The Samsung BD-P 3600 is a Blu-ray player that hit the market in spring 2009. The list price is currently 400 USD, but online retailers offer the device from just 250 USD. In the United Kingdom, the BD-P 3600 sells for around 280 GBP.

• Excellent 24p movie picture.
• Superb DVD playback.
• Automatic film-mode detection for DVDs.
• Fast disc drive.
• BD-Live and PC streaming - even via wireless.
• Bitstream HD audio.

• Awkward network operation.
• Blurry JPEG photo playback.

The BD-P 3600 shines during Blu-ray and DVD playback, producing pictures of outstanding quality - in the most important respects, therefore, the player does a great job. The speedy disc drive also impressed, as did the flexibility of the audio section. Photos lacked sharpness, however, and the awkward operation for PC streaming was more than a little irritating.

Points of criticism:
Samsung's PC-streaming function is a great idea - but, like so many great ideas, it doesn't work so well in practice. Low points of the awkward operation include, for example, that the player can only access files via the computer's internal directory structure - especially with larger media collections, therefore, it can take a long time to find the file you're looking for. Furthermore, you could go gray trying to input the IP address and password manually via the on-screen keyboard. Surely the developers could have found a better way!

We've also got some criticism for the photo playback, whereby JPEGs appear blurry and display in half-resolution! In this respect, Samsung's current TVs perform significantly better, displaying photos in perfect Full HD quality.

WLAN dongle included:

Supplied as standard: A wireless dongle for BD-Live also allows you to stream media from PCs.

The Korean company does, at least, supply a WLAN dongle with the player. This deserves a lot of praise - with other Samsung devices, the user would have to buy this separately for around 50 GBP.

Operation and other features

Speedy disc drive:
Now that's a fast disc drive: The first Blu-ray picture appears on the screen 15 seconds after the disc is inserted; with DVDs, it takes just 10 seconds. The Blu-ray loading time is an almost record breaking value! The BD-P 3600's on-screen menu also scores brownie points with its clear layout and easy operation.

Remote control:

The remote control's glowing buttons perfectly suit the dark home-theater environment.

The positive trend continues with the remote control, whose glowing buttons allow easy operation in the home-theater. We also love the "Info" button - this provides direct access to the sharpness and noise filters, allowing the user to tease an even better picture from every display.

Picture Quality

HDTV:
In our laboratory testing, the 3600 delivered some impressive results. There's just one tiny thing to point out: When outputting images in RGB format via HDMI, the player caps blacker-than-black (BTB) content. This means you cannot use test patterns to find the optimal display settings.

In the YUV color space - which players and displays almost always agree on automatically - the Samsung gives completely correct values. The same is true for playback of movies in 1080/60p and 1080/24p: perfect!

HD documentaries in 1080/50i or 1080/60i convert into almost flawless progressive pictures. We say ‘almost' because the test candidate showed some obvious flicker in one particularly tricky test sequence, in which the camera moves slowly past a woman's face. In the Samsung's defense, however, almost all players trip up here.

DVD:
The quality of DVD playback varies significantly on Blu-ray players - in fact, not many BD players display DVDs in optimum quality. In this discipline, the BD-P 3600 collects plenty of praise, and manages to do so without a film-mode setting. This means that the player has to recognize automatically whether it's reading movie or TV material, and then put the (progressive) images together correctly.

PAL material with 720 x 576 pixels up-scales perfectly to Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) - the Samsung displays, for example, the still, diagonal propeller blade of a plane in "Six Days Seven Nights" without visible stair-step effects. Few players can say the same!

Sound Quality

It's got it all: The rear panel even hosts a 7.1-channel analog audio output.

More praise is due for the BD-P 3600's sound: The player is a real all-rounder with audio formats! It delivers bitstream HD audio to modern receivers, and fully decoded HD audio as PCM to older receivers via HDMI. And that's not all - namely, the Samsung's rear panel also has an analog, 7.1-channel audio output, making the player suitable even for much older receivers.

What's more, the 3600 can even output HD audio formats to older receivers as newly encoded DTS audio via its S/PDIF output, providing increased dynamics and more precise treble resolution. In other words, it's just great!