The BD-P1600 is the first Blu-ray player we've tested that lets you listen to personalized Pandora.com music channels over your television or over the home-theater system you use with your TV. The interface is easy enough. And since streaming audio over the Internet isn't a problem, sound quality isn't a major issue. But once you've set up your player with one Pandora account, you can't remove that account or add another.

The BD-P1600 comes with a USB 2.0 port for use with a 1GB flash drive (for BD-Live functions) and for playing MP3 music and displaying JPEG photos. To find the files you want to play, though, you have to search through folders on your flash drive (or external hard drive). Another problem: Though the USB port doesn't support video, a poorly placed menu option suggests that it does. The player has on-board audio decoding of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HS Master Audio Essential.

For reasons unknown, Samsung decided to put a big flap over the front panel of the BD-P1600. The flap swings open when you eject the tray--and it stays open until you remember to close it, meanwhile posing a scrape hazard to anyone who walks by the player too closely. Like the , the BD-P1600 is shallower and lighter-weight than its predecessors, helping it fit easily into tight spaces.

The BD-P1600's setup menu is a good-looking, legible full-screen affair, though it lacks explanations of its options. If you press the remote's Display button while watching a movie, a big box on the side will pop up, listing the title, chapter numbers, time elapsed, and some technical information. When you press Pause or skip to the next chapter, a leaner, more useful information display pops up, showing you time elapsed and total time.

This Samsung unit is one of the fastest Blu-ray players we've tested, getting a disc up and running in just 42 seconds. There's a very slight wait when you skip a chapter, and none at all when you press Pause.