Audio & VideoAudio & Video

Great Blu-ray player....Consider this player if you have a non-HDMI receiver...
This was a Christmas gift for the family. A GREAT Christmas gift. We already had a Samsung 37 inch 720p LCD, and Blu-ray looks tremendous on it. The colors pop off the screen unlike any up-converting DVD player. After watching 4 BDs so far, I really hope Blu-ray comes through. It is just like having your own theater in your home. Picture and sound are phenomenal.

As for the player... fast loading times, nice menu and easy setup process. IMPORTANT... If you have an old 5.1/7.1 receiver with no HDMI ports, this or the Panasonic DMP-BD55K are the players you should consider. The S550 has 7.1 analog out, so the player will both decode and output all the latest HD audio codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio) through the all-familiar red and white RCA cables to your receiver. You cannot listen to the HD codecs with just a fiber optical/digital coaxial cable...you will be stuck with just lossy Dolby Digital/DTS. Believe me... the HD audio is as impressive as the HD picture, if not more so. I highly highly recommend this player for anyone already with an HDTV but with an old 5.1 receiver. If you purchase this player, which at the moment is more than the Sony BDP-S350, you do not have to go out and purchase a 0 HDMI receiver or a 0 HDMI receiver with HD-decoding capabilities. This is the main reason our family bought this player over the less expensive S350 or BD35K. With a non-HDMI receiver, you just hook up your player to the HDTV via HDMI and to the receiver via analog (and optical if desired...read ahead).

One negative... This only applies to those who would use 5.1/7.1 analog out for HD audio. If you choose to watch DVDs using fiber optical/digital coaxial, you can still hook up the player to the receiver with both analog and the optical/coaxial cable. Unfortunately, the player doesn't treat the two outputs independently. Therefore you have to make changes in the S550 menu under Audio Output Priority (Multi-out vs. Optical). You can always play the DVDs using analog out and therefore not need to make these setting changes, but some people prefer the digital cables for their DVDs.
This problem is nonexistent in the Panasonic DMP-BD55K. However, the Sony apparently has better picture quality, especially for up-converting DVDs. Our family had a preference for the Sony brand and the attractive blue front.

If you already have an HDMI receiver, I would recommend the less expensive Sony BDP-S350 or Panasonic DMP-BD35K.

The BEST blu-ray player
I bought this Sony after owning a Samsung.Wow what a difference--Sony always makes the best new technologies.Easy to use and set-up. Loades faster that any BR I have seen.

Player works fine but the remote design could use some work
Set up was a breeze in my case. The unit was up and running in no time. Unlike some others have mentioned, I don't seem to need any software update since all of the discs that I have played to date have performed fine. The power control was so unobtrusive on the left face of the unit that it took me a couple of weeks to realize that I could turn the unit on and off without using the remote.

My only complaint is about the design of the remote control. The designer(s) for some reason decided to use place some of the controls in a two-concentric circle configuration. I am accustomed to using Sony remotes that have controls placed in a circular or wheel fashion and those can generally be operated by touch without the need to be looking at the controls when using them. The remote for this unit however requires the user to be very particular as to which circle they are pressing. Push the control on the outside circle instead of the inner circle and you will no longer be watching the movie at all, but instead will return to the home screen and then have to sit through the initial reading of the disc, followed by the FBI warning and then return to the disc's set up screen and then hope that you can locate the chapter that you were in when you pressed the wrong button in the first place.

I can understand that it can take a few days to become accustomed to a new remote control unit but I have had this one for about a month now and I still find myself making this same mistake repeatedly. Somehow I doubt that I am alone in this and wonder whether the designer(s) tested this configuration sufficiently with test groups before releasing it to the public.

Great straight out of the box
This is a fantastic Blu-ray player straight out of the box - no firmware upgrade required. The picture and sound are great and installation was a breeze. This was a great deal at the 0 price point, but still worth the full price. I noticed much faster load times than other Blu-ray players I used.

Good Accessibility
I bought the 4G nano after reading about Apple's inclusion of accessibility features for blind users. While the implementation is not complete, it is good enough to allow me to operate the basic functions of the device.

