[New Bloke]

SAMSUNG BDP1500 at Richer Sounds - HI-FI Separates, Home Cinema, Speakers, MP3 DVD Portables, Plasma LCD, etc.

Grab a bargain guys and gals...

[Sephiroth0000]

Originally Posted by New Bloke

SAMSUNG BDP1500 at Richer Sounds - HI-FI Separates, Home Cinema, Speakers, MP3 DVD Portables, Plasma LCD, etc.

Grab a bargain guys and gals...

Samsung BD-P1500 I updated mine to the latest firmware and it never worked since. Refused to read discs (apart from DVDs), remote is not responsive and it won't even let me reset it to original settings. Samsung won't help me either as I purchased second hand!

Sorry for the rant people lol!

[Scott_Mac]

Originally Posted by New Bloke

SAMSUNG BDP1500 at Richer Sounds - HI-FI Separates, Home Cinema, Speakers, MP3 DVD Portables, Plasma LCD, etc.

Grab a bargain guys and gals...

In store only... may as well spend an extra tenner from Amazon and get it delivered as stocks are very erratic!

Samsung BD-P1500/XEU - Blu-ray Disc Player - Includes: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

[den9112]

Same here did a update and never worked since , only reading standard dvd . If any one could tell me how to roll back to a previous update were my player worked i would apreciate it before i throw it in the bin . ps only played about 6 blu ray discs .

[wakeywarrior]

Afraid not such a good deal at R.S.

You do not get the two free blu ray discs: I am Legend and Oceans Thirteen with this as you do at Amazon for only £10 more.

HMV also have it in store for £150 including the said discs.

I tried to get R.S. to discount it further, stating that the discs are worth more than a tenner but they were not interested- very poor RS. A tenner off would have sealed a deal for them.

I had also made a trip to them and wasted an hour as they were not picking up their phone. Stood in the shop I saw how the phone just rang and they did not pick it up, albeit they did seem busy.

I don't think I'll ever bother going to R.S. again.

[boxrick]

Originally Posted by wakeywarrior

Afraid not such a good deal at R.S.

You do not get the two free blu ray discs: I am Legend and Oceans Thirteen with this as you do at Amazon for only £10 more.

HMV also have it in store for £150 including the said discs.

I tried to get R.S. to discount it further, stating that the discs are worth more than a tenner but they were not interested- very poor RS. A tenner off would have sealed a deal for them.

I had also made a trip to them and wasted an hour as they were not picking up their phone. Stood in the shop I saw how the phone just rang and they did not pick it up, albeit they did seem busy.

I don't think I'll ever bother going to R.S. again.

If customers were in the shop would you deal with the customers first or answer the phone? I would certainly want serving first above them answering the phone.... this is what i usually see from my local shop. (Maybe if we all had 2 heads and 4 arms eh )

[boxrick]

Originally Posted by den9112

Same here did a update and never worked since , only reading standard dvd . If any one could tell me how to roll back to a previous update were my player worked i would apreciate it before i throw it in the bin . ps only played about 6 blu ray discs .

Its faulty and *should* be working... take it back to retailer or contact samsung.... ( say it was a present and no receipt usually works for me with 2nd hand purchases! )

[den9112]

Been trying to find the sony for £150 at hmv online . Is it instore only .

[wakeywarrior]

Originally Posted by den9112

Been trying to find the sony for £150 at hmv online . Is it instore only .

The SAMSUNG is in HMV (at least the Leeds branch) at £150 incl the free discs. They also have a Sony 350, which yesterday was 200+ (can't remeber exact price, just thought expensive) and today is £179 which is nearly as good as Amazon.

A little off topic, but HMV seem to be getting more competitive on their pricing. Also had Guitar Hero 3 inc guitar on all formats for (I think) £35 but it may have been £39.

[Marky1973]

I would just say that I got the samsung from Amazon in August and updated the firmware and it is a great little player, not problems with it at all - good cheap way to get into Blu Ray with a 2.0 machine.....£139 is a great price imho

[Sandman]

Originally Posted by Marky1973

I would just say that I got the samsung from Amazon in August and updated the firmware and it is a great little player, not problems with it at all - good cheap way to get into Blu Ray with a 2.0 machine.....£139 is a great price imho

I have had 2 of these, both stopped working after firmware upgrades so were sent back. Now have the sony 350.

