Seems to be alot of problems with Samsung DVD players

I bought this unit in January 2006 from BBuy. I admit I was mainly looking for a surround sound system but the price seemed reasonable and with all the other features (5-disc changer, divx capable, etc.) I thought what the heck. At first I didn't really use the dvd player that much, but when I did I had a problems with a few discs skipping after about an hour into the movie, at the time I just figured the discs themselves were bad, like I said I didn't use it to watch many movies. Well recently my wife started working at a movie rental store, so with free rentals we've started watching a lot more movies. Now I see that the dvd function on this unit is basically useless, pretty much every movie we play begins to skip and then freeze at about an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie. I know it's not the discs, sometimes she gets free unopened movies as promotional items and the same thing happens, an hour and fifteen minutes or so into the movie it begins to skip, every single time now. I have tried disc cleaners with no luck. After some research online, it seems that alot of people have the same exact problem with all types of samsung dvd players. Maybe there are just a few bad units floating around out there but nonetheless I would recommend going with another brand.

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DVD only worked for 5 months...

Things were going great for 5 months, until suddenly I can't play DVDs. The DVD audio is choppy and the video pixelates then stops altogether within seconds. Samsung of course is difficult to deal with to have them complete a warranty repair. Rather than just send a new unit, which most reputable manufacturers would do to minimize your inconvenience & displeasure with their company, they want me to send it off to them for 2-3 weeks. (Not a partcularly enticing option when the unit comprises the sum total of your home audio/video equipment.)

We'll see how this plays out, but I'm inclined to return to Sony products. After all, I had the same receiver, CD player, tape deck, & DVD players for many years (nearly 20 years in the case of the receiver), and now my Samsung replacement dies after 5 months.

Other down sides that I was willing to overlook, but deserve mentioning:
* when you plug in your iPod to the USB port, its next to impossible to control what song is next. It doesn't pull up the song/artist info, but rather you get a series of 4-5 random letters, so you're stuck just clicking next until a song plays that you may want to hear at that particular moment. The work around I started using is just to plug the iPod into the stereo using the iPod's headphone jack & controlling things from the iPod itself. The USB port is a great idea for Samsung, but its not thought out well enough to actually be effective.
* The remote control is not well organized. Difficult to navigate DVDs without really concentrating on the buttons you're looking for.
* The disc #s on the carousel should be white on black, rather than black on black. Its real hard to read them -- even up close -- in a dark armoire.
* No CD mode that I can discern. So if you just want music, you gotta take out the DVDs, otherwise, it'll play them when it comes around to them. My old Sony DVD player has this feature and would skip the DVDs in CD Mode.

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Three and a half stars

I purchased my Samsung HT-P38 about four months ago, and I have to say I have been reasonably happy with it. The reason I give it less than a perfect score has more to do with the system not having things I was looking for than any major flaws with it. The reason I bought this was to have a surround-sound system in my room, which would mostly be used for playing video games, in addition to the occasional movie.

My dismay is mainly due to my lack of research I did prior to purchasing it, so I will save you from the same mistake and go over what I should have considered. As I previously mentioned, I bought this mainly for use with video games. The HT-P38 has two normal audio imputs and a fiber-optic hookup. The Playstation 2 is capable of fiber-optic sound transmission, but I don't have the cable for it so I am unable to comment on that. What I am able to comment on is the Pro Logic II that the system has.

Pro Logic II is a digital decoder that can take any audio signal no matter how encoded and convert it to 5.1 surround sound, while preserving stereo effects and surround effects from lesser surround formats, such as 4.0. That is all well and good; both the Gamecube and PS2 support this as an audio format for their games, although it tends to sound more like four speaker stereo sound when played.

However, the disadvantage to this is that Pro Logic II cannot decode actual 5.1 signals, making any 5.1 surround-encoded signals the HT-P38 receives be ignored and transformed into psudo-5.1. The system I was most excited to play in surround sound was the Xbox, which supports 5.1 Dolby Digital, and upon finding this out, I was rather disappointed. However, the home theater does a good job of playing sound from other sources, though it is not for people looking for an all-encompassing home theater.

First and foremost, this is a DVD player. It has a 5-DVD changer that can play DVDs, CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs and MP3 discs, as well as Div-X encoded video CDs. It does have skipping problems with burned DVDs, however. Playing movies is this system's strong suit, as it does include Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding for DVDs, meaning true 5.1 surround sound, which makes movies like Spider-Man 2 more exciting to watch. It also has DTS decoding, but I have never used it, as most everything uses Dolby.

The P38 has three video outlets: A standard composite outlet, an S-video outlet and a component outlet. The player has progressive scan available from the component outlet, which makes the quality of the DVD video much, much better. For some TVs, those that can support progressive scan mode, it is almost as if you were watching it through a sheet of diamond, the clarity is so good. Progressive scan means that, instead of displaying alternating lines of video for each frame, it makes the picture from top to bottom all at once, the same way a computer monitor does. This mode is very good for displaying moving objects. If your TV does not support progressive scan, the video quality is still good with the S-video and composite modes, just nothing exciting.

The player also has an AM and an FM radio receiver, with included antennas for each. They act very much like any other radio. It also has the ability to play music directly from an MP3 player by way of a USB cable, however, not owning such a device means I have never tried this function.

It also includes a dedicated remote control, and it is here that the system has the most oddities. It has the standard volume control, channel changer (for the radio), buttons for navigating DVD menus, power button, open/close button, stop, play and pause buttons, etc. It also has controls for switching between the DVD/CD player, radio, fiber-optic and auxiliary audio imputs, as well as controls for controlling the way the Pro Logic II acts, the left/right fade of the front and rear speakers, center speaker volume, rear speaker volume, and sub-woofer volume. The last one should be turned all the way up if you plan on watching a movie like Star Wars, which has lots of explosions, unless people are trying to sleep in the nearby vicinity. It also has a 10x zoom, slow motion, sleep mode, and a few other random features.

While most of my dismay with the system stems from my disappointment over the surround sound, the system does have some weird quirks. The major one being that to fast forward or rewind, you must hold down the skip chapter button for a few seconds. If you do this incorrectly, you may accidentally skip a chapter, meaning you'll have to either rewind it or go back to the start of the chapter and fast forward to the place you were. This might take awhile, however, as the maximum speed of both is 4x normal speed. Most DVD players are capable of at least 16x. For movies like Shrek 2 that have ads that are unskippable except by fast forwarding, this can be very annoying. Also, the remote only has a "skip disc" function, meaning if you are playing a DVD in slot 2 and you want to play the one in slot 1, you will have to go around the horn, which can take a while. The player does have buttons to skip to any of them on top of the unit, however.

One final sound gripe: The system has a THD (total harmonic distortion) of 10%, while most mid-level home theaters have less than 1%. This is normally not too noticeable, although when you have the volume turned up you can sometimes hear faint static in the background when people are talking. Ok, I lied, but the rear speakers should be turned up as well, as they are not very loud normally.

In conclusion, the Samsung HT-P38 Home Theater System is a good first home theater system, with many nice features save for a few annoying ones. If your main intent is to simply watch movies, and maybe have a VCR or something like that hooked up to the system as well, then this is a good choice. For people that are looking for outstanding audio performance, look for different home theater, one that supports Dolby Digital for incoming audio signals and that doesn't sound staticy during quiet love scenes. You can find this in stores for around $250, although, for that price you could get a DVD player and surround receiver separately. If space is a concern though, this will suffice.

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