I had the demo of LG Bx580, Samsung D5100 and D5500 with bluray demo disks and my HD/SD movie collection today.
D5500 in samsung plaza started playing all the movies from my disk but 'paused' automatically after every 3 seconds. The salesman said that there seem to be a problem with the set since it plays bluray disks. I asked him to give demo of the bluray disk and it dint play either. Said it costs 12.5k and issues like this are covered in warrenty. Said I'll get the demo elsewhere and come back if prices are high elsewhere.
Other two are in a different multi brand showroom.
LG Bx580: 10k with HDMI cable free. Has 10% cashback over it. (Letsbuy has it for 9k with a bluray disk and HDMI free)
Interface - Has 3D user interface - Awesome, snappy and reads the disk (1TB) in a jiffy compared to my WDTV.
Browzing through files is faster than WDTV.
Opened all the files which the WDTV cannot open also. I have stored them in a different folder. This is a surprise.
PQ is only ok. Blacks not black enough - Could be the LG LCD - Not sure.
Lots of grains in certain movie files.
Asked the sales person to play some bluray and he played Dabang. The picture graininess was visible in this bluray too.
All in all, great 3D/2D UI, played all the movies I thew at it. (I mean ALL), PQ not great but good.
Samsung D5100: 6.4k. Has 10% cashback over it. No 3D. (Letzbuy has it for 5.7k with 30 moserbaer DVD ser free)
Interface - Awesome. Much more snappy and fast than Bx580 (and obviously WDTV)
Opened all files and played back smooth. FF and Rwd worked on all files. No voice sync issues that I can see.
No grains and stuff, good contast and good blacks. Played in D6600 LED.
Played the bluray pretty well without grains.
No 3D. Thats the only issue.
Very very good for 6.4k.
The sales person told that Sony S380 will not recognize the external HDD. So did not demo.
Blasto,
Thanks for the review. Just wanted to know on the formats tested. Mkv, mp4, avchd, mov, 3gp, cropped mkv(not sure if its a terminology as such).
No panasonic in ur review. In case you've reviewd this before can you share that deatils too.
Thanks.