Samsung DVD-N501 Nuon DVD Player

The picture is very crisp, and although it lacks progressive scan for those with high-end televisions, most consumers will be more than satisfied by it. Sound is also quite good, though the lack of an internal 5.1/DTS decoder might turn some away (not a problem if you have a DTS receiver thanks to its DTS compatible optical and coax digital audio outs). With built-in HDCD decoding and the Virtual Light Machine (which pulsates and illuminates to the many aspects of whatever music you may be listening to), this is one of the better players for the audiophile as well.

As far as the gaming aspect of NUON is concerned, it may very well have fallen flat, though a couple of the games released, Tempest 3000, an extremely addictive and compelling update of the classic arcade game & Freefall 3050 A.D., an extremely unique, if difficult shooter of sorts, are well worth playing. That aspect taken as it is, the multimedia aspects of NUON are still compelling. Aside to what it allows you to do with any DVD (the 20x ZOOM with image filtering and smooth forward/reverse are the best on any player), the NUON Software Development Kit has opened up quite an underground development core, and there are quite a few applications already available, from the shareware version of DOOM, to Pac-Man, with more on the way. It's not going to replace your Playstation 2, but it's a nice diversion from your standard DVD watching, and a great bonus to one of the best values in DVD (the released games can be had for $10 by the way, with controllers at $10-$15.

First and foremost, the DVD player skips quite frequently when playing normal DVD discs. It was quite a severe skip too, much more harsh than a layer change. Forget the fact that you can download something to fix the problem, because a consumer shouldn't have to jump through loops for a product to perform basic operations. Why spend so much money on a player that will simply turn out to be a huge inconvience?

In addition to the skips, the player wouldn't even play some of my more advanced discs. Terminator 2: Ultimate Edition DVD, for instance, would either not load at all or freeze upon loading.

Also, the player would often freeze if you use the remote buttons at a moderately fast pace. An example would be if you are manually fast-forwarding through the movie, press pause, then quickly change your mind and keep fast forwarding. This kind of thing can cause the player to freeze up.

And that is exactly what this NUON player is. Looking for the upgrades (around the months of July, 2002) turns out to be quite an epic quest. Before I returned it I tried several programs to fix the player, but to no avail. The downloads I did manage to find didn't fix the skipping problem.

Another huge problem is the loading time. DVD players two years older than this had quicker loading times. It really shouldn't be too big of a deal, but when you have to wait ten to fifteen seconds before the menu comes up, it does become quite annoying.

My advice? Find another player. I've seen these players marked down quite a bit at electronic stores around me, but there are much better players at much better prices.