Samsung BD C5900 or 5500

[Initialised]

Considering one of these for streaming to a TV in the bedroom.

1: Is 3D the only advantage of the 5900?

2: What files won't it play?

3: Is the Samsung AllShare software and good (I'll probably dedicate an old PC to the job of streaming) is there anything better suited and easy to use?

 

[next010]

2: Samsung have reasonable codec support although not as good as a proper network media player.

3: Legendarily terrible, Samsungs software should be avoided and Samsung are limited to reading DLNA servers, they have no samba support. You'll want to avoid DLNA when it comes to certain media types. You can use third party transcoding servers like Serviio or Mezzmo instead of Samsung's.

I think you'd be better off buying a media player a HDI Dune Smart B1 if you want a Blu-ray player and and proper network media player.

If you absolutely have to get a brand name 3D Blu-ray player try LG players instead as at least they allow reading samba shares so your not stuck with DLNA.

 

[Initialised]

Thanks, unfortunately Mrs Ini is dead set on Samsung for everything. If I had my way I'd just add a Blu-Ray player to the dedicated PC and use that as the player or maybe get another PS3.

 

[limegreenzx]

The BD C5500 makes a great media player. It has completely replaced my WDTV gen1 as it does a better job. I have never needed to transcode on the fly, my Atom server isn't up to it. Most of my files are 1080P and 720P MKVs (AVC video and DTS audio) and these it plays natively. Not sure about subtitle support as it's not required.

The Samsung DLNA server is poor. The worst problem is the time taken to add another file to the library. I use TVMobili (it's free), first on a desktop PC and now as a service on a Windows homeserver. I tried Serviio and many others, but TVMobili has proved to be completely reliable.