When connecting through iTunes 8, you can turn on voiced menus. On a Windows machine, iTunes will use the system's default text-to-speech engine and settings to voice most of the menus and media on the iPod. Some menus not voiced, but the important ones are. After sync'ing, I have occasionally had an unvoiced podcast folder. The contents are voiced, just not the menu name. The next time I sync, this generally is corrected, and the problem is sporadic and not a huge deal.

I switched to the iPod after growing frustrated with Rockbox on a Sansa. While Rockbox had a much more comprehensive implementation of voice technology, the device crashed one too many times. The iPod hasn't got all teh bells and whistles of Rockbox, but it has been much more stable,... so far.

Ipod Nano made it in time for XMAS-Fastest delivery on earth by Amazon!
I purchased this a few days before Christmas Eve and Amazon got it to my door Christmas eve! I am always amazed at Amazon's quickness of deliveries. Ipod Nano is being used by my son and he seems completely satisfied with Apple's Ipod Nano 16GB model. Overall, I would recommend product and Amazon to everyone as it is a great experience!

I LOVE IT!!!
I absolutely love my new Ipod! Its a perfect size, in my fave color, the screen is amazing for watching my movies and videos! I recommend buying the game Monopoly... it keeps me ADDICTED! I've read the other reviews, but I haven't had any problems with my Ipod and I've had it for about 2 months now! Definitely recommended!!!

Excellent product
I have the P720 and it is excellent also. Right out of the box slipped in my SD chip from my camera, turned on the unit, and instantly saw the slide show. Fantastic gift. Due to cost and ease of use I highly suggest this item to all my friends. The only feature not on this inexpensive unit is the fact that you need to group pictures so they display all horizontal or portrait depending on which way you hang/display the photo frame. But that feature was not important to me as I wanted an excellent product at an inexpensive cost and that is exactly what I got! Nice job Kodak!

Great frame, but sub-par software
I like this frame a lot. It's constructed really well and my photos look great on it. The onboard controls are good enough and they disappear gracefully when not in use. The frame supports all kinds of memory cards as well as a USB port for a thumb drive. And of course it supports Wi-Fi which is terrific. I have it downloading pictures from my Picasa Web Albums.

Unfortunately, the software that comes with the frame is not very good. It runs really slowly and is not very intuitive. That's not devastating because I decided to use Kodak's framechannel.com site to configure feeds for the frame. It's not great, but it works much better than the software. With either one, the menus and work-flow are frustrating at best.

The bottom-line : It works great for displaying photos loaded on a memory card or on a computer in my house. But it falls short of reasonable expectations when used to display photos from the internet.

7 inch frame: Great frame, could use better resolution.
This is the review for the 7-in frame, since Amazon has yet to figure out that they need distinct reviews for each distinct model (hello, Amazon?).

Fantastic aesthetics on the frame, my wife and I were impressed, and my mother-in-law was even more impressed when she unwrapped it for Christmas. The frame is beautiful, and the red matte contrasts perfectly between the dark frame and white touch border.

The software on this frame is awesome, once you get used to the touch border and how to use the controls. This software seriously saved my keester. Story:

I neglected to order a SD card reader for the extra SD card I had laying around and planned to use for this frame, since I figured my wife's camera would have no trouble allowing us to transfer pictures from her computer onto the blank SD card if it is was in her camera. I was wrong, and the camera only let you transfer photos from Camera-to-PC, and not PC-to-Camera. Of course, being the master of procrastination that I am, I had waited until Christmas Eve to figure this out. My wife was unhappy with me, and all the nerd knobs in my brain started turning to devise a solution.

Alas, I found a USB memory stick with enough space to store the photos, but it was so long that it stuck out beyond the frame. Great. Remember how I said the software saved my keester? Guess what folks, once I had the USB stick and the SD card plugged into the frame, the software built into the frame allowed me to copy the photos from the USB stick over to the SD card. Kodak, me and my keester thank you.

