Product Description

Samsung BD-P3600 plays Blu-ray high-definition discs (selectable output resolution: 1080p signals available through HDMI output only; 720p/1080i signals available through HDMI or component video) with selectable 720p/1080i/1080p video upconversion for DVD (upconverted video available through HDMI output only). There is built-in audio decoding for Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio Essential--Netflix video and Pandora music streaming (subscriptions to these services required). Player has 2 USB ports (1 front, 1 rear) for storing downloaded BD-Live material.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2 in Television
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: BD-P3600
• Released on: 2009-03-31
• Dimensions: 2.20" h x 17.30" w x 9.90" l, 5.30 pounds

Features

• Experience vivid, crystal-clear visuals that are more natural, more realistic and simply stunning with Blu-ray's full 1080p HD resolution
• Stream Blockbuster, Netflix, YouTube & Pandora
• Multi-format playback lets you enjoy Blu-ray Discs, DVD, CD, MP3/WMA, JPEG, AVCHD and more
• DivX support allows you to enjoy downloaded DivX movies on the big screen
• Connect wirelessly for BD-Live content or streaming services using the included USB Wi-Fi dongle

From the Manufacturer
Manufacturer's Description (March 20, 2009)
Set a new standard with the Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-ray player. Thanks to Blu-Ray Disc you'll enjoy detailed images and brilliant color in full 1080p resolution. In addition, the stylish BD-P3600 boasts cutting edge features like support for Netflix and Pandora movie/music streaming; wireless capability with the included USB dongle; BD-Live support; and two USB connections for updating firmware or playing back digital media files. Watch your favorite DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, listen to CDs with the highest-quality audio, stream internet content and plenty more with this sleek and powerful player.

Set a new Blu-ray standard. Click to enlarge.

Clean and simple touch-sensitive controls. Click to enlarge.

Experience vivid, crystal-clear visuals that are more natural, more realistic and simply stunning.

Get more out of a Blu-ray Disc than what's on it with BD-Live.

Experience billions of colors, high definition audio and improved frame rates with a single cable.

A New Era of Functional Design
Samsung's newest Blu-ray players continue their trend of stylish and decor-friendly electronics, with new versions of Samsung's groundbreaking Touch of Color (ToC) design and touch-sensitive controls. The BD-P3600 is just over two inches tall, and comes encased in deep black with charcoal gray highlights curving along the outer edges.

Total Full HD 1080p Video and HD Soundtrack Support
The BD-P3600 boasts full HD 1080p playback of Blu-ray discs, and crisp upconversion of standard DVDs through the HDMI 1.3 connection. For a true, Hollywood-quality experience, the player can internally decode the latest high-resolution digital multichannel audio soundtracks, including Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD HR / MA. The BD-P3600 can also output any of the soundtracks as a bitstream through its 7.1-Channel analog audio outputs, or as an uncompressed PCM signal, for consumers desiring the best cinematic sound with an older A/V receiver.

BD-Live ready
Get more out of a Blu-ray Disc than what's on it. BD-Live 2.0 lets studios future-proof their Blu-ray titles, so they can add content to BD-Live Ready discs even after they have been shipped. Simply connect your Blu-ray player to the Internet (through the included Ethernet port or using an optional Link Stick USB wireless dongle) to download images, subtitles and more. Text-chat with friends during a movie, or play against others in online trivia games to unlock exclusive video content and earn discounts on other products.

Multi Format Playback
In addition to Blu-ray discs, you can drop in a normal DVD and watch the picture get upconverted to near HD quality. Your CDs will also sound great, and you can play MP3/WMA audio from CD, DVD or USB. Or enjoy looking at your favorite JPG files from photo CDs.

DivX Playback
Insert DVDs, CDs or USB drives that have DivX movies downloaded via computer and enjoy watching them on a large-scale TV.

