Samsung BD-P3600 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player Order Now

Dirty Harry once asked, "Do you feel lucky, Punk?"

I ordered my Samsung BD-P3600 on Aug 8th. As usual, Amazon.com under committed and over delivered, getting the unit in my hands on Aug 12th, two days earlier than promised. That and their pricing is why I love doing business with these folks. I discarded the product packaging after the Amazon 30 day return period passed, assuming that I would have no need of it ever again. In retrospect, this turned out to be foolishly optimistic, as I now have to purchase a sturdy box and packing material to ship it back for repair.

I selected this top-of-the-line Blu-Ray because of its rich feature menu, which I thought would compliment my new LN52B750 Samsung LCD TV. True to form, everything went together almost effortlessly and worked well together until the forth time I attempted to use the DVD player. That's when the BD-P3600 completely froze up. Now it not only fails to display the Pandora/Netflix splash screen, it also won't respond to any command from the top-mounted touch controls or the remote. Generally when it powers up, the display says "Loading" on the front even though there's no DVD onboard, remaining so until the unit is turned off or unplugged. Other times it fails to recognize that a DVD has been put in the tray, refusing to load it at all. In every case, it fails to play a disc and/or respond to the set-up menu command, displaying nothing on the screen at all.

I called customer service and found myself talking to a very helpful rep. She had me first try to reset the unit by holding down the top mounted fast forward button for 10 seconds. Earlier, I had unplugged the power cord for 30 seconds and then replaced it, powering the unit up again. I also unplugged the HDMI from my receiver and went directly into the TV on the HDMI 3 input with a brand new cable but those, too, failed to correct the problem. Now I have to return it (shipping and insurance costs paid at my own expense in addition to the packaging materials I have to buy) to N.J. for repair and return. She says this will take between 7-14 days, not counting shipping times each way.

Having extensively researched this unit before selecting it, I was aware of the significant number of unhappy BD-P3600 buyers who have posted feedback complaining about the same problem. Despite these numerous red flags posted by angry BD-P3600 buyers on Amazon, C-Net, etc., I assumed naively that A) enough time and B) enough customer complaints had passed since its introduction that Samsung would have addressed this obvious design fault by now (my units date of manufacture was in late June '09). I thought that in this economy, while scrambling for every paying customer, no major consumer electronics manufacturer would be so irresponsible as to fail to correct such a well-documented shortcoming in their top end $300+ product, and particularly after so much negative customer feedback. This proved to be naively optimistic. The issue is clearly still very much a problem with a significant number of these units shipping today, as evidenced by the CSRs comment "I'll bet I can guess exactly what your problem is" as soon as I gave her the model number. How very, very disappointing for a company such as Samsung.

So, are you still considering buying a Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-Ray player instead of a Sony, Panasonic, etc. If you get one that works and stays working, you'll have a kick-a** player. If not, well I'm sure YOU'RE not one to throw away the original packaging prematurely, right?

"Do you feel lucky, Punk?" Well, DO you?
Get more detail about Samsung BD-P3600 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player.