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292 of 293 persons found the following review helpful.
Great Experience Streaming, Blu-Ray & External File Playback
By Susurration
Chose this model because it had streaming, DLNA, and wireless built-in (you don’t need a distinguished dongle). I have not been disappointed in any of it is functions. Wireless connectivity was a breeze – setup was straightforward and this model accepts a 32-character WPA2 security key (unlike former LG TVs and Blu-ray player models which were fixed to 18-20 characters, as I ran into when I purchased a wireless dongle for our TV!). The wireless connection seems to be much more stable than with the other wireless widgets we have. I at times have to turn off and on again to get a connection on startup, but this is not surprising given how flaky our router is … 
Blu-ray playback is in truth good. Our original Blu-ray disc looked grainy and I was concerned until I read respective forum discussions that criticized this movie transfer. Many Blu-ray movies are apparently on purpose grainy because this duplicates the “film” experience that the conductor intended. You may use the movie mode on your TV to reduce graininess as this lowers the sharpness setting. Our second Blu-ray disc was actually smooth and detailed, as were most of the other discs. Playback solution is excellent, you may see each pore on someone’s face and the depth of field is amazing. There were no stutters, freezes or glitches with any of the discs we have played. DVD upscaling is also good – I decisive it is not worth replacing any DVDs with Blu-ray discs as the upscaled playback in 1080p looks just as good as Blu-ray playback.
Wireless streaming from Netflix was perfectly painless, once I worked out that the “Netflix ESN” that the player provides in the network set up menu is NOT the code that you need to use for Netflix connection setup. You need to select the LG Premium menu icon which accesses premium streaming services, select Netflix and get the connection code from the setup menu there. Enter the code once on the Netflix website (“Activate a Netflix ready device” in your account settings) and Netflix streaming works mechanically after that. Hopefully my experience will save other people hours of attempting to connect with the wrong code! Netflix streaming is magnificent quality, much better than broadcast TV for most shows. The player seems to stream seamlessly from Netflix with almost no stutters or degraded solution issues, even for HD movies. The only issues I have seen are when my internet connection is congested (Comcast net access is gorgeous bad on Friday evenings and Saturdays in my area). I am impressed.
A recent firmware update (April 2011) added Amazon Video on Demand, which likewise works great! It is in truth cool to have these services. The device likewise offers Vudu, Pandora, etc. but I haven’t applied those. Firmware updates are easy, altho these do take around 5-10 minutes to load thru wireless connection – you need to keep your nerve and not turn off the player, thinking not one thing is happening. Eventually, you get a message saying that the download has loaded and the player turns off and on again. If the download fails (which did occur once), the device is not affected (good design).
I was genuinely impressed by how painless it was to set up media streaming from a PC using DLNA. A copy of Nero Home Media Server necessities was supplied on CD – I installed this, the player mechanically detected my PC and staged me with a list of files I could play from the media folder. This was *so* easy! DLNA file-streaming has worked brilliantly: I only experienced difficultnesses with one, huge (10 GB) home movie file that stuttered and stopped. Then I encountered the USB connection on the right-front panel of the player. I had been so taken with all of the streaming solutions that I overlooked the easiest way to play media files, which is from an external hard drive or flash drive! The BD670 played the big file from an external hard drive with no problems. Since then, the player has played everything I have thrown at it: AVI and MKV, etc. using a large total of dissimilar codecs. With 3 firmware updates in the month that I have owned it, I have a lot of selfconfidence that it is being modified constantly to play all of the latest disc and file formats. So I am a very happy bunny indeed!
UPDATE: *** Hulu-Plus just appeared on the premium services (network access) menu, as of the July 30th software update! I can’t vouch for the quality, because I am not a member. But the demo videos seem to play just fine. Napster was got rid of (“at the provider’s request”) in Dec. 2011.
273 of 284 people found the following review helpful.
