# Revising Equipment, Samsung bluray broke



## Red Z (Jan 8, 2008)

I find that I am constantly revising home theater equipment; always trying to stay current with the trends. I belong to Block-Buster's mail rental system and have at least 6 new DVD movies a week to watch. I recently attempted to switch my DVD player to BluRay from conventional DVD and have had a few problems. 

I purchased what I thought to be a high-end Bluray player, A Samsung BDP-5000U. This $500.00 player was dead out of the box. It would play standard DVDs, but not BluRays. I changed my block-buster account to receive BluRays instead of standard DVDs and it took about 2 weeks to make the change. When I received the first Bluray, that is when I found out the player would not work--it just locked-up and would not respond to any commands--including eject.

I called Samsung Tech support and they diagnosed it from the symptoms and recommended sending it in for repair. They made it easy by sending me a shipping label on email, paying for the shipping, and scheduling UPS to come and pick it up from my house.

After two weeks, the repaired bluray player arrived. It did not come back in its original box as it was shipped in, but rather, a generic box. On inspection, the back of the case was scratched all over by the HDMI output--it was as if a blind man attempted plugging in the HDMI cable and missed. After hooking up the player, I found it would now play blurays, but the picture quality was horrible through HDMI. It was fuzzy, had halos, and all kinds of artifacts. I changed the output cables to 720 component video and the picture quality noticeably improved. Apparently HDMI did not work. 

I wanted to give up on the Samsung--I figure I should have never sent it in for repair, I should have just returned it. When I attempted to return it after it came back from repair, I could not. Even though it was just over a month old, I no longer had the original box. As the store manager told me, if you ever send a new item in for repair, they will always tell you to ship it in the original box--and then they keep the box--thus prohibiting you from returning it to the place of purchase. 

The Samsung was my first bluray player and I had nothing to compare it to. I also needed to verify all of my HDMI cables and hardware. I bought a Sony BDPS350 bluray and immediately noticed a difference in the operation compared to the Samsung. The Samsung was definately defective.

I contacted Samsung tech support who again provided postage and shipping. The player has been in repair, again, for about two weeks. Just before I began writing this, UPS arrived with the Samsung bluray player. I have yet to hook it up, but I have doubts as to whether it will work correctly.

My advise to someone with a DOA component--never send it in for repair. Return it to place of purchase and either get your money back or a new component.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

You will actually find that Samsung and many other companies dont send you the same player back but rather a refurbished unit. Good practice is to request that they send you a replacement first and that you will then return the defective one when it arrives prepayed shipping. Samsung offers this and so do other companies. Warranties usualy have a 30 day in store exchange so for the first 30 days you can just exchange or return the unit to the place of purchase.


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## Red Z (Jan 8, 2008)

I wish I would have just returned it to the place of purchase for a replacement or refund. One other note: I previously misidentified the model number just from memory when I first started this thread. It is a BD-UP5000 and not what I wrote before.

I do have an update to this entire dilema; I have now received the player back from Samsung's repair facility and it appears (from what was on the repair ticket) they replaced the entire motherboard and some other part. Long story short, *the player seems to work fine now *(I have only played one bluray in it though). The player loads faster than before and it no longer locks-up. The picture is output at 1080 and is crystal clear, the audio is output in PCM through the HDMI and sounds awesome. 

It also appears I did get the same unit back, judging from the scratches they put on it when they attempted repair the first time--also the serial number is the same.

I guess I can now quit cursing Samsung--they (in the end) did do the right thing and repaired my player.


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