Samsung BD-H5100 Blu-Ray Disc Player (2014 Model)

I rarely write product reviews, only if something is exceptionally good or really terrible. I am a frequent Amazon customer and their service has always been fabulous. This review is in no way a reflection on Amazon. I bought this Blu-Ray player after several Sony DVD players (progressive scan and upscalling) failed on me. All of those numerous players and this Blu-Ray had great consumer ratings on Amazon, thats why I bought them. I wanted a quiet player for a bedroom after my many previous ones were incredibly loud. This player, to my disappointment is also very loud. I bought it in September 2014. It suddenly stopped working this past weekend, with a DVD I checked out from the library stuck inside. The picture froze on a flawless DVD, I couldnt even get any functions like play, stop, skip, eject, or even power to work. The machine just kept whirring noisily and stayed stuck in the same spot. I ultimately unplugged the unit and was lucky that that disc tray eventually opened. When you spend almost $70 on an electronic it should give you more than six months of good service. This didnt give long lasting or good service. My first DVD player worked well for years. I am willing to pay extra for quality. Why are DVD and now Blu-Ray players so disposable? Consumers deserve better and our environment deserves better. My suggestion: save the warranty information if you make the mistake of buying the Samsun BD-H5100 Blu-Ray player.

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Update: March 2017 unit failing again. Response to remote control is sporadic. Piece of crap. Bought this player new in April 2015. It is now August 2015 and the player is already starting to fail. I can no longer turn the power off on the unit via the remote when there is no disc in it. The disc drawer wont stay closed after you insert a disc in it. Have to power off the unit with the disc in it to get it too stay closed and play the disc. It now wont play DVD+Rs either. Very disappointed with this purchase. August 24, 2015 Update - I contacted Samsung Customer Support and they emailed me troubleshooting instructions. Powering the player off for 60+ seconds by unplugging it fixed the problems. Also did a firmware update just for good measure. Have changed my rating from 1 star to 3 stars based on the player being operational again. September 2015 update - the August fix only lasted a short time. Ended up having to ship the player to a repair station at my expense. They replaced the motherboard. It has been working fine since that time. Have lowered my rating from 3 stars back to 1 star for poor reliability.

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After 5 months of minimal use, this player started to sporadically NOT play blu ray discs. Discs that Ive had for years would suddenly not be compatible. Brand new discs not working. This is blu ray only. Extremely long story short, I find out that there are periodic necessary firmware upgrades. Hours of live chat, and broken links and misunderstanding reps at Samsung later, and apparently my now 7 month old 5 star bluray player needs to be sent in for a tech to fiddle with. NO WAY. Ill use a 2 disc blu ray set as a 1 star example. They both played just fine every time I played them within that 7 months. Now it will play the first disc, but will not accept the 2nd. Thats ridiculous. For something as minimal as a disc player, I expect it to play a disc when I put it in. Of course things break and STOP WORKING, I understand that. But having the system randomly choose to not play is 100% unacceptable. Its either broken, or its not. I see that I noted in the original review that it would fire up and go "Smart" on me. I should have known then. As far as Im concerned: Samsung is the same garbage it was 40 years ago, when you would consider buying a $19 dorm room TV knowing that it was not going to make it through the semester to begin with. I know Im the rarity here, but Im being honest and transparent and sometimes the 1 star reviews are accurate. The time I personally wasted alone, trying to get a disc to play, and having 4 separate chats with Samsung was worth FAR more than the purchase price of a new player. Do they really think Im going to submit a repair order, send my box in, and wait for them to tell me that theres nothing wrong with it? Maybe get it back 6 weeks later at my postage expense? Am leaving my original review for comparison I guess, so my update is fair: I like the subtleness of this wee box. My Sony Blu-Ray crapped out after about 5 years and of course, having cut the CABLE, I have to have a DVD player! The top of it has almost invisible controls on the right front. They arent buttons, but they appear to be almost touch screen like. The door and disc tray are quiet during operation. Its much more compact than my old Sony, and that works just fine for me. The only thing I really dont like about this SMART player is that when it powers up, it automatically goes into Smart mode and makes you choose if you want Netflix, YouTube, etc. I like to choose those things when I want them. When I power up a disc player, I probably want to watch a disc and not have a couple of extra unnecessary remote control steps. I have a Smart Panasonic TV already!! So far so good. I will update if necessary, but I would imagine that with Samsung, which is now a GOOD name in electronics, (theyve come a long way), nothing dramatic will occur. This machine was highly rated, and that was mostly what I based my choice on. I rely on others reviews quite often! Id buy it again if I needed another, or as a gift.

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