LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player

Forget Windows Media Center TV, Apple TV, DVico, Roku and all the other wanna-be's that purport to make your digital video viewing experience easy and seamless: the LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player is the biggest leap in consumer friendliness and video feature set than any technology product I have had experience with. If you have a modern PC or, better yet, a network attached storage server with multimedia capabilities, setting up the video and audio streaming capabilities on the LG BD 390 is pretty much a connect-the-cables-and-flip-the-switch affair. When you're done you will be able to enjoy up to 7.1 analog output, access to Vudu, Netflix, YouTube and other online content as well as excellent image quality and performance. Firmware updates promise to bring even more varied network features.

I cannot speak to the wireless capabilities of the product. I think people who try to stream video content with today's wireless standards are hopelessly optimistic. But with wired Ethernet, this product cannot be beat. My only quibble is that even after I manually input my network information, the LG still wants to scan a few seconds for my NAS box instead of displaying the multimedia content on the server immediately.

But overall, despite its plain looks, the LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player is deserving of all the kudos it has received in reviews. It is fast, reliable, easy to use and produces great video and audio output.

When I bought this unit, I did it because of two main reasons: it could be hacked for region-free play and it could stream from my PC, as a media center. The latter I haven't yet tried, but I am very much frustrated about the former attribute. Apparently, if you buy the BD390 or the BD370 in the US, you don't get a firmware that allows you to change region and it blocks the hack.

As I haven't yet tried the streaming capability I can't say nothing about it, but let's hope it works as such.

At the time I didn't buy Pioneer and JVC models, or even the Oppo, all of them having much better image quality. But I felt I was getting a better deal from LG. If you also think so, think again, as you are not. AFAIk, right now only Oppo allows a firmware hack to change DVD region and make it region-free.

I've tried the BD 370 and two Samsung players which are similarly priced to this unit, and this is definitely the best choice. It works remarkably fast and is very responsive. I have seen people complain about networking issues but I had none, even though I use Apple Airport Express to create my wireless network. The only trouble I had with set up is that I could not find a way to use capital letters when entering my network passcode. Once I changed my code to just lowercase and numbers, there wasn't a problem.

Streaming quality for Netflix is a little hit or miss. Generally, if it says the network connection is too slow I tell it to ignore that, and the network quality suddenly jumps to good. Don't know why that happens, but I haven't yet had any trouble watching a Netflix stream.

I use Playback as a third-party UPnP on my Mac to connect wierlessly to the BD player and have not had any trouble. It can play my home movies, show photos from iPhoto and play all of my mp3 music from iTunes. It has worked flawlessly, though the menu system and the playback options mean that I'm more likely to just play music over Airtunes directly from my computer since the workflow is much easier. Perhaps Apple should start creating BD player menus. . .

I have had one fairly major complaint which has so far applied to all Blu Ray players. I cannot get the sound to synchronize with the video. I use the digital output to go to my HT and HDMI to my Sanyo projector (video looks great at 103"). The video is consistently faster than than the audio, whether I'm playing SD DVDs, BDs or even Netflix. This appears to be a very common complaint in all of the forums I've visited trying to find a solution, but have yet to come up with one - Anyone with an idea I'd love to hear it!

Overall a great player - fast and easy to set up, works great with my Apple network and computers. Just need to sync audio and video.

I bought this player for its Netflix and home media video streaming. I have it connected to my 42" standard def plasma TV that I'd been using mostly to watch DVDs and some HD OTA programming I capture on a PC. Before buying the player, playback of that OTA programming was a hassle because it involved attaching my laptop to my TV and fiddling with resolution setting each time I want to watch something. I'd occasionally watch Netflix streaming on my laptop, either connected to that TV or just on my 22" desktop LCD monitor, but had been unimpressed with it (probably because because it's hard for streaming to look good sitting 1.5' away from a 1920x1200 resolution screen which is going to expose every digitization artifact).

I'm really liking the player and its Netflix support. I'd been plowing my way through "Lost" on Netflix rental disks and now I'm watching them streaming at an even faster rate. The picture quality (now 8' away from that plasma TV) is generally excellent, although Netflix will occasionally drop the resolution down from (what they call) "HD" to something noticeably worse. I have a Verizon FiOS connection, so it's unlikely that the bandwidth limitation is at my end, but who knows how many places between my house and the Netflix servers might be getting bogged down. (Welcome to the cloud.) At the lower bandwidth, pretty serious digitization artifacts show up in fast-moving scenes. This is almost certainly due to the limitations of the data, not the player itself. It'd be nice if there were some sort of button that allowed me to say "Hey, maybe that bandwidth problem was transient; please try to go to HD again".

I didn't know this before I bought the player, but wasn't surprised to find out that it also can play back audio files off my PC, which is convenient. If it also had support for Pandora and Internet streaming (I listen to various actual radio stations via Shoutcast and work and in another room at home using the Logitech Squeezebox Boom), I'd be really happy. Maybe eventually it will. Hulu support would be great too, but I haven't heard of any devices that do that yet.

I haven't actually put a Bluray disk in the player yet and don't expect I will for some time (no point really, since it's connected to an SD TV). It plays regular DVDs fine though.

The one serious gripe I have with the player is that when playing back video files from my PC, there's no fast-forward capability. This means I must run a time-consuming commercial scan and remove package over my recorded video files before watching them.

Bought an LG 55" LED TV.

Had a very good Sony "upconverting" DVD player.

Had absolutely no plans to buy Blu-Ray.

HOWEVER, PBS broadcast the truly exceptional full screen HD version of the Walt Disney Concert Hall LA Philharmonic, and the next day I was ordering this Blu-Ray player from Amazon.

(Link to story about LA Philharmonic concert! [...])

I've no real comparison to other Blu-Ray players. This one had excellent top reviews, and CAN share a controller with the new TV.

I have seen some "artifacting." That might be from the Blu-Ray compression, or the player, or the TV. Who knows? Only the most exasperating critic would object. Blu-Ray movies play with exceptional clarity. I think it is POSSIBLE that the up-conversion of standard DVDs may be better than the 18 month old Sony I gave to daughter, but, boy, that would be hard to say with certainty without some kind of video tests. If you have a library of standard DVDs, this player will do very well by them as it upconverts to 1080p.

My only disappointment is the wireless streaming. The player is Wireless N. My household is Mac, Apple Airport Extreme. I have an AppleTV which works very, very well on Wireless N set at the 5ghz feed.

The LG player will not run at 5ghz. So I had to set the Airport Extreme (temporarily) at 2.4ghz. Then I had to take down the password to mate the wireless signal to the LG player. When I did that, they found each other, and the result was inadequate.

I tried streaming a NetFlix instant movie over the 2.4ghz Wireless, and it looked like really, really bad YouTube, and the Player gave me a message that I had a really slow internet connection.

Maybe really slow for Korea, but I have the fastest cable internet (25 Mbps) our local provider offers. So the message about "slow" was really about the 2.4 ghz Wireless.

Started over with an ethernet cable dragged to the Blu-Ray Player, with much, much better results.

I'm happy with this player, and think it should definitely be on your "short list."