LG BD590 - Blu-ray Disc Player / Digital Multimedia Receiver / HDD Recorder - 250 GB

Have had the player for about a month. Liked it so much I bought another one for a different room in my house and I bought another for a friend who also loves it. The wifi is easy to set up is nice (fewer messy cables). I readily connect to the internet, my pc, or play DVDs. The price is nice (~$210) for a good quality player with all these features (wifi, hard drive, etc.). The machine is aesthetically pleasing. It loads up the DVDs, Netflix, etc. pretty quick. And I like that the fast-forward and rewind have multiple speeds. I have loaded up a considerable amount of music on the hard drive and am still less than 5GB used. There are two things that I don't like. First, I would like to be able to store DVDs on the hard drive so that I can access my library w/o ... MoreHave had the player for about a month. Liked it so much I bought another one for a different room in my house and I bought another for a friend who also loves it. The wifi is easy to set up is nice (fewer messy cables). I readily connect to the internet, my pc, or play DVDs. The price is nice (~$210) for a good quality player with all these features (wifi, hard drive, etc.). The machine is aesthetically pleasing. It loads up the DVDs, Netflix, etc. pretty quick. And I like that the fast-forward and rewind have multiple speeds. I have loaded up a considerable amount of music on the hard drive and am still less than 5GB used. There are two things that I don't like. First, I would like to be able to store DVDs on the hard drive so that I can access my library w/o having to rummage thru a bunch of DVD cases. Second, whenever you have to enter text (such as passwords to access my PC, or naming folders, etc.) you have to use the up/down/left/right navigation buttons to highlight the desired letter, number, character on the screen; this is pretty tedious especially if you need to toggle back and forth between lower case or capital letters. A QWERTY keyboard, as I have seen in other remotes, would certainly make this easier.

I have an LG flat screen TV and the BD590 works almost seamlessly with it, when a disc is loaded the Blu-Ray player automatically turns on the TV and links with it, when the TV is turned off, the player also shuts down. I particularly like the way the BD590 up-converts, with this player there really doesn't seem to be a difference between a regular DVD and a Blu Ray disc. On the negative side, if the player is shut off with a disc still in it, when you power up the program goes back to the beginning, making finding the point where you left off difficult. I mentioned that starting the player also turns on the TV, well almost all of the time, there are times when it has to be done manually, I'd like to have some consistency here. Another negative is - If you unload ... MoreI have an LG flat screen TV and the BD590 works almost seamlessly with it, when a disc is loaded the Blu-Ray player automatically turns on the TV and links with it, when the TV is turned off, the player also shuts down. I particularly like the way the BD590 up-converts, with this player there really doesn't seem to be a difference between a regular DVD and a Blu Ray disc. On the negative side, if the player is shut off with a disc still in it, when you power up the program goes back to the beginning, making finding the point where you left off difficult. I mentioned that starting the player also turns on the TV, well almost all of the time, there are times when it has to be done manually, I'd like to have some consistency here. Another negative is - If you unload the player while the TV is off, when the disc drawer closes it automatically turns on the TV, not a great feature since it takes a few seconds for the TV to come on and unless you are aware that this might happen the TV could be on for quite a while. The unit does connect to the internet quite well, but it isn't apparent which features are available from the units embedded menu, even when logging on for any updates to the firmware, so if Pandora, Picasa and Roxio are available, there's no way to know unless you go on-line and look at the latest product literature, a poor way to service customers. Finally, I have heard of sequencing problems with LG TV's and DVD players and haven't experienced that problem while viewing movies, however with one disc, there was a mismatch between the picture and the audio, but it only happened when I went to the "director's comments" section. Overall I'd give the BD590 between three and a half to four stars, since the former top of the line player shouldn't have any of these problems, but the negatives are manageable and it is, for the most part, an exceptional unit.

I love the BD590. Its a terrific blueray player. Its a terrific networked media device -- VUDU, Cinemax etc all work well as does the DNLA access that allows me to play home movies or view photos from my PC.I bought into the hard drive feature because I liked the idea of having a digital music library acessable via my living room remote control playing through my expensive high-fi system.The ripping of CDs works very well and is completely idiot-proof, but that's where the limitations arise...The music library managment features are rather limited -- only one playlist! A much more significant irritant is that having invested the time to rip 100+ CDs, LG does not provide a practical means for moving these digital audio files back to your PC (iTunes Library). ... MoreI love the BD590. Its a terrific blueray player. Its a terrific networked media device -- VUDU, Cinemax etc all work well as does the DNLA access that allows me to play home movies or view photos from my PC.I bought into the hard drive feature because I liked the idea of having a digital music library acessable via my living room remote control playing through my expensive high-fi system.The ripping of CDs works very well and is completely idiot-proof, but that's where the limitations arise...The music library managment features are rather limited -- only one playlist! A much more significant irritant is that having invested the time to rip 100+ CDs, LG does not provide a practical means for moving these digital audio files back to your PC (iTunes Library). The DNLA access does not work from LG to PC. I cannot even use a USB external hard drive for backup of the LG. The only option provided for moving files off the BD590 hard dirve is to use a USB memory stick. Given the 100+MBs of music I currently have on my BD590, a memory stick is simply too small.The inevitable conclusion is that having conceived of a great innovation, hard drive BD player combo, LG failed to really think through user needs for such a device. Yes we need more than one playlist. Yes, yes, yes, we do need a practical means to backup the music files created on the BD590 hard drive.Recommendation: you really may not want to purchase the hard drive version of this product until LG makes better use of this high-potential feature.Other than that, its a great product.