vashek
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- Nov 22, 2010
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Hi all,
I'm considering buying the Samsung BD-C8500 and I have a few questions to which I haven't been able to find clear answers.
1) What's the difference between BD-C8500 and BD-C8500M?
2) Can it play a DVD/BluRay while recording to HDD or not? I've seen reviews that say either, so I don't know what the truth is...
3) Many reviews say something like "it only has one tuner so you cannot record something and watch something else". Am I missing something? Doesn't everyone have a DVB-T tuner in their TV these days, thus being able to watch whatever channel they want, irrespective of what the PVR is doing?
4) Is "Freeview" the UK marketing name for the DVB-T standard? I.e., is it the same or is there some difference?
5) Can you play AVIs with SRT subtitles? And if yes, has anyone tried east-european character sets - do they work? Is the font and encoding supported? (I am Czech, we use all kinds of weird accents on our letters.)
6) Is there any advantage if your TV is also from Samsung? I have a LE37A656. I seem to remember they advertised some common remotes for all Samsung devices or whatever.
7) Judging by the documentation, it seems the device runs Linux inside it. Is it hacker-friendly? Can you get root? Is there a modding community somewhere?
8) And finally: apparently, the device isn't supposed to let you copy recorded video from the internal HDD. Is that true? Has anyone tried to find a way, e.g. take out the HDD, or get root and export the filesystem over the network (see previous question)? Is there any word from Samsung whether they intend to add the function via a firmware update?
(I hope I am not breaching any rules here. I believe recording from TV and transferring to other media for your own use is still legal, at least where I live.)
9) (added after posting) I understand you can rip your audio CDs to the HDD, add some MP3s from a USB flash drive, and then play music from the HDD. True? Is it easy to play the library without having the TV on, i.e., can you use it as a jukebox without consuming 200 watts of power or however much the LCD takes? Can you, for example, set it to play a random selection of tunes from a sub-tree of folders?
Thanks for any help! Cheers,
Vashek
I'm considering buying the Samsung BD-C8500 and I have a few questions to which I haven't been able to find clear answers.
1) What's the difference between BD-C8500 and BD-C8500M?
2) Can it play a DVD/BluRay while recording to HDD or not? I've seen reviews that say either, so I don't know what the truth is...
3) Many reviews say something like "it only has one tuner so you cannot record something and watch something else". Am I missing something? Doesn't everyone have a DVB-T tuner in their TV these days, thus being able to watch whatever channel they want, irrespective of what the PVR is doing?
4) Is "Freeview" the UK marketing name for the DVB-T standard? I.e., is it the same or is there some difference?
5) Can you play AVIs with SRT subtitles? And if yes, has anyone tried east-european character sets - do they work? Is the font and encoding supported? (I am Czech, we use all kinds of weird accents on our letters.)
6) Is there any advantage if your TV is also from Samsung? I have a LE37A656. I seem to remember they advertised some common remotes for all Samsung devices or whatever.
7) Judging by the documentation, it seems the device runs Linux inside it. Is it hacker-friendly? Can you get root? Is there a modding community somewhere?
8) And finally: apparently, the device isn't supposed to let you copy recorded video from the internal HDD. Is that true? Has anyone tried to find a way, e.g. take out the HDD, or get root and export the filesystem over the network (see previous question)? Is there any word from Samsung whether they intend to add the function via a firmware update?
(I hope I am not breaching any rules here. I believe recording from TV and transferring to other media for your own use is still legal, at least where I live.)
9) (added after posting) I understand you can rip your audio CDs to the HDD, add some MP3s from a USB flash drive, and then play music from the HDD. True? Is it easy to play the library without having the TV on, i.e., can you use it as a jukebox without consuming 200 watts of power or however much the LCD takes? Can you, for example, set it to play a random selection of tunes from a sub-tree of folders?
Thanks for any help! Cheers,
Vashek
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