All-in-all a really well built frame. In a non-widescreen format, and a bit sharper resolution, this frame would be a perfect 5 stars. As it stands, the frame will either "windowpane" photos, or automatically zoom in on them to fill the screen but then you can't control the cropping that occurs. Of course, you can manually crop in an image editing program, but if you're buying for someone who is not computer savvy, you probably want to remain as hands-off as possible, and preferably just have them dump their digital photos to the SD card and go. The resolution doesn't lend itself well to close-up inspection, or to capturing vivid detail in images (did that hummingbird have 3 eyes?), but it's inexpensive if you catch the right deal, and it looks great from across the room.

Mother-in-laws everywhere need one of these, or a bigger brother of it.

Nice (once you get it to work)
I received this unit for Christmas and seriously thought about sending it back. However, after several days of playing with it to figure out several issues that aren't adressed in the product manual or SW updatees I finally have it working well enough to give it a fair review based upon the 10/28/2008 firmware and 1.1.3.58 Easyshare PC software.

My anticipated use for this frame is to place it in a public area then connect to a PC wirelessly to change slideshows and background music on the fly during parties. The weak points for this use case appear to be:

1) Setup of Wireless connectivity. My experience was better than most with the frame connecting to an unsecured network and then to a secured net after enabling WAP. However, manually adjusting the network parameters resulted in an inability to re-establish communications with the frame stating my security was wrong even though I verified it meticulously. The corrective action for this was to restore the frame to factory defaults (volume up and power) then re-enter the exact same data.

2) Slide transitions are much slower than the rate set in slide show options. This appears to be caused by the frame rescaling my images on the fly to fit them to the LCD. A faster processor would have been nice, but performance is usable setting the transition to the fastest rate. If you pre-load a slideshow to the frame and allow for resizing during the transfer it works better but this was not aligned with my use case.

3) Wireless speeds seem to be a little slow in transfering large amounts of data between the PC and the frame. Since this is not a multi-tasking user-interface device the frame (and PC Software) appears to be frozen during 10 minute updates.

4) Background audio breaks up when playing slideshows. This occurred with the audio and video files transferred wirelessly or pre-loaded on the frame. My initial assumption was the processor in the frame is just plain undersized or incompatible with my MP3 ripper. Attempts to correct this by re-ripping my audio tracks at a lower bit-rate were fruitless although I did notice that audio worked well while not in a slide show. What helped out enormously was changing the transition effects. I'm starting to believe there is a memory corruption issue in the 10/28 FW when using WIPE and a couple other effects. Fade/Zoom seems to work fine. While I occasionally hear a slight rhaspyness in a track, this may just be a limitation of the audio fidelity of the frame.

5) The PC Software for creating slide shows BLOWS CHUNKS. When accessing a directory on the frame it is unresponsive up while it downloads all of the information. This is excessive when you've downloaded 1000 images and just want to update a couple. It's also pretty sad to see the special edition of Easyshare SW for the frame doesn't even have a sort button for merging photos from several cameras by date. For that matter, the frame only plays in order of file name or picture date, making a scripted slide show more difficult to create. The slide show preview doesn't allow for deleting photo's from the show and the images in the picture tray are way too small to make judgement calls on.


So it may sound like I'm down this frame, not really. As a bleading edge product it can be made to perform well and offer features this year that others will be adding next.

The question you must ask yourself when considering this frame is are you willing to invest the time learning how to make it work and hope for firmware and PC software updates over the next few months to improve usability or would you rather wait another year for a more mature product from Kodak and others. If you aren't willing to spend a few hours frustrated wondering if problems are your media, network or the W1020, then save some money and drop the WIFI feature. If you really want to be the first in your group with a WIFI frame, then be aware that you can make this frame work pretty well if you invest the effort.

Apple Got It Right
I bought the 16 GB 1st Generation iPod Touch in June of 2008, which means that I have owned it for less than a year. It has already become my favorite device, and probably the best gadget that I've bought so far in my life.

This is the first mp3 player that I have ever owned, and I'm glad that I went with this one. Before purchasing the iPod touch, I did a lot research on cheaper alternatives. The main thing for me, at the time, was having a device to play my music; the wifi feature of the ipod touch looked like something that I would use occasionally, but it wasn't a necessity. Despite this, my love for sleek new gadgetry led me to purchasing the ipod touch, because none of the alternatives were comparable in the number of features. Little did I know, at the time, how extraordinarily helpful those features would be to me.

