The Samsung DVD-M101 DVD player is an affordably priced model that features state-of-the-art composite-video outputs, digital compatibility, and a slim design. The player's Spatializer N-2-2 sound circuit simulates surround sound through your TV or stereo speakers, while its 96 kHz/24-bit audio converters deliver pristine audio quality from DVDs and CDs. The back-panel Toslink optical terminal passes a 96 kHz/24-bit audio stream for use with the latest high-end audio recordings (though be aware that your receiver must be able to decode your 96 kHz recordings if you use a digital connection there). The Samsung DVDM101 DVD player connects to your stereo or home-theater sound system to deliver outstandingly real theatrical sound when playing DVD movies. The DVDM101 has Dolby Digital and DTS audio outputs to work with your compatible home-theater receiver.The DVD-M101 includes left/right analog-audio outputs for compatibility with Dolby Pro Logic receivers and, in case you don't have a receiver yet, TV inputs. This unit also supports both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel formats through its digital outputs for direct connection to a full-featured audio/video receiver or an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC). In the video realm, the M101's 10-bit video DAC ensures precision playback of high-resolution DVD signals. Analog video components are also selected to optimize performance. Composite-video output terminals provide the optimum connection between the DVD-M101 and an advanced direct-view or projection TV system. The unit also offers standard component- and S-video outputs.
The Samsung DVD-M101 DVD player is an affordably priced model that features state-of-the-art composite-video outputs, digital compatibility, and a slim design.
The player's Spatializer N-2-2 sound circuit simulates surround sound through your TV or stereo speakers, while its 96 kHz/24-bit audio converters deliver pristine audio quality from DVDs and CDs. The back-panel Toslink optical terminal passes a 96 kHz/24-bit audio stream for use with the latest high-end audio recordings (though be aware that your receiver must be able to decode your 96 kHz recordings if you use a digital connection there).
The DVD-M101 includes left/right analog-audio outputs for compatibility with Dolby Pro Logic receivers and, in case you don't have a receiver yet, TV inputs. This unit also supports both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel formats through its digital outputs for direct connection to a full-featured audio/video receiver or an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
In the video realm, the M101's 10-bit video DAC ensures precision playback of high-resolution DVD signals. Analog video components are also selected to optimize performance. Component-video output terminals provide the optimum connection between the DVD-M101 and an advanced direct-view or projection TV. The unit also offers standard composite- and S-video outputs.
1 Apparently, Samsung still hasn't fixed their problems
Two of the other reviewers here mentioned the picture breaking up on some discs. I had this problem, along with a skipping problem, on about HALF of the discs I tried -- but they played flawlessy on 3 other DVD players (by companies other than Samsung I might add). I actually have an earlier model Samsung DVD player, and it, along with other Samsung models at the time, had a horrible skipping problem on many DVDs. Samsung's support was almost non-existant -- I found out there was a firmware upgrade for the player, but not through their website (where I couldn't find any help whatsoever), but through a friend with the same problem. HOWEVER, the firmware upgrade did not resolve the problem, and the last I heard, there was a class action suit filed here in Pennsylvania (which I received an invitiation to be a part of, but could not participate in, I think because I no longer had the receipt). Considering their lackluster customer support, I would advise anyone against buying any DVD player from this company. Players are much cheaper nowadays anyway, and you can get an excellent Sony or Toshiba for a modest price.
2 good entry level dvd player
this samsung model is a good value. while it's not the most consistent player on the market, for the price you pay you are getting a nice bargain. it froze up on one of the first movies we watched on it, but that might have been due to the fact that it was a blockbuster rental. basically, you get what you pay for. overall, its a nice dvd player for an even nicer price that you will enjoy for a long time.
3 Pay a little more to get a better player
I bought the Samsung 101 a couple months ago as my first DVD player. The price seemed reasonable and I liked the remote control. I also liked the Samsung 1-year warranty on parts and labor. Most players have a 90-day warranty on labor, and a 1-year warranty on parts, which means you are taking a risk if you do not buy an extended service contract from your retailer.
Connection and set-up were fast and easy, and the owner's manual is excellent, logically organized and with clear instructions.
Picture and sound were fine, but there were sporadic, though noticeable, "break ups" in the picture where it would disintegrate into large pixels. These are not the fault of the discs, since they don't always happen in the same place at the same time.
More annoying than the occasional picture problems is the slowness with which the player loads the DVD and responds to the remote control. The remote response is so slow that I often was not sure if the player had even received the signal until 5 or 10 seconds after I had pushed the button. While you do get used to this after a while, it's a real drawback.
