Most of you are mistaken and are making comments without actually testing the unit. I personally own the Samsung 5000 and it's far superior in many ways compared to 4 other players I've tried. I've tested it against the Panasonic, Samsung 1400, Sharp and Sony. First off the 5000 is MUCH MORE responsive then all these other players. You hit Stop, Play, Fast Forward, Next Chapter and it responds almost instantly. Other players DON'T that. There's a big lag time when you hit these buttons on other players. The 24fps works awesome and makes a huge difference if it's not built into your HDTV. But the best part is the Sharpness feature. Most units DON'T come with this feature. When I set the 5000 on "Low Sharpness" it was a much clearer picture then when I set the Panasonic on the MAX setting of +6. So when I set the Sharpness on the "Middle" setting, it makes the Panasonic look like crap. The "High" is to sharp and only useful on regular DVD's. This feature alone is incredibly useful for Blu Ray's that need a slight nudge of crispness and it's EXTREMELY helpful in regular DVD's that need a like big boost of sharpness. This feature alone is priceless to me and it works far superior to any other player that has it. Again, most don't. The combination of upscaling to 1080p + the sharpness ability takes regular DVD's to a level that other players can't even touch. Playing HD DVD's is it's weakest point but who cares??? HD DVD has gone the way of the Dinosaur. I could care less that Samsung is dropping the 5000 as long as they include these awesome features in the next player to come out. Like I said, the 5000 responds faster then any other player out there so I hope they maintain that in future players and I hope other companies get off their ass and fix that problem in the current players. Since this is going to be discontinued, you can pick one up for about $500 and it's worth every Penny. The Panasonic DMP-BD30K cost that much and didn't perform as well as the Samsung 5000. I'm holding on to mine until Samsung or another company surpasses the quality of this machine. Don't believe me? Get you hands on one and you'll see for yourself.
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Most of you are mistaken and are making comments without actually testing the unit. I personally own the Samsung 5000 and it's far superior in many ways compared to 4 other players I've tried. I've tested it against the Panasonic, Samsung 1400, Sharp and Sony. First off the 5000 is MUCH MORE responsive then all these other players. You hit Stop, Play, Fast Forward, Next Chapter and it responds almost instantly. Other players DON'T that. There's a big lag time when you hit these buttons on other players. The 24fps works awesome and makes a huge difference if it's not built into your HDTV. But the best part is the Sharpness feature. Most units DON'T come with this feature. When I set the 5000 on "Low Sharpness" it was a much clearer picture then when I set the Panasonic on the MAX setting of +6. So when I set the Sharpness on the "Middle" setting, it makes the Panasonic look like crap. The "High" is to sharp and only useful on regular DVD's. This feature alone is incredibly useful for Blu Ray's that need a slight nudge of crispness and it's EXTREMELY helpful in regular DVD's that need a like big boost of sharpness. This feature alone is priceless to me and it works far superior to any other player that has it. Again, most don't. The combination of upscaling to 1080p + the sharpness ability takes regular DVD's to a level that other players can't even touch. Playing HD DVD's is it's weakest point but who cares??? HD DVD has gone the way of the Dinosaur. I could care less that Samsung is dropping the 5000 as long as they include these awesome features in the next player to come out. Like I said, the 5000 responds faster then any other player out there so I hope they maintain that in future players and I hope other companies get off their ass and fix that problem in the current players. Since this is going to be discontinued, you can pick one up for about $500 and it's worth every Penny. The Panasonic DMP-BD30K cost that much and didn't perform as well as the Samsung 5000. I'm holding on to mine until Samsung or another company surpasses the quality of this machine. Don't believe me? Get you hands on one and you'll see for yourself.