A Couple Steps Up From the BD390, But Not Perfect. (Yet)
By Hectic
I purchased this player a month ago and wanted to wait and get a great deal of plentiful use time with it before I left a review. The LG BD670 is my second standalone blu-ray player, where my firstborn was the LG BD390 (2009 model). (It also actually says something when in 2009 I salaried $330 for the BD390, yet only 2 years later remunerate only $154 for the BD670.) I decisive to go with LG again because of my experience with past performance and they give all the features I want. As with most blu-ray players like this one firmware updates are a must, so as soon as I got the player connected to my network (wireless) I got it modified to the latest firmware. So far I am gorgeous impressed with most, but not all distinct features of this player. There are 3 main observing methods I use to watch videos with this player: discs (30%), USB (30%) and streaming/wireless (40%). I’ll give elaborated reviews of these since they’re what I use.
* DISCS: With both the capacity to stream AND watch video files by way of the USB port (as with the 390) I don’t watch as a heap of discs as I use to. There are now of course 2 types of video discs, DVD and blu-ray. What a lot of persons don’t understand is that DVD and blu-ray are 2 exclusively dissimilar formats, each with there own disc format. The only thing that they have in mutual (besides playing A/V streams) is that they both have the same SIZE disc.
– Blu-rays: ** See UPDATES @ the end of my review when it comes to this! ** When I basi watched a blu-ray on my BD390 paired with my (then new) Vizio 42″ 1080p 120Hz HDTV I unquestionably saw the betterment over DVD with a much sharper, clearer picture with much more detail. In fact it on occasion sucks to have that much detail for some of the older/low budget movies that I have on blu-ray because it allows you to see just how bad a great deal of of the special effects were (wires, etc.)! I thought the picture couldn’t get any better on my Vizio because I thought that what the BD390 was giving it was as good as what the TV could produce. Well, when I watched numerous of my blu-rays on the same TV with the BD670…it turned out I was wrong! This player gives noticeable betterment when it comes to playing blu-rays when equated to the BD390. The picture IS genuinely even sharper/clearer and the colors are more vibrant; not in any grand, immense betterment kind of way, but it is noticeable. I’ve played in regards to a dozen or so blu-rays on it thence far, but it’s been competent to play them all without any difficulties whatsoever…say for one title (so far). “Daybreakers”. I recognise this title plays just fine because the disc would play in the 390. When I put this disc in to play in the 670, it starts to load up the main menu with it is movie icon/progress bar, but then stops with regards to 3/4 of the way through. However the sound will carry on to play for the trailers with just a little patch of the video on the screen showing besides half of the logo. I “next track” all of the trailers to undertake and get to the menu (pressing the “disc menu” button only gives me the “circle cross” icon telling me it can’t do that), but once I’m past all the trailers and the menu is suppose to load up…nothing. It just sits there and doesn’t load up anything. I called LG to make them conscious of this problem and the woman I talked to said she would pass along this info to their firmware dept. and look into fixing the problem. (Who knows how long that might take though?!) Hopefully this one title is a rarity, but it makes me wonder out of the over 100 titles on blu-ray I do own and have yet to play on this machine, how numerous of those might encounter this same kind of problem?
– DVD’s: ** See UPDATES @ the end of my review with regards to this! ** Surprisingly, this unit DOES have a slight problem when it comes to playing DVD’s! You think the one thing they could get right for this player is to play DVD’s with no difficulties whatsoever, but sadly no. The audio/video plays fine, but each chapter modify there is a half-second skip in the play (more for the audio than the video). It’s scarcely noticeable, but it IS noticeable. It’s not sufficient to actually bother me, but I may perceive other humans being bothered by it. If it happened more oftentimes in the play, then it would probably get on my nerves more. This is a problem that LG is already conscious of and says is working to fix in a future firmware update, but still I contacted them by way of email in regards to this just to add my complaint to the list. Other than that there is no other difficultnesses I’ve experienced. The audio/video quality is great and each single DVD loads up and plays, even a lot of region 0/PAL DVD’s I got from Australia.