The ergonomics of the remote itself are very good, with an intuitive layout, but this is offset by the slowness of the player's response.
The player does a good enough job that it got me hooked on DVDs, but after a month, I relegated this player to the bedroom and bought a Toshiba (2800) that is far superior to the Samsung and only cost about [a bit] more.
The Toshiba also has a great feature that the Samsung lacks: the first zoom level on the Toshiba gives you a slightly larger letterboxed image for widescreen DVDs, without cutting off much at the sides and with no discernable loss of image sharpness. This is a real convenience on my 27" TV, maintaining the widescreen ratio but giving a bigger image. The Samsung has a feature called "S-Fit" which supposedly does the same thing, but the manual says it does not work on all discs, and I never got it to work on any of mine. The Toshiba works for all the discs I have and it's a feature I would not sacrifice.
Bottom line on the Samsung 101:
Pro: Good remote, good picture, good sound, 1-year warranty parts and labor, good instruction manual.
Con: Sporadic picture problems, slow to load DVDs and slow to respond to remote, 2-level zoom does not increase image size for widescreen DVDs.
If you want a good basic player and don't want to pay for an extended warranty, consider the Samsung.
4 Beautiful pictures - half the time
We already have a Sony DVD player, this Samsung unit was purchased for another room. We were looking for a fairly cheap DVD player with decent picture quality and ease of use.
The Samsung unit was easy to hook up, and worked very well with the first two DVDs. The picture was crisp and clear, the colors bright. I can't comment on the quality of the sound, since the unit was hooked up to a - to put it mildly - inferior sound system.
Unfortunately, the initial favorable impression didn't last too long. The player has problems with about half the DVDs we have tried. The picture is fuzzy and very dark. With some DVDs it changes between the regular, good picture and the dark, fuzzy one.
Bottom line: if the performance was consistent, we'd be very pleased with our purchase. It is not, and we aren't.
5 Definitivamente un buen producto!
He descubierto con mucha satisfacci—n que este es un muy buen producto, pensˇ que tendr’a algunos de los problemas que otras personas comentaban, sin embargo para ser justo, el DVD Player ha tenido un buen desempe–o. Considero que los problemas de saltos se dan por fallas en los discos, pero no he tenido muchos problemas. Presenta una muy buena imagen y una nitidez y fidelidad normales.
6 Another terrific Samsung product!
This Samsung DVD player is a great machine. It displays crisp, clear, and brilliant digital quality images. The controls on both the remote and the player itself are easy to use. For the price this DVD player will suit most needs. Also, if you send in the registration card you get a 3 month extension on your warranty for free!
7 Decent enough, but you get what you pay for
I have to say that as far as DVD playback, digital is digital. When you compare this to a VCR/VTR this thing blows 'em away. I use the optical digital audio output so the sound is insane - excellent seperation for 5.1 channel movies, and *very* clear CD audio. But I use the standard RCA video output, and the thing still stomps all over my VTR for picture quality. That said, there are a few (minor) frustrating things: Response to the remote commands is somewhat lethargic. You have to wait a second or two before you know whether the unit "heard" your remote. Also, it is a bit slow when loading a disc (DVD's and CD's take the same amount of time, it seems). That leads me to my biggest complaint. When I got this unit I was really looking for a CD player, but saw this as an opportunity to move into the world of digital video for quite a small amount of cash. The CD support is really quite disappointing. It flat won't play some CD's, and is rather finicky on most. It has a lot of trouble with direct track access - it usually finds the right track, but starts about 3-10 seconds into the tune. Sometimes it just won't even come close (like going to track 3 when looking for track 6).
All in all, for DVD playback, including some pretty neat features, it's probably worth the money (note that it's not a lot of money). Just don't expect it to replace your single disc player for CD Audio.
8 Decent sound but skips too often
I got this DVD player prior to xmas and soon discovered when I put in my first DVD that this DVD player has some serious latency problems. I don't know what's happening on the inside but every time I watch a Dvd or listen to a CD it stops. Then it makes a clicking noise like its trying to regain itself to continue then just freezes. I'm returning this thing tomorrow..
also a friend of mine said his parents bought the same unit and had the same problems
9 Overall, very good performance to price ratio
Recently purchased the Samsung DVD-M101 and have been very
satisfied with it.It comes with three settings, analog, S-Video and component video [...]. Tried the analog and S-Video hookup...image quality was very nice. Sound quality was excellent too...even for a direct hookup to the television.
Overall, Samsung has been making better and better products and the DVD-M101 is no exception. Will definitely recommend this product.
