LG BD270 Blu-ray Disc Player
by LG
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Our Price: $219.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $69.99 (click here) Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of LG BD270 Blu-ray Disc Player
Customer Review: Great Basic Blu-Ray Player
Summary: 5 Stars
This is our second Blu-Ray Player. Our first one is a Panasonic with internet connection and some fancier features. We still have it and it works great. This LG player .LG BD270 Blu-ray Disc Player is perfect for what we want in the other room as this room has no internet connections. The LG sets up just like a regular dvd player - quick and simple. Simply plug in the power cord to an outley, connect an HDMI cable to your tv (or amp), turn it on and put a movie in the tray and press play. It's really that simple. Takes longer to unpack it.
We have had this player for about a week and it has worked flawless. My big concern was about updates, which my other one seems to need often. It has not needed anything to this point and we've played several Blu-Ray movies including the Star Trek Movie collection - yes all 6 movies. The LG also plays the movies much quicker from the time the drawer closes to the start of the movie, very little wait time. For a no frills, basic Blu-Ray player, I don't think you'd find better. I paid $89 for the player, including shipping here on Amazon ($10 off with Discover Card), so for the money, I am very happy.
I gave it 5 stars with the exception of 4 stars for upconverting and 3 stars for no internet connection availability. For upconverting dvd's, no player I know of can earn a 5 score, I mean it is like comparing dvd vs. video - you can only enhance a format to a certain point. This player upconverts as well as any other I have seen or have thus far. The lack of internet is ok for me, but may be a downer for those who do BD-Live, Netflix or You Tube but I have PS3 or other Blu-Ray that will do that. I know an update will be needed somewhere down the line but I am sure I can transfer the update to a USB Jumpdrive and use the USB port on the player to do this.
I was unsure about LG brand for a home Blu-Ray player but it has been quite reliable for me so far. I have a LG Flatron W53 series 23" montior and an LG Blu-Ray player for a computer as well as a Blu-Ray Burner for computer and all work flawless with no isues.
Customer Review: Errors and Omissions
Summary: 4 Stars
I am rushing to put up this review before fully evaluating the unit, because issues with the specs given at the LG site as well as at least one error in the user manual need to be discussed. I will probably add more later after a full evaluation.
First, if you have read LG's specs, you will believe that there is a component video output as well as an optical audio output. Neither of these exists. There is HDMI, composite video, stereo audio, and a coaxial connection for digital audio.
The only cable supplied is for composite video, useless for HD, not even very good for SD. Thus, until the HDMI cable I ordered to use with it arrives, I won't be able to comment on video quality. Others say it is very good.
The unit does fine with DVDs and is an excellent music player. The screen display when a disc of mp3s is inserted is much like that of a portable music player, with pretty icons that scroll across the screen.
The remote control has a few functions that work with a TV. In the manual it says to hold the TV power button and punch in a single digit corresponding to your TV brand. What you do in reality is input the full remote code for your TV while holding the red button. That works fine.
With these omissions and errors, do we really know what we are getting here? Are some of the really important specifications inaccurate? Was this product rushed to market too quickly, perhaps with engineering problems unsolved?
The unit is attractive looking, and I like what I have experienced with it so far. The price seems excellent for what you get, even if that's less than LG says it is. I would advise caution in purchasing it, though, because of the issues I have outlined. I will update this review later after a lot of use and evaluation.
Update 1: As of today (9/27/09) it appears that LG's spec sheet has been corrected. It still states that a component video cable is supplied. Wouldn't be much use with no component output. I have had a chance to do more testing with mine and am feeling confident this is a good product.
Customer Review: Great entry level (CHEAP!) player
Summary: 4 Stars
My local public library maintains a pretty extensive collection of Blu-ray discs, so I wanted an inexpensive way to take advantage of it. I only paid $100 for this, and at that price I must say I am very close to completely satisfied with this deck. I am an A/V professional (which was where I had my initial introduction to Blu-ray), so I consider myself pretty demanding when it comes to stuff like this. In a nutshell: The LG BD270 loads discs quickly and outputs very nice picture and sound through both component and HDMI outputs.