One of the most brilliant things about the ipod touch is its ergonomics (its design). This is something that people overlook far too often when they're purchasing some gadget, and I advise you to take it into consideration. It's obvious that the developers of the ipod touch put a lot of thought into the design of this product, because it's incredibly intuitive/natural in use. In fact, it's so simple to figure out that they don't even include a manual with it! Even the most technologically inept people can usually figure it out in a few minutes. All of your music on the ipod touch is also incredibly easy and quick to navigate through; you can browse alphabetically by playlist, artist, song, album, composer, genre, or by something else. On the right-hand side of the screen, while browsing for a song, there's a list of the letters A to Z; You can touch any of those letters, and it will automatically jump you to all of the songs whose titles begin with that letter. It's just another way that the ipod developers made this device quick and intuitive. Also, no matter where you are in the ipod (whether you're browsing in Safari, checking your email, browsing youtube, or anything else), you can just double press the "home" button (the physical button at the bottom of the ipod), and a box will pop up to give you instant access to your music controls, such as the volume, a pause/play button, and two buttons for "previous song" and "next song." It might sound like a gimmick, but I use it a lot when I'm browsing safari, because it saves me the time of having to go back into the music area to adjust the volume, and then back to safari. Once again, a quick, intuitive feature. "Typing" on the ipod touch takes a little bit of getting used to. Eventually, you'll find a method that works best for you. The ipod automatically tries to correct mistyped words, which can allow you to type fairly fast on it... I find that I'm able to type faster on my ipod than I can text message on my phone.

Now let's talk about wifi. As I mentioned earlier in this review, I didn't expect to get much use out of the wifi. I was dead wrong. It turns out that the wifi is the main reason I love this device so much. I'm a college student, and the school I attend provides free wifi access to all students all over the campus. Do you see where this is going? The ipod touch has actually saved me the trouble of having to lug my laptop around, when I just want access to my email and a tool for browsing the web. To me, this has become invaluable, because I'm already carrying a couple books and notebooks around. Adding a fairly heavy laptop to that is just highly undesirable, whereas carrying an ipod touch around in my pocket is no problem at all. An interesting thing about the ipod touch is how personal it can become; Because the ipod so portable, having your e-mail, the internet, and your music in your pocket at all times can turn out to be helpful or enjoyable in ways that you won't know, until you have it yourself.

I have already managed to use nearly every feature that the ipod touch provides. Let me go through the list:

1.) I browse safari all the time at college. In a number of cases, safari alone has "replaced" my laptop.
2.) I've programmed my class and work schedules into the ipod's calendar, just in case I forget something.
3.) I use the e-mail feature of the ipod touch all the time as well. You can program as many e-mail accounts into the ipod as you want, and you then have quick and easy access to all of them, via the "Mail" icon on the home screen. You don't have to type in your password each time, so you can go through and check your mail very quickly. I usually check my e-mail on my ipod right when I get up in the morning. It's nice not having to turn my computer on to do that.
4.) I've programmed all of the contacts from my cellphone into the ipod's "Contacts" section, in case something happens to my cellphone
5.) I've used the YouTube feature a number of times, when I get reallllly bored
6.) I haven't used the "stocks" feature myself, but it could certainly be helpful to those of you who are interested in the stock market... obviously.
7.) To my surprise, I have used the "maps" feature a number of times. In one instance, it helped get from Wisconsin to New York City. In another instance (when I was new to my college campus' surroundings), it helped me find a place to eat!
8.) I use the "weather" feature all the time. Pretty self-explanatory. Nice to know what the weather is, or what it's going to be.
9.) In the "clock" section of the ipod, there's a programmable alarm clock which I've used a few times.
10.) I've used the calculator a couple of times. If you buy the 2nd generation software upgrade, you'll also get a scientific calculator.
11.) I've used the "notes" feature a number of times, mostly just to save a thought, or something that I read before it slips my mind. Of course, you can use it for whatever you want; it's just a virtual notepad.
12.) Obviously I listen to music all the time... After all, at the core, the ipod touch is still an mp3 player. Oh, and music sounds great on it, if you were wondering...
13.) I've put videos and pictures on the ipod, for convenient, portable entertainment.
14.) Every now and then, I have made a purchase from the built in iTunes Store feature.