10 Samsung is cheap for a reason.
Bought Samsung DVD player from retail store for my home theater becouse it was listed as a best buy by Consumer Report. They did make mention that the unit had problems with scratched discs. This was an understatment! If the disc had the slightest flaw the sound and picture would skip and jump. If this wasn't bad enough the player would stop in the middle of a brand new disc and stop playing. This turned out to be a major frustration after spending thousands of dollars on a home theater and have the evening ruined by a faulty player. Used the same DVD at a friends house and it played fine. I tried cleaning the player to no avail. Samsung technical service was little help. It took two e-mails to their web site before someone responded. The e-mail responce instructed me to contact customer service and get a UPS tag in order to return the player. I called and a UPS tag was supposed to be sent but never arrived. Called again and customer service did not have a record of my request or complaint. I gave up and took the player in it's original box to a pawn shop and got [money]. I considered myself lucky.
11 Great DVD for the money
I got this from Amazon.com for $99 shipped to my door. It's been a great unit. Very clear picture. Some extra features and optical out.
It has skipped on DVDs on occassion which is apparently due to bad chips or something and this has happened twice for no apparent reason.
I've hooked it up to my Aiwa 580 Home Theater system and the 2 systems work great.
For the money you can't beat this system.
12 Great Video for a Great Price
I recently purchased this Samsung after great deliberation. I've wanted a DVD player for quite a while, but didn't want to pay through the nose. I have been very timid about buying one of the
bargain priced units. I was realy hoping to find a nice Sony or JVC on sale, but I don't have HD TV so why pay for all that Hi tech. I have had a Samsung camera for about 5 years now with no problems,so when I saw this unit on sale I figured I'd give it a shot. It works great!! Only problem is, like I said, No progressive scan, and no cdR or RW playback. But if you're looking for a good deal to play DVDs and CDs on a normal TV. This is it!
13 Value for the money.
I purchased this DVD player for last Christmas as a present to myself. It has performed admirably with new DVD's and rentals. The remote works well and picture quality makes makes you feel like your in the movie. I used the S-Video connection and it improved the picture even more. For yourself or for a gift buy this unit.
14 INCONSISTENT PERFORMANCE CAUSES AGGRAVATION
I finaly bought this DVD player for myself after researching several models. Although it was not one of the most expensive, I was expecting it to still get the job done. Well, I sure was wrong. It is even enough to set up, but that was about the only plus. Sometimes it would play certain DVD's, sometimes it wouldn't. The ones that did play would take several minutes to get started, especially because the remote does not register what you press right away.
15 Very good
I was thinking about getting a DVD player for quite a long time and was still debating on the one I should choose. I wanted a SONY at first and then when I was in the store, they had an incredible sale on this product (...) and I just bought it. Ever since, its been a very good DVD player. Very good quality, everything was good, and of course the price was very affordable!!!
16 Does what it promises.
I just got this yesturday. I was looking for something that would just play dvd's and had all the connections that are in vogue (component video, s-video, optical audio).
It doesn't have a lot of bells and wistles, but it gets the job done very nicely. Load times do seem to be little slow, but only when you first put the disc in.
-Mike
17 It should always be this easy
I took it out of the box, connected it to my system, turned it on, and started playing a DVD in 10 minutes. Really, I'm not kidding. It's very easy to use and the instruction manual, which is hardly necessary, is clearly written. Both picture and sound quality exceed my expectations. It plays all my DVD's perfectly, including one that had given my PC a lot of trouble. I had been putting off buying a DVD player due to analysis paralysis -- too many choices with a bewildering array of features, wondering which ones are compatible with my hardware and which ones would become obsolete, and finally settled on this inexpensive basic model, which turned out to be a totally successful purchase.
18 Fantastic
This was a great purchase for me, it plays all my DVD's flawlessly, fit in perfectly with my entertainment system as well. Definately a must buy for anyone looking for a reasonably priced DVD player!
19 Samsung DVD-M101
I bought the Samsung DVD-M101 DVD player to use in my bedroom and have been very pleased with it. For the money it is a very good buy. If you are looking for tons of features it really doesn't have that, but it has some cool stuff like 32X fast forward and Zoom feature that are nice. I was very pleased with the fact that when I brought it home and plugged it in it worked and played the new DVDs that I had. For a basic unit it works good.
20 This DVD player is not the best for the price
This DVD player was one I bought to put in my bedroom, I already have a Toshiba, but when I pluged it in to my new Home Entertainment System I bought to use it with I was extremly disappointed. The reading time after you load a disk is quite long, it even takes a few seconds for my system to register any input from a remote, as well as the manual controls on the system itself. I would think twice about buying this system.