HDMI 1.3
Experience billions of colors, high definition audio and improved frame rates even at full 1080p resolution. HDMI 1.3 is a video cable format that delivers it all from your Samsung Blu-ray player without any loss of quality. Since you only need one HDMI cable, there's no ugly mess of tangled-up wires. So your set-up is as clean-looking as the picture.

Netflix Instant Streaming Ready
Are you a Netflix member? You no longer have to wait by the mailbox to satisfy your flix fix. Instantly stream from a selection of over 12,000 (and growing) movies and TV shows. The number of titles you can stream per month depends on which Netflix subscription plan you choose.

Stream movies instantly from your Netflix account.

Upgrade firmware easily via Ethernet or USB.

Instantly streaming movies and TV episodes from Netflix is done through a broadband connection and a Netflix Queue-based user interface. Netflix members visit the Netflix Web site to add movies and TV episodes to their individual instant Queues. Those choices will automatically be displayed on members' TVs and available to watch instantly through the Samsung players. Once selected, movies will begin playing in as little as 30 seconds. With the included remote control, Netflix members can browse and make selections right on the TV screen, read synopses and rate movies, and fast-forward or rewind the video stream.

Pandora Ready
The BD-P3600 can stream music though the popular Pandora music service. Enjoy a fresh way to discover new music and stay up-to-date with your favorite artists.

Wi-Fi Ready
Thanks to Samsung's proprietary Link Stick 802.11b/g/n wireless dongle (included), users can wirelessly connect to the latest Blu-ray features when the dongle is connected to one of the players' two USB 2.0 ports, or via the traditional wired Ethernet connection.

Analog/Digital Audio Out
Know what sounds great when it comes to your Blu-ray Disc player? Having audio output options. For picture-perfect audio there's the HDMI output. If you prefer analog audio, the player comes with a stereo RCA output for two channels of analog audio. An optical output is also included for the happy medium.

Firmware Upgrades
Your new Samsung Blu-ray Disc player won't be obsolete the moment you bring it home from the store. It's equipped with an Ethernet connection so you can download the latest firmware upgrade and add new features. If your player needs more local storage to take advantage of these features, simply plug in a memory stick with at least 1GB of memory into the USB port.

What's in the Box
Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-ray Disc Player, Wi-Fi dongle, 47-key Remote control, Batteries, AV cable (RCA type), User's Manual, Quick Start Guide

Customer Reviews

Outstanding player!!!!
When choosing a blu ray player, the choice can be confusing at times. After months of searching I now believe the best ones are the ones that match your needs most, after price point. Here is my review after a night well spent learning the ins and outs.

Pros-

Wifi-- This year Wifi will be all the rage. Set up with my samsung after a slight learning curve took 20 mins tops and once connected it worked flawlessy. I didn't even need to read the manuel. Superb and blazing fast!

Pandora--what a terrific gem of a music program. And its free! The learning curve is super easy and fun. I was able to program it from my mobile phone, and there it is two seconds later. I am a happy camper!

Netflix-- Great. super simple! Netflix needs more choices, but that is not Samsung's fault.

wifi dongle!- They could have charged for this. They didn't. Great!

cons, if it is one--The player feels flimsy upon first contact so that you almost want to be super gentle with it. As opposed to the sturdier players out there. If that concerns you, i suggest you hold a floor model first and decide for yourself. Also, still no hdmi plugs offered with the majority of players, this one included. Makes no sense at this point. Luckily i have spares.

Overall- a solid player, with wonderful audio and visual clarity. My test for blu ray, The Dark Knight. Looked amazing, sound oustanding. Test for upscale, Wall-E. Looked incredible and rich.

Nice job samsung!!!


UPDATE: Not sure what all the griping is about for a select few, but I watched Punisher Warzone on this player, a hard hitting film if there ever was one and this player did not hiccup. Audio and visual clarity were fantastic!! Also just watched quantum of solace. No issues. A little lag in the load time but I suspect that has to do with the dvd not the player. Sounded and looked great!! Be cautious of those few on here who get one bad lemon and decide the whole basket is rotten.