[James Baker]

Had one also - slow and dreadful DVD playback quality.

Got refunded due to the fact it was always reverting to 1080p and as my screen wont accept it meant I got a black picture.

Well rid...

Go for the SONY BDPS-350 for a few quid more (and free films)

http://www.richersounds.com/showprod...d=SONY-BDPS350

You have been warned

[wakeywarrior]

Originally Posted by Baldybouncer

Had one also - slow and dreadful DVD playback quality.

Got refunded due to the fact it was always reverting to 1080p and as my screen wont accept it meant I got a black picture.

Well rid...

Go for the SONY BDPS-350 for a few quid more (and free films)

SONY BDPS350 at Richer Sounds - HI-FI Separates, Home Cinema, Speakers, MP3 DVD Portables, Plasma LCD, etc.

You have been warned

I think you are correct Baldy, go onto Amazon's US site and the Samsung gets some shocking reviews from real world users. Too many people have returned these players. I am glad I did not buy it now. R.S. has the best price on the 350, but no branch I call has it in ( I know I said I would not shop there again!). I don't really want to pay 179 for it (price everywhere else) as I am certain price will come down soon- when those credit card bills start hitting in the next few weeks, the retail trade will never have seen anything like it and they will become desperate to do deals. I went into Blockbuster and it is 199 with 7 films. They told me the price will go up and/or it will be the same price without the films soon, but seriously, when over the long term has technology never plumetted in price over anything but the short term? Never and it will not start now.

[boxrick]

Originally Posted by Baldybouncer

Had one also - slow and dreadful DVD playback quality.

Got refunded due to the fact it was always reverting to 1080p and as my screen wont accept it meant I got a black picture.

Well rid...

Go for the SONY BDPS-350 for a few quid more (and free films)

SONY BDPS350 at Richer Sounds - HI-FI Separates, Home Cinema, Speakers, MP3 DVD Portables, Plasma LCD, etc.

You have been warned

My friend has a BDP1500 i agree dvd quality is not great.... however as a blu ray player overall its pretty decent. Its got the same blu ray quality as most of the other players do. Bootup speed is decent and menus fairly easy to operate. Not a badp layer for £140

[Doctor Smith]

i wish people would stop posting Richer sound so called bargains. They are either out of stock or crap

[Marky1973]

As has been noted on these forums many times before, most people will only post for advice or if they have a problem - at least more often than just posting to say they have bought something which is a great piece of kit.

I say this, not to question other people's experiences with this player, just to balance it with mine......which is over 5 months of fault free use.

The SD quality isn't the best and can probably be easily beaten by a decent upscaler. However, it is better than my old progressive DVD player and, even on a 100inch projection at 720p standard DVDs generally go from acceptable to great (I robot SD being a good 'great' example).....never have a I watched something on SD on the samsung that I thought was 'awful' and unwatchable. Once you are into the film, it doesn't really matter.

BD performance is great IMO - and I guess other players may be better but, again, on the projection (which should show up faults at that size) I have never had any issues.

It can be slow to boot up (and get through adverts) but if I am going to watch a 2 hour film, an extra couple of minutes is manageable.

Not trying to justify the purchase to myself as I am very happy and it fits into my set-up very nicely. Just trying to counter the arguments that this is a poor piece of kit. It isn't the best, but you don't expect to get the best at that price - its more about the best for your needs at the time you are buying. Some people have obviously been unlucky with it, but a lot of us are very happy with it.

Perhaps give it a try, you might like it.

Going to put my soapbox away now

[James Baker]

But the player is not a bargain as for an extra £20 you get a better player with atleast 2 free blu-rays!

As many people on here know I am not a Sony fan.

The player is small,quiet,fast at loading and gives excellent picture and sound on both BD & SD whereas the Samsung 1500 gave me nothing but trouble...Theres nothing worse than openeing a new bluray to find it doesnt work (needing another firmware upgrade) or finding the player locked into 1080p mode AGAIN!

