LG BD650 3D Network Blu-ray Disc Player with Smart TV (2011 Model)

I have had good luck with this Blu-Ray player. This is not the most expensive unit on the market, but it met my requirements for doing a good job playing Blu-Ray disks, as well as having network applications that will enhance your viewing and listening experiences.It does a wonderful job playing the movies, with the sound handling being just as good as the visuals. I have had this for about a month, and I have used it on 6-7 Blu-Ray movies, as well as some standard DVDs. It does a good job of enhancement of DVDs, and the Blu-Ray is all that I could ask for.One of the bigger reasons that I got this player was for the network capability. I do have a wired connection at my Television location. I have had no experience with the Wi-Fi portion. (It might not have Wi-Fi, please check the posted specifications.) I have a very adequate Internet connection and that all helps for the network applications. I can see if using Wi-Fi which has less access to the full bandwidth of your Internet connection that it could slow things down.I do love the compliment of applications provided. One of my requirements was that it had MLB.COM available, and it does. Some other applications included are Netflix, Cinema Now, Vudu, Accuweather, You-Tube, Pandora, and a lot of new entries into this field.This is my second LG player and the last one was last year's model. One of the additions for this year is something that I have tried and it works well too. That is the Amazon service for movies. If you are a Amazon prime member, you can watch some of the movies free. You can also make purchases from Amazon from this unit.Some of the applications will require that you set up an account on a computer prior to using the service. Most of us have a way to do that, so the main thing when setting up is that you have to enter in the user name and password for each respective service to get it to log into your account. Once that is done, the player remembers it for later. This is a one time setup.Netflix works quite well on it, and they are adding new services all of the time. I do enjoy the Internet Radio application as well. It plays stations of all genres and from all over the world. The quality of the music is more than adequate played through my sound system connected to the television. It will also tell you how the station is streaming, for example in MP3 @ 128 or WMA @ 96 (bps). All of the streams that I have listened to are more than adequate to have great sound quality through my component system.All of this is simple to hook up if you have HDMI connections. Basically, there are three connections for this, power, ethernet network and HDMI. And then you are ready. However, when I first got my system, I allowed myself the time to go into setup and tailor the system to work well with the equipment that I have. My amplifier for example had recommendations on how to set up external devices that connect to it for the best performance. Another thing that I allowed myself to do was to update the software on it, just as soon as I hooked it up.Most of these units sit in the box long enough that there will be a software update for it by the time that you get it. I recommend that you consider downloading that just as soon as you hook it up. It will remove many of the bugs in the original software that are likely there. I do know that many manufacturers release products quickly and will find bugs in the system. But since I downloaded the new software, I have not experienced any. This might not have been the case with some of the earlier reviewers.This weekend, there was a software update pushed to the system, which I found a bit aggravating at the time. I didn't want to stop and be forced to download an update as I had done in the past. But it seems that the ones that they push are very quick and not for the same purpose. After the short download was complete, there were several more applications that appeared in that area, including HULU and a new music service.The main software updates for the drivers and the core software will have to be requested, which is easily done. You just hit a button to check and see if there are any updates available, and it will let you know if there are and offer to download them. If you choose not to, you can do the same thing later when you have a few minutes (it doesn't take that long, but it does take a reboot of the system) to spend doing this.My friends have been impressed with the video for MLB and some other functions. I have no issue with Hi-Def video over the network. However, I believe that it is a benefit to have a wired network on these if it is available. If not, there should still be enough bandwidth on Wi-Fi to do the trick. However, I can not verify that.Overall, a pleasing purchase for the money.

Unfortunately, I bought two of these.The good news:1) Of the two I bought, one is still working.2) One is on it's way to LG for repair under warranty (and within 90 days so they will not charge me $70 for labor).The bad news:1) I bought these to play movies from my media server and Netflix. While this feature DOES work, the sound doesn't synch with the video while playing mp4's. When played on any other player device, the mp4 file sound synchs perfectly.2) For some blue-ray disks, it takes about 3 minutes from the time I insert a factory blue-ray until it shows the menu.3) These are downloading updates weekly. The updates fail more often than they succeed.4) Tonight, while I was watching a movie from my server, I paused the movie, fed the dogs, and came back to a bricked BD650. Hard reset doesn't work. LG is nice enough to offer to fix it after 20 minutes on the phone.Wow, what a dismal failure from LG.The "customer service rep" told me that it was likely bricked because of the mp4 file I was playing. OMG.I will be searching for a different player for my media library. These will be up for sale soon.It's a shame I waited longer than 30 days to decide to get rid of them.---editI am editing this to provide three more details:To elaborate on the sound sync issue: when played with VLC, Windows Media Player, XBMC on Apple TV, iPad, the sound synchs perfectly. When played on the BD650, the sound out of sync on all mp4's.I'm preparing to ship this back to LG. Unfortunately, there's a (not cheap) blue-ray disk in the player and I CAN'T GET THE DISK OUT. There's no "emergency eject" hole into which you can insert a paper clip. So I have to send this in with an expensive movie and cross my fingers that they will return it.The warranty is effectively 90 days. After 90 days, there is a $79 "inspection" charge for warranty service and you pay shipping to LG AND return shipping. It's anyone's guess how much more the repair labor will cost after the $79 inspection charge and $30-40 shipping both ways. Since the unit cost about $100 brand new delivered, consider it disposable after 90 days. I'm undecided if this is praise for the purchase price or a complaint about the repair price.----- Update.The bricked player has been replaced. It works fine and the DID return the disk that was stuck in the device. However, I still can't recommend these devices because occasionally, they refuse to interact on the network. Just last week the both stopped interacting with the network, so I ordered a 2nd Roku to stream content. As soon as the Roku arrived, they both started working again. I didn't change anything!----- Update 2013-03-01One of the players now has a disk clamping problem. You can hear the disk slipping when it spins up and it ejects the disk while the disk is still spinning at a high rate of speed. Yes, I said I would be replacing them, but haven't done so yet. The Rokus are effectively replacing them. Rarely do I need to play a physical disk.----- Update 2013-07-19I opened the one with the disk clamping issue to see what the problem was. It turned out to be a fairly simple repair for a mechanically-minded individual. When a disk is inserted, the tray and motor rise up to meet a loosely-held spindle above the disk. This upper spindle contains a strong magnet. As the tray rises, the motorized spindle meets the magnet, clamping the disk. The failure: the magnet became unglued from the upper spindle and stuck to the motorized spindle. After cleaning out the soft weak adhesive, I epoxied the magnet in place on the upper spindle, then re-assembled the unit. It's functional again.

Bought this to set up a network media player for my TV and projector. My objective was primarily to run movies and see photos from my computer without moving and connecting the laptop to my TV every time. Worked out to provide more bang for the buck in comparison to pure media players only (roku, boxee, apple) .. since I got a Blu-ray / 3D player along with this.Set up was relatively ok for me as I am a techie. Once connected to my WiFi bridge (Netgear) via a wired connection, which was fairly quick - the unit did update a software a couple of times. It downloads two files - driver and software - which fails to install together in one shot. It took 2 updates before the update for successful.The DLNA setup was great. Once you set up your PC for sharing, the discovery was instant and playback was great. There are minor issues with Windows 7 sharing .. but that is a Windows issue not the player. I did have to upgrade my WiFi router with dual band to avoid network connection issues related to bandwidth requirement to stream HD content (which I did see on