The BD-P1600's video chipset is different from--and unfortunately not as good as the Silicon Optix Reon chip (used by the we tested last year). When playing Blu-ray discs, the BD-P1600 sent very good but not spectacular images to our HDTV, regularly besting our reference player, a PlayStation 3, by a slim margin. "Just a hair sharper than the PS3" I noted while watching a Mission: Impossible III scene (chapter 7) involving a lot of camera movement and detailed architecture.

It had more trouble with a scene from The Searchers (chapter 20) shot in daylight but set after dark. In this hard-to-reproduce scene, the image seemed too dark on the BD-P1600, even though it did show more detail than the PS3 did. The Samsung's best performance came in its handling of the opening sequence of the animated movie Cars, where it offered vibrant, saturated colors; the "PS3 looks washed out by comparison" wrote one judge.

The BD-P1600 didn't fare well with standard-definition DVDs, which the player must upconvert to 1080p. We found images softer and less detailed on the Samsung player than on the PS3. Our judges split on whether the unit did an acceptable job of upscaling, but none of us thought the output was very good.

All BD Live-capable players have an ethernet port. With the BD-P1600, you can use that port to enjoy Netflix's and Pandora's video and musical offerings. (You'll have to sign up for these services and manage them via a computer.)

When we tested with Netflix content--Gandhi in standard definition and The Host in high def--on the BD-P1600, we deemed the image quality acceptable, though not at the same level as DVD or Blu-ray content. In contrast, two other Blu-ray players--the and the previously mentioned Samsung BD-P2500--delivered horrible image quality in our Netflix trials. Streaming quality depends in part on Internet traffic and other issues unrelated to the technology at either end of the stream, so we can't say for sure what caused the improvement.