For the moment he Sony BDPS-350 is a better deal all round

[Marky1973]

I am not doubting there are better deals out there, I was just trying to make the argument that the player is not the pile of **** that a lot of people seem to be saying - although I am also not denying people have had problems.

I was just saying that I am happy (so far) with my player and we have not all had problems.....as I also said, it's all down to your specific needs at the time you want to buy.....

Anyway, I'm off to watch an HD-DVD......

[James Baker]

Originally Posted by Marky1973

the player is not the pile of **** that a lot of people seem to be saying

I disagree...If it doesnt play blurays after a recent update surely its not worth bothering with especially as its not really any cheaper than a decent player...


Chocolate Teepot comes to mind...

[Marky1973]

Not going to argue with you or tell you you're wrong, I was just trying to give a balanced view - you have had problems, I haven't - simple as that.......we all have different views, I was just giving mine....

You say tomarto I say tomayto

[Richer Sounds]

Originally Posted by wakeywarrior

Afraid not such a good deal at R.S.

You do not get the two free blu ray discs: I am Legend and Oceans Thirteen with this as you do at Amazon for only £10 more.

HMV also have it in store for £150 including the said discs.

I tried to get R.S. to discount it further, stating that the discs are worth more than a tenner but they were not interested- very poor RS. A tenner off would have sealed a deal for them.

I had also made a trip to them and wasted an hour as they were not picking up their phone. Stood in the shop I saw how the phone just rang and they did not pick it up, albeit they did seem busy.

I don't think I'll ever bother going to R.S. again.

Dear wakeywarrior,

I was sorry to read that you were unhappy with the level of service received on your recent visit to one of our stores.

At £139.95 the Samsung BDP1500 is an extremely competitive price and as far as I'm aware none of our competitors are cheaper. We don't include the free discs as we are sure most of our customers would prefer to pay less for the player, rather than get films which they may or may not want.

However, we do have a very strong price beat policy in the unlikely event you do find a cheaper price or better deal. See our website for more details on our price beat, Richer Sounds - The UK's Hi-Fi, Home Cinema & Flat Panel Tv Specialists! .

Finally, I am sorry that you have experienced problems whilst trying to telephone your local branch. I can assure you we are constantly looking at ways to improve our customer service, including making it easier for our customers to contact us.

I hope this clarifies things although please let me know if I can be of any further help.

Yours sincerely,

John Clayton
Operations Director
Richer Sounds

[Kryptix]

Can this send HD audio codecs as bitstream?

[Marky1973]

Hi Kryptic

The manual for the player is on this link and page 35 gives the main three ways of connecting the audio. I'm not clever enough to answer your question directly , but that might offer some guidance!

http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/co...00_XEU_ENG.pdf


And just to continue to be contrary on this thread, I have bought loads of stuff from Richer Sounds over the last few years (LCD TV, AMP, Speakers DVD-R, Projector and various other little bits and pieces) and have always found them to be helpful and willing to haggle a little........so don't let one person's experience put you off!

[Kryptix]

Originally Posted by Marky1973

Hi Kryptic

The manual for the player is on this link and page 35 gives the main three ways of connecting the audio. I'm not clever enough to answer your question directly , but that might offer some guidance!

http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/co...00_XEU_ENG.pdf


And just to continue to be contrary on this thread, I have bought loads of stuff from Richer Sounds over the last few years (LCD TV, AMP, Speakers DVD-R, Projector and various other little bits and pieces) and have always found them to be helpful and willing to haggle a little........so don't let one person's experience put you off!

Cheers -- it appears that it can!

[wakeywarrior]

Originally Posted by Richer Sounds

Dear wakeywarrior,

I was sorry to read that you were unhappy with the level of service received on your recent visit to one of our stores.

At £139.95 the Samsung BDP1500 is an extremely competitive price and as far as I'm aware none of our competitors are cheaper. We don't include the free discs as we are sure most of our customers would prefer to pay less for the player, rather than get films which they may or may not want.

