read tons of test and reviews before buying something electronic, but not this time. And it was a mistake. The damn thing started freezing and skipping and crashing after 6 months. The problems got worse, and now every 2nd DVD is just annoying or impossible to watch. I've read some stuff about firmware update, but no go to DIY. What do I do for the weeks its going to be in repair? Will Samsung pay me a replacement? Guess not. Otherwise a decent player. Just this freezing problem.

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Toshiba - never had a problem. Even with the scratched DVD's and CD's from my little sister.

price, looks, GUI

lack of convenient MP3 features

I've been waiting for a hybrid component unit so I can do my DVD'ing and MP3'ing through my home stereo. I've only owned the unit for 4 days now, but because this unit is so new and this is the 1st review here on AudioReview.com, I thought I'd at least write in my initial thoughts, and tell you what it does and does not have. I should warn you that I have focused more on it's MP3 playback capabilities than anything else at the moment, so I won't have much detail below about the video quality of DVD's, or much about the DVD aspect of this guy at all. That being said...


First off, the unit's pretty attractive looking, with minimal but functional buttons on the front face for typical playback control functions (play, pause, stop, skip, open/close). The LCD is an aqua blue color (it does clash with the flat black/white LCD combo of my Sony Receiver and Sony CD Changer, but oh well). Unlike other units from Panasonic, Apex, and another one I forget, the remote is pretty slick-looking (as opposed to "cheap", like the others), being all silver and having a mini-joystick to control the GUI menus. It's not programmable though, or the most you can do is punch in a manufacturer's code (included in the manual) to control your TV's basic functions. But what else would you expect from a DVD remote? It's also not backlit, but not a huge deal, because my fingers can find the Play/Pause, Stop, RW/FF, and skip buttons in the dark easily enough. It fits comfortably enough in either hand, and it has me noticing how blocky and plain my Sony ES receiver's remote feels.


Enough about the looks and remote. Onto the MP3 stuff...



So the big selling point for this unit was its MP3 playback, and the accompanying on-screen interface to control it (now I admit my only glimpse at the GUI was a single picture on the unit's box, but it looked cool enough to get me to take it home). I threw in a CD I burned with a bunch of MP3's on it and after the 5 second load it started playing, and the "Virtual Light Machine" kicked in. Hitting the "Disc Menu" button on the remote brings up a listing of the directories on the CD, and I can traverse them using the joystick on the remote. After much dilly-dallying, here's what I have found:



What MP3 features it has

- great sound (using 192 VBR)
- play/pause/stop/skip
- multiple-directory support
- mutli-format MP3's (different bit rates, and VBR)
- straight digital-out to your receiver for MP3's
- virtual light machine accompanying the song playback



What MP3 features it doesn't have

- fast forward and rewind of a song
- "full" ID3 support
- playlists (at all! ugh!)
- song info on the LCD
- upgradeable firmware



The MP3 features it has are standard nowadays. It really hurts that I can't do anything a CD player can, like jump 10 seconds into a song or something. When I say "full" ID3 support, I mean that, yes, it does actually read it, but it doesn't display it either on the menu or the VLM during playback. You have to hit the "Display" button on your remote, and even then it displays only about 10 characters for the Album Title, and about 12 for the Song Title, which is hardly useful if you use the artist name/track title naming convention for your MP3 files (now that I look at it, it depends on the characters you use, because it does not used a fixed-width font and therefore it only displays the # of characters that will fit in the single line it allows for the text). Perhaps the biggest thing is the lack of any playlists or even basic programming. You can't queue up songs or play in a specified order. The most it will do it play continuously, starting at the first song in the first directory and then the next, into the next directory, etc. Another thing that would have been great is to show some info on the unit's LCD, so that I could leave my TV off and still jump to the song I want, but alas, no dice.



Another thing worth writing about is the GUI. The menus are unobtrusive, easy to use, and very attractive. It gives the entire package a good, "quality" feeling.



I should mention that I have only watched 1 DVD on this guy so far ("Exotic Robotics: Pleasure141X" by Atmospherex), which has a lot of great, colorful (trippy) animations. The colors were vibrant; no visible artifacts; no skipping; quick load time. No complaints here.



This guy is also "NUON-enhanced", meaning that it can play video games that are done for NUON units. I don't think this feature should sway your buying decision either way (I doubt the NUON gaming scene will amount to much) unless the prospect of playing "The Next Tetris" on your 50-inch projection TV gets your palms sweaty. Kinda funny actually, thinking about how units like the PlayStation 2 and XBox are gaming machines that play DVD's, and now DVD players are trying to become gaming machines. Ok, so maybe it's not that funny...



Overall, I like the unit, but I'm considering returning it - but not because I think it's a bad unit, but because I'm picky, and I've waited this long to replace my Toshiba DVD unit and still haven't found what I'm looking for. It's a tough call, mostly because I don't know of any other DVD player out there that has all the MP3 features I want, and others with the nice GUI this one has. It also doesn't have progressive scan out, but the $229 price is nice, and I can see buying another DVD player in the future anyway when I get a progressive scan TV.

Similar Products Used:

2 Toshiba DVD players, other non-component MP3 players

Nuon gaming, cool visuals on audio discs. Good zoom, and fast/slow play.