Three and a half month update: Still no problems to report with this player. I have not had one single issue with any movie I have thrown at it and I have now played over 200 films on it. it's a workhorse. It also plays copies of pretty much any DVD you have burned from a computer hard drive. I'll say it again, great product!

This blu ray player has gone done in price remarkably since it first dropped. It's orginal asking price, for those of you coming to it now, was nearly 400.00 dollars. It is now nearly 50 percent less. This is a real steal folks.

Black and Blu
I've never felt so conflicted about a piece of home theater gear in my life. On the one hand, the BD-P3600 offers very good to excellent audio and video performance on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs as well as some great internet streaming features. On the other hand the "PC Streaming" feature is frustratingly hard to use and unreliable to the point that I finally gave up trying to get it to work.

A few die-hard audio/videophiles were worried when Samsung chose not to include the excellent Silicon Optix Reon HQV video processor in this year's line-up of Blu-ray Disc players. The DVD upconversion on last year's BD-P2500 was outstanding and many of us were concerned that its omission from the BD-P3600 would lead to noticeably inferior standard def performance. Turns out there was little to worry about as both the DVD and Blu-ray performance of the BD-P3600 are excellent, comparable to Panasonic's DMP-BD80 and superior to LG's BD370.

Also, with on-board decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI/PCM and multi-channel analog outputs, the audio performance and flexibility of the BD-P3600 is also excellent. Throw in the included WiFi dongle, BD-Live support, quick disc loading, Netflix online streaming and Pandora internet radio and you get one full-featured high performance Blu-ray player. That is until you try out Samsung's new PC streaming feature.

With PC streaming, you can access media files (photos, music and Divx videos) directly from a PC with shared folders on the same home network... at least in theory. When we tested this, the "automatic" feature to detect sharable PCs on the network failed entirely and we had to resort to manually providing the IP address of the PC, and even this was not reliable. This process wouldn't be such a pain except that the player does not have a "remember me" function to remember the IP address, share name, userid and password for the next connection, and entering all of this manually using the remote and on-screen graphical keyboard is a time-consuming process. Also, we found that the player hung on multiple occasions while attempting to playback AVIs from the networked PC, and the only way to recover from this was a re-boot (which, of course, forgot all of our network information). Meanwhile, playback of the same content from a USB flash drive connected to the player's front or rear USB port, worked reliably, without all the drama.

As a Blu-ray Disc and DVD player, the BD-P3600 performs very well. It is one of the fastest players to load up both standard DVDs and Blu-ray Discs (faster, in most cases, than even the PS3). Also, the Pandora and Netflix streaming features are very reliable and add quite a bit to the overall flexibility and versatility of the player. But Samsung really should have waited to release the PC streaming feature until it was more robust and more reliable. If you promise not to use this feature, then I'd happily recommend the BD-P3600 as a full-featured high performance Blu-ray and DVD player. But those who do want to take advantage of PC streaming are in for some serious frustration.

A full review is available at Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).

A Good Blu-Ray Player
I differ with the first reviewer and am very satisfied with the player. It does a beautiful job of playing Blu-Ray disks and the image is immaculate as is the audio (the primary reason for buying any player). Netflix stream is great (it also streams in HD where the content is available - much nicer than the image on a PC), Pandora internet radio is a bonus.
I had no trouble connecting to my network. It was very easy and by putting my media into a shared (public) folder there was no complicated set up. I agree that this aspect of the player is a work in progress - codec support seems spotty - some played, some did not. Samsung has always done a great job of supporting their products (I've owned printers, TV's, etc.), so I expect further improvements.
My conclusion is that if what you want is a great Blu-Ray player with good networking and excellent audio then this IS the player. If you primarily want streaming of computer files to your TV, then a PC attached to the TV is a better solution (I have one of those too).