In particular I appreciate the fact that it doesn't have tons of layered menus with which to tweak aspects of the picture and sound. Given the level at which one can control these things through one's TV and Home Theater sound system, it seems absurd to me when playback deck manufacturers add all kinds of adjustability in these areas. What can end up happening is that the adjustments made in the deck just "fight with" the A/V monitor settings, which on their own typically have plenty of latitude with which one can completely screw up the image and sound anyway.
Most of the other "bells & whistles" lacking on this deck are also things that I could care less about. However, the one thing I am a little bummed out about is the fact that it doesn't seem to recognize DVD-R discs with AVI files burned onto them, nor does it recognize such files from the flash drive that I plug into it. My old Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player played that kind of stuff like a champ.
Music and photos coming from a Flash Drive do sound and look great, and they load really fast too - much faster than they do from the SD card slot in my Panasonic plasma TV.
I guess I really will have to just buy a PS3 to take care of the full breadth and depth of my media playback desires.
Until I can afford that, though, this is a great deck, and I'm glad I got it 'cause I do love the way Blu-ray discs look and sound.
Customer Review: LG is worthless
Summary: 1 Stars
LG (Life's Good) is appears to be "Lacking Gratitude" towards its customers. I, too, purchased my LG BD270 between Thanksgiving and Christmas and am now experiencing the same issues that not only many here on Amazon are experiencing, but on other consumer review sites. It is apparent that LG is very much aware of this issue since many of you have called and maybe even sent in the money for the repairs only to find out that it is a simple programming update that is not supported in the current firmware update.
I just called LG again to give them another chance to fix my unit without charge since they are aware of this issue and that it is a manufacturing/programming error. The response I got is the $69 fee (funny that we all get quoted different prices for the same issue) goes to tech support to run a diagnostic test on the unit. There is no need to run the test when the issue is a common one that has already been acknowledged by them. I do not know why they just do not post the firmware update on their site to fix this issue. (Yes, I have downloaded and installed the most current firmware update from their, but still no luck. It is not the correct update to fix the problem.)
Until LG can fix this issue, I highly recommend against buying this product. Given my treatment and their practices in this matter, I would think twice about buying a LG product of any kind. Even Apple, who has a similar 90 day free tech support and 1 year warranty, understands when the issue is on their end will own up to it and fix the problem without charge. $69 for a test on a unit that cost me $99 just does not seem right. Looks like I am going to find a better company.
***Update: After much fighting, I was able to get LG to waive their $69 fee. Sending in the unit today to see what happens. Post back when I get it returned to let you know if it works.***
Customer Review: Decent player and good value. USB capabilities are limited on US model.
Summary: 4 Stars
This player is a great value and offers both high quality Blu-Ray and DVD playback. It isn't overly noisy and it there doesn't seem to be a delay in reading most Blu-Rays and DVDs. So far I haven't had problems reading Blu-Ray discs. The USB port in front is a great feature despite it's limitations.
It would be great if the USB "media host" was capable of playing video as is indicated in the product descriptions. When the BD270 arrived I checked out the manual and it only indicated MP3 and photo playback. This also appears to be the case with optical media as the BD270 won't play any additional video formats burned onto optical media. MP3 playback seems to be limited to individual folders - you cannot set the unit to "shuffle" play across multiple folders which would have been nice.
Remote is well laid out but probably of the cheapest quality I have seen. I've owned dirt cheap DVD players with remote controls of better quality.
It's a great player and I recommend it. I just wish that video files could be played via the USB connection similar to the Philips DVP5992 DVD player I used to own. As a side note, it seems that LG's non-US BD370 model can actually play videos via USB but it looks like the US version does not. If this is indeed the case, then it seems that the US versions of these LG players have video (or movie) support disabled for USB and optical media. I contacted support about this and they told me different regions might have different functionality. They stated that support for this wasn't planned for future implementation but they were going to forward my suggestion. Perhaps if they receive enough requests to enable this feature we might see it implemented in a future firmware release.