Occasional freezing/restarting and lips out-of-sync with audio on dvd play.

the weaknesses far outweigh the strengths; Best Buy got this one back. It was very annoying to watch movies on because the out of sync audio required intervention at least 3 times per movie. I would have to push pause, wait, then play again to get the lips to match up. Very poor for a player nowdays.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic rv-31 and Sony $220 player (unsure of model, but year 2001 also)

Excellent DVD playback,zoom,Virtual Light Machine,can also play games.

Had to upgrade the firmware w/ my own disc

Being my first dvd I wanted the best I could find under $200 and this is the one. Plays DVD,MP3,CDR&CDRW,VCD. You have to upgrade the firmware on the player out of the box but anyone with a computer & a cd burner can do this. If not check out http://www.nuontalk.tv/ and request someone send you a upgrade disc. I recently sent mine out to a person having trouble. I have has zero problems with this player. My girlfriend and I can watch the VLM (virtual light machine) for hours(if you dont know what this is, it plays a funkadelical lightshow while music is being played) . It has played all my mp3 discs with no problems. The games aspect will hopefully catch on and it does look promising. They also have came out with a SDK(software development kit) that will allow others to create software for the NUON player. Imaging downloading a game off the internet,burning it to cdr & playing it on the DVD player. Others have suggested "if i want to play a game & watch dvd's I ll buy a PS2" But the problems I have heard from PS2 playing dvds why would you want to....can you play mp3 or vcd on PS2....a big NO.
To sum it up....after months of reviewing which dvd to buy, I have made the best decision.

Similar Products Used:

None

CPU-based system boosts performance and feature set. EASILY upgradable firmware. Gaming.

Remote

After I upgraded the firmware to version 51, the audio-sync problems were solved. This is a high-end DVD player with a low price. This is a result of the unit being based on the NUON CPU platform.

Gladiator, The Matrix, and Phaton Menace all perform flawlessly. The Zoom feature works very nicely and has a huge range.

Menus are clean and easy to navigate.

The 501 also plays CDs and MP3 disks. The unit has built in visulaiztions (a la Real Jukebox and WinAmp) that display on your TV.


Of minor notes are:
* NUON games are appearing. One is even included. However, I don't think NUON gaming will take off. Buy this DVD player for the other fetures and not the games.
* The remote is too small.
* Load time is slow (8-10 seconds to load a DVD)
* Some NUON enhanced movies are available. I don't own one, but I don't think these will proliferate.

This DVD player has excellent features for the money; including HDCD decoding, NUON enhancement, component video, and MP3 decoding.

Does not like heat! Remote is not lighted like on most higher end units and is poorly laid out.

I am very happy with this DVD player, now that I discovered that I need to keep it cool. If you put on top of your receiver, it will get hot and then it will have lots of errors including unsynced audio and picture jitter. I am very impressed with the picture quality, even text is very sharp. I don't plan on using the Nuon for gaming, but it definatly helps picture quality and gives excellent slow motion picture.

I only use the analog outputs for HDCD listening, and the quality is decent.

Similar Products Used:

various, from Toshiba to Apex

Many Features, Sleek Design, Nice Remote

Mp3 software a little unorganized

Its a great dvd player with superb picture and many features. For the money it is the best deal out there.

Excellent picture quality, LOTs of features, software upgradeable.

Slowish in recoginizing discs, minor freeze and audio synch problems with earlier 'bios' versions

Pros: Features
Cons: customer support at Best Buy - why not to give some information about sw upgradeability of this dvd player - I have no problems anymore...

Similar Products Used:

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Alot of dazzling features and special affects. MP3 playback, 15 times zoom, strobe in matrix windows, light show.

Unfortunately locks up on dvd's. Sometimes the player goes out of synch between dialogue and picture. I've heard from other that this is a common problem.

This DVD player has NUON enhanced 128 bit processor to give you some dazzling affects. Has gaming capabilities, fifteen times zoom, MP3, real smooth slow and fast motion, music light affects and strobe frame effects. There is no other DVD that has as much special effects that I know of.
CD's and MP3 sound very crisp and clear. The MP3 has a catalog listing but you cannot create a custom play list. The light affect to music is also a very nice feature.
The DVD player puts out a very clear picture. It is not progressive scan though. Even all the special affects come out smooth and clear.
Now here is the stickler, a very frustrating problem in that on playing some dvd's the picture some times freezes for no appearant reason. I also had a problem where the dialogue did not match the picture (remember old "dubbed in", kung fu movies). This product has dazzling affects but if they can't get the basics down, well its up to you. I'm returning it.

This player has it all, great video, with a hookup for any connection, great audio, digital or analog. Great looking GUIs, and easy menus. So many features, mp3. strope, digest, snapshot, and many more, what else could you ask for in a dvd player? Great looking shell, and remote. Its upgradable to some extend, so dont have to go out and buy the newer models. Also can double as a gaming platform, and soon to come connect to the internet.

none so far!

If your just starting off into the dvd world this is a great dvd player. Gives you all the stantard features and so much more. Its entertaining, educational, and fun. Technoligy is a steaming rate, dont let it pass you by, pick up the samsung N-501
to learn more about the samsung n501 or nuon technoligy check out these.
www.nuon-tech.com
www.nuon-dome.com
www.nuontalk.tv.com

This one is worth it!!!!!

Similar Products Used:

none. This one is unigue!