However, we do have a very strong price beat policy in the unlikely event you do find a cheaper price or better deal. See our website for more details on our price beat, Richer Sounds - The UK's Hi-Fi, Home Cinema & Flat Panel Tv Specialists! .

Finally, I am sorry that you have experienced problems whilst trying to telephone your local branch. I can assure you we are constantly looking at ways to improve the our customer service, including making it easier for our customers to contact us.

I hope this clarifies things although please let me know if I can be of any further help.

Yours sincerely,

John Clayton
Operations Director
Richer Sounds

Dear John

First, it is impressive that you are monitoring the forums and replying like this- it shows that you care.

Regarding your staff in the shop, I had no problem with how he actually dealt with me in terms of service when I was there. I just thought that it was
disappointing not to offer to do anything on the price because the price difference was £10 more at HMV, but they had two discs and those discs were worth more than £10. However, there was no interest in attempting to do a deal. Possibly he knew you were at the bottom of your margin, but I suspect there was more than £10 in it. As someone who spent many years in my student days selling electronic equipment in my Saturday job, I would have been less eager to let a deal get away.

Regarding the phone situation, I have noticed another reply to my original post saying that the phone should be ignored in favour of serving customers when customers are waiting in the shop.

I do not wish to sound rude, but that person knows little about customer service. Richer Sounds have no online stock check ability (why?) and say that you must contact the store. Unfortunately, when you try, no one picks up the telephone when busy. The customer on the telephone is as important as the customer in the shop. If the shop is busy, it would take ten seconds to take the call between customers, explain that the assistant is currently serving customers, but would be happy to take a number and call back shortly. That would be good customer service. It would not alienate the waiting customer. I am a partner in a business with a eight figure turnover and am busy myself, but if I let my clients ring and we do not answer their calls we will lose the clients.

I also note R.S. Leeds employs a "phone answerer". Perhaps he does not work Thursday evenings?

The problem and frustration is compounded by the fact the deals are advertised on the website but you cannot order from the web or check the stock, you have to walk or drive to the store because they will not pick up the phone when busy and when you get there they often have no stock. This has happened to me a few times.

On a more positive note, one time I did recently get through to the Leeds store (to be told they did not have any of that particular deal in stock) the assistant was very pleasant and helpful and the model of how the phone should be answered- inviting me to come down to the store to browse alternatives with R.S. paying my car parking. I declined his offer, but it was good all the same.

Customer feedback is therefore do not let the phone ring incessantly when inviting customers to ring to check on stock levels at your store and try and implement some stock level display on your website, albeit I know you may say this is too expensive for you to do on your margins. However, in response to that I would say that Richer Sounds deals can normally be matched elsewhere on the web and invariably the other stores selling at the same price have stock level details.

Regards

Wakeywarrior

[Richer Sounds]

Originally Posted by wakeywarrior

Dear John

First, it is impressive that you are monitoring the forums and replying like this- it shows that you care.

Regarding your staff in the shop, I had no problem with how he actually dealt with me in terms of service when I was there. I just thought that it was
disappointing not to offer to do anything on the price because the price difference was £10 more at HMV, but they had two discs and those discs were worth more than £10. However, there was no interest in attempting to do a deal. Possibly he knew you were at the bottom of your margin, but I suspect there was more than £10 in it. As someone who spent many years in my student days selling electronic equipment in my Saturday job, I would have been less eager to let a deal get away.

Regarding the phone situation, I have noticed another reply to my original post saying that the phone should be ignored in favour of serving customers when customers are waiting in the shop.

I do not wish to sound rude, but that person knows little about customer service. Richer Sounds have no online stock check ability (why?) and say that you must contact the store. Unfortunately, when you try, no one picks up the telephone when busy. The customer on the telephone is as important as the customer in the shop. If the shop is busy, it would take ten seconds to take the call between customers, explain that the assistant is currently serving customers, but would be happy to take a number and call back shortly. That would be good customer service. It would not alienate the waiting customer. I am a partner in a business with a eight figure turnover and am busy myself, but if I let my clients ring and we do not answer their calls we will lose the clients.