* USB: This is the main reason I purchased and have stuck with the LG model blu-ray players. I have a great deal of USB flash drives, not to mention external HD’s where I have all my media files backed up on, other things I download from respective sources. I just transfer them to a flash drive and plug it into the port and commence watching. This player is a bit dissimilar from the 390 in that the USB, not the disc source is the main source it defaults to. I may have a disc already loaded in the unit when I turn it on, yet if you have a USB drive plugged in, it will ask if you want to play something from that original rather of loading up the disc. So far, it has played each single video file/format (.mkv, .mpeg, .avi, .mp4, .m4v) I’ve thrown at it with no difficulties at all. I LOVE this ability.
* Streaming/Wireless: Not only does this unit have the USB port up front to play video/music/picture files off of external drives, but with the wireless it has the capacity to use DLNA to stream media from your computer (which I haven’t messed with yet.) This unit has dual-band wireless, meaning it uses both 2.4Ghz and 5.8Ghz bands. This is in particular utile for those who have a dual-band router (such as myself), so there is less prospect of a dropped connection or decrease in connection speed. Mostly all of the streaming I do with the 670 is from LG’s Premium service, i.e. Netflix, Pandora, etc. This is unquestionably where the 670 has bettered over the 390 with a lot more services and better interfaces. The interface menu for Netflix has VASTLY bettered from the 390 with more selections to look up movies and posing no difficulty navigation of the “instant queue”. The only other Premium service I’ve used so far is Pandora which is nice too. I have yet to try out any of the other services, and don’t plan to for the foreseeable future. I will note that when I initial did the firmware update (no problems) then loaded up the Premium service, it started to do an update for the program, but said it failed and just loaded up Premium as normal. The second time I loaded it up it attempted the update again and was successful. All of the movies I’ve streamed have played fine with no dropped connections/rebuffering and the quality has been at least DVD or better.
Overall, for the time being, I’m satisfied with this player; but only with the understanding that the troubles it has will be fixed in future firmware update(s). As these blu-ray players get more and more complex with all the dissimilar features they have, it likewise means there’s more chance for respective and unforeseen bugs like the ones this player still suffers from will pop-up, consequently the need for the firmware updates. I know a number of humans believe that they must be like the old DVD players and just work straight out of the box and I wish they did too. In a perfective world they would, but this is far from a perfective world isn’t it? These players are getting more and more like computers, respective hardware and software meant to work together to carry out sure tasks without faults or conflicts. However ANYONE with a computer knows that it’s not that easy. I modify/upgrade hardware and some programs (software) on my system all the time and now and again these changes cause conflicts. A change in hardware, even with the latest drivers may cause unforeseen difficulties with other hardware or software. A new update to a driver may cause the hardware it’s suppose to improve to work less expeditiously or program update may cause conflicts with other software. Most of the time this doesn’t occur or may be without apparent effort resolved, but once in a while it does. This is the same for these new players. A firmware update meant to repair one issue may cause another. The companies that create these players may only do so much beta-testing before they have to release them into the real world. That is when we, the buyer whom these gimmicks are intended for, put them through their real world paces that the manufacturer merely can’t do. There are so a heap of variations (different DVD’s, blu-rays, vidoe files, streaming, etc.) made by dissimilar studios and other companies that all use respective manufacturing/specification standards that it would be nearly out of the question for the manufacturers to try and test them all on these players, when they themselves have their own standards and specifications. Read reviews for any other blu-ray player out there right now and I defy you to find one single player that has no complaints versus it. I’m not attempting to defend this players shortcomings, I’m just saying I comprehend (more than galore people) why they subsist and at the same time am attempting to make other persons grasp why they exist.
With this review I am attempting to inform you, the buyer when it comes to this player. It is a good player and will be an even better one once these little difficultnesses it has are fixed in firmware updates. If you buy this player now, be conscious of the aforementioned troubles and be patient for the firmware fixes. If you are turned off by these difficultnesses I have experienced and/or difficultnesses cited by other reviewers which I have not experienced; either wait until these difficultnesses have been addressed to buy or plainly look into buying a dissimilar player. Once firmware for these difficultnesses have been freed and fixes the player, I will update by review accordingly.