As you can probably tell, the built in wifi is definitely what makes the ipod touch so worth it for me. Thus, I advise you to evaluate your area before making a purchasing decision. If you're someone who has wifi spots all over the place (like I do, on a college campus) I would highly recommend the ipod touch to you... But if you rarely use the internet, you should probably consider a different ipod, because you can get a lot more music/video capacity for less money (take a look at the ipod classic).

Before I close this review off, I'll briefly mention durability... In short, this is a surprisingly durable device. I have dropped it from 2-3 feet on some hard surfaces, more times than I wish to say. It still works flawlessly. I saw a review which said that it's susceptible to damage from condensation, if you move it from a cold to a warm environment quickly. However, I live in Wisconsin (where winters are agonizingly cold), and I haven't had any water damage issues. Just be relatively careful, and your ipod should be fine. Also, in the specifications, Apple says that the iPod Touch's screen is resistant to scratches, because it's made out of tempered glass. This is true... but the key word here is "resistant," not "immune." If you don't buy a protective screen overlay, you will eventually scratch the screen. Personally, I don't care. I haven't bought a screen protector for mine, because the scratches are hard to see, and you can't see them AT ALL when the screen is turned on. Just be aware, the screen CAN and WILL be scratched with long term use.

I would give the ipod touch 6 stars out of 5 if I could. As an mp3 player, it has made life a bit more entertaining. As a wifi device, it has made my life easier, and that's the key. Plus, like all ipods, it comes with a decent pair of those well known white earbuds. Highly recommended.

Thanks for reading.

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Stunning Technology By Apple!
Received this 16GB ipod touch (1G) for a week now but still stunned by Apple's amazing technology! I've used a few ipods before but none of them can compare to this one. It is simply the best portable device on market. It is very user friendly. Get on line is so simple when you're in a hot spot. The Apple's App Store is amazing. It has so many useful software for free! Even for those who need to pay, the price is very reasonable (mostly from (asin:B0012JCZYM).99 to ). I remember I'd paid more than to buy a dictionary software for my Palm PDA. Now with the same I can buy more than 10 app software for my ipod touch!
The good thing for the ipod touch is it uses the same firmware with the iphone. That means all the software for the iphone can also be used by the ipod touch. There are tons of them. So I recommend you to get the biggest memory that you can afford. 8GB is simply not quite enough. The difference between the 1G and 2G is so little. I would recommend to save the money and get a bigger memory for the 1G ipod touch. You would appreciate to have more built-in memory than the extra volume button and a built-in speaker on the 2G. I would love to see Apple to put a memory expansion slot on the next generation ipod touch.
Last advice is Don't Buy This For You Kids. It is so fun, addictive and so portable, they will have a very hard time to put it down and finish their homework!

IN LOVE with my touch
Ive downloaded alost all the free apps and will never be bored after getting the ipod touch

the DMP-BD35 will play any disk you can throw at it!
Excellent image quality on Blu-ray Discs; Profile 2.0 compliant; onboard decoding for all high-resolution soundtrack formats, plus bit-stream output.But PlayStation 3 offers much more functionality and faster navigation, although it costs more.
While there are a host of entry-level Blu-ray players with similar features and similar prices, the Panasonic DMP-BD35K offers some significant pluses, experts say. For one thing, it's does a better job upscaling standard definition DVDs than many other Blu-ray players. It has onboard decoding for all high-resolution soundtrack formats, including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, so you don't need a new receiver to take advantage of the improved audio quality. The player can also output high-resolution soundtracks in bit-stream format, so you can opt to let your AV receiver handle the decoding duties itself.