I also note R.S. Leeds employs a "phone answerer". Perhaps he does not work Thursday evenings?

The problem and frustration is compounded by the fact the deals are advertised on the website but you cannot order from the web or check the stock, you have to walk or drive to the store because they will not pick up the phone when busy and when you get there they often have no stock. This has happened to me a few times.

On a more positive note, one time I did recently get through to the Leeds store (to be told they did not have any of that particular deal in stock) the assistant was very pleasant and helpful and the model of how the phone should be answered- inviting me to come down to the store to browse alternatives with R.S. paying my car parking. I declined his offer, but it was good all the same.

Customer feedback is therefore do not let the phone ring incessantly when inviting customers to ring to check on stock levels at your store and try and implement some stock level display on your website, albeit I know you may say this is too expensive for you to do on your margins. However, in response to that I would say that Richer Sounds deals can normally be matched elsewhere on the web and invariably the other stores selling at the same price have stock level details.

Regards

Wakeywarrior

Dear Wakeywarrior,

Thank-you for taking the trouble to come back to me with some further information.

I completely agree with regards to your feedback with about our phones! Telephone callers and in-store customers are of equal importance and we certainly don’t want to disappoint any of our customers – whether they be in-store or otherwise.

Going forwards I will be taking this subject up with all of our store managers to tackle any problems with the phones directly. I’d also like to take the opportunity to remind any customers that they can contact our customer care team on 0845 900 1230 if they are having any problems contacting their local store.

Yours sincerely,

John Clayton
Operations Director
Richer Sounds

[wakeywarrior]

Well Done John!

[the.godfather]

Originally Posted by Richer Sounds

I completely agree with regards to your feedback with about our phones! Telephone callers and in-store customers are of equal importance and we certainly don’t want to disappoint any of our customers – whether they be in-store or otherwise.

Going forwards I will be taking this subject up with all of our store managers to tackle any problems with the phones directly. I’d also like to take the opportunity to remind any customers that they can contact our customer care team on 0845 900 1230 if they are having any problems contacting their local store.

Yours sincerely,

John Clayton
Operations Director
Richer Sounds

I have to agree about the phone issue as well John. I've tried ringing the Romford branch on/off nearly all weekend and not once have I found it to be anything other than engaged. So the phone is either very busy indeed or the phone itself is off the hook.

I'd like an update on the repair of my faulty Denon DVD-1940 (which is under the supercare warranty) but I've been unable to because of the phone issue. And my most local branch is about 30mins away from me.

Thanks for answering our queries, it's much appreciated.

[Rorry]

Originally Posted by the.godfather

I have to agree about the phone issue as well John. I've tried ringing the Romford branch on/off nearly all weekend and not once have I found it to be anything other than engaged. So the phone is either very busy indeed or the phone itself is off the hook.

I agree on the 'phone thing too - my local store is Chester and the only time the phone rings is when the store is shut. I'm sure they must just take it off the hook.

[Richer Sounds]

Originally Posted by the.godfather

I have to agree about the phone issue as well John. I've tried ringing the Romford branch on/off nearly all weekend and not once have I found it to be anything other than engaged. So the phone is either very busy indeed or the phone itself is off the hook.

I'd like an update on the repair of my faulty Denon DVD-1940 (which is under the supercare warranty) but I've been unable to because of the phone issue. And my most local branch is about 30mins away from me.

Thanks for answering our queries, it's much appreciated.

Dear the.godfather,

Thank-you for your message and also for your feedback re contacting our Romford store.

At this busy time of year many of our stores have experienced an extremely high volume of calls which I appreciate has caused difficulties for some customers who have been trying to contact our stores by telephone. However, I will take this matter up with our store manager in Romford again to look how we can improve this situation.

If any customers are having difficulties contacting their local store then please feel free to contact our customer care team on 0845 900 1230 where one of our colleagues will be more than happy to help.

With regards to your repair, if you could contact me privately with some more information (your name, job reference or post code) then I will arrange for one of my colleagues to telephone you with an update.

Yours sincerely,

John Clayton
Operations Director
Richer Sounds