**UPDATE: 6/15/11**
After contacting LG a couple times and browsing the AVS forums, it seems that the DVD skip was introduced in the latest firmware update that was put out in late April. It ought to be fixed in the next update along with a few other little things. So the fault lies not in the player, but the latest firmware. (Just so humans will know.)
**UPDATE: 6/20/11**
A new firmware update was freed just after my last update. It didn’t come up automatically, I went into the “Setup” division to check (like I do each few days, just in case). I altered to this most recent version to see if any difficultnesses were fixed. For the DVD “chapter change” 1/2 second skip problem, I may say it’s been fixed for the most part. I’ve only watched 3 or 4 DVD’s so far (a couple movies and a TV series episode) and I only experienced the skip intermittently or not at all. For 1 or 2 of the movies the skip happened like once in the beginning and a few times closer towards the end, for the other movie and the TV episode I watched, I didn’t experience the skip at all. For that queer blu-ray title problem “Daybreakers”, this has been fixed (or perchance it was half my fault from the start)! What I ran into is that the reason “Daybreakers” wouldn’t load up in the firstborn place is because I always had a USB drive plugged into the front when I tried to load the movie! I don’t know why this interferes with this peculiar title ONLY (so far) and not any other I’ve loaded up, but it does! I want to say that before this most recent update I HAD already tried having the flash drive unplugged from the front to see if it made a difference, so I’m not sure if this update had anything to do with it or not. If you are having trouble with a queer blu-ray (like “Daybreakers”) not loading up AND you have a USB drive plugged in, THAT could be the problem! I modified the rating for my review to 4 stars since LG is starting to release firmware updates that are making improvements and are getting the player to proper working order again.
**UPDATE: 6/25/11**
Yet another update was freed on 6/21 which, it appears, COMPLETELY fixes the DVD skip problem. I watched galore more DVD’s and I haven’t experienced it on ANY of them, so I guess that problem has been squared away. Since any of the difficultnesses I’ve experienced have now been fixed I’ll stop doing these updates, particularly since their making my review even longer than it is already! (Can I get an “Amen”?!)
161 of 166 persons found the following review helpful.
good help samba linux mediatomb netflix amazon vod pandora
By jerry uanino
Upsides: Pandora works nicely. Some other nice internet radio options.
Netflix interface decent.
The best thing here is the SAMBA, CIFs or Windows file sharing (Whatever you call it) is nice. Works fine with Linux, works fine with MediaTomb upnp server. Couldn’t find right transcoding options, but didn’t need it… good with mp4′s ripped h.264 and does mp3. plays flip video files natively no problem. Pause, rewind, fast forward over streaming (cifs or upnp).
LCD display shows timecode when playing streams from samba or upnp.
Bought device to have single device for netflix and home media serving.
Plays mp3′s nicely.
Better than ROKU for me since it does SAMBA and UPNP for home streaming, wasn’t clear if Roku did that.
Wi-FI, wired.
Oh, and it plays BD’s too, I tested one, but not my important reason for purchase.
Unit stays cool, is nice and little and does what I need.
Downsides: no screensaver in pandora, fearing burn-in.
Menus kind of laggy.
No progression meter when updating firmware. LCD gives evidence of updating but must have distinguished downloading and applying progression when installing firmware. Have seen samsung do this better with progression meter.
I’d like to add a special item here. LG you did this correctly — you have a sticker for support on the device. Wow. I love you. I called, humane answers. No hold time. Sat, Sun, no problem. I had an issue with firmware 268.E within 3 days there was a new 270-something to correct. 268.E added Amazon VOD for me and the other nifty items. Support was very friendly, apologized and was pleasant to work with. I’ve never owned home electronics where they actually had a aid line with humans. And the humans called you back with updates on your problem!
First LG device I own… crazy props for the utile humane support!
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