Great Blu-Ray player, but don't overpay for it
This is a very good player, but don't pay the prices that are being advertised on Amazon right now (late December 08 - early January 09). The MSRP on this unit is 9 and it can be had at many retailers for this price or lower. I have no idea why it's -100 higher on the Amazon website. I had planned to buy mine on Amazon, but not after I saw the outrageous prices. Amazon has some other great deals going on right now (see HDTVs), but this Panasonic BD35K is way overpriced.

Great player
This is my first blu-ray player and I am very happy with it. I went by the reviews here and the CET review and it turned out to be a good choice.

I have seen the Sylvania one available for 8 at Costco and the Panasosonic player is much lighter and prettier. Did not do a close comparison of picture quality between the two. However, I recall that the Sylvania one was short on some audio connectors compared to this one. If you just intend to use the HDMI cable for audio output it may not be a factor.

Good Accessibility
I bought the 4G nano after reading about Apple's inclusion of accessibility features for blind users. While the implementation is not complete, it is good enough to allow me to operate the basic functions of the device.

When connecting through iTunes 8, you can turn on voiced menus. On a Windows machine, iTunes will use the system's default text-to-speech engine and settings to voice most of the menus and media on the iPod. Some menus not voiced, but the important ones are. After sync'ing, I have occasionally had an unvoiced podcast folder. The contents are voiced, just not the menu name. The next time I sync, this generally is corrected, and the problem is sporadic and not a huge deal.

I switched to the iPod after growing frustrated with Rockbox on a Sansa. While Rockbox had a much more comprehensive implementation of voice technology, the device crashed one too many times. The iPod hasn't got all teh bells and whistles of Rockbox, but it has been much more stable,... so far.

Ipod Nano made it in time for XMAS-Fastest delivery on earth by Amazon!
I purchased this a few days before Christmas Eve and Amazon got it to my door Christmas eve! I am always amazed at Amazon's quickness of deliveries. Ipod Nano is being used by my son and he seems completely satisfied with Apple's Ipod Nano 16GB model. Overall, I would recommend product and Amazon to everyone as it is a great experience!

I LOVE IT!!!
I absolutely love my new Ipod! Its a perfect size, in my fave color, the screen is amazing for watching my movies and videos! I recommend buying the game Monopoly... it keeps me ADDICTED! I've read the other reviews, but I haven't had any problems with my Ipod and I've had it for about 2 months now! Definitely recommended!!!

Couldn't be happier
I compared this DVD player to the Sony models...couldn't tell the difference and the price was much better on the Samsung.

Samsung BD-P1500 1080p Blu-Ray Player
I had purchased a Samsung 650 Series LCD television a couple of months ago, and wanted the Samsung player because it interacts with the television. I didn't need to add another remote to the mix. I was a little concerned with the fair amount of negative reviews of this product. However, I took the chance. I am glad I did. This player performes exactly as it should. I didn't want a player with a lot of bells & whistles, and this player does exactly what I wanted it to. It does a good job of upgrading the quality of my older movies. It even plays dvds that I made myself on an older recorder, copied from vhs-c tapes, made when my 26 year old son was a youngster!! I bought this before Thanksgiving and waited this long to see if it would perform as it should. It has. If you want a good basic machine, you can't go wrong with this one. You can't beat Amazon's price either.

SLOW, BUT GOOD BLU-RAY PLAYER
This was my first blu-ray player and first experience with blu-ray movies.
As always, Amazon was Johnny on the spot with prompt delivery.
Hook up and start up of the player was simple and painless using an HDMI cable and digital optical cable for sound. The player was hooked up to a Samsung 52" lcd tv (quite possibly the coolest this I've ever purchased aside from my first DeWalt cordless screw gun).
My wife and I were stunned as we watching the beginning of Iron Man on blu-ray...check out the mountains in the opening scene!
Movies on blu-ray are comprable to the difference between regular TV cable and HD channels. Wow.
My only complaint is that the player does take time to load movies...perhaps due to the extra memory the discs deal with....but I can live with that.

Great Player
Got myself a Birthday/Christmas present when it was on sale for 2.00
Great right out of the box.
Didn't need to upgrade firmware.
Great picture, great sound.

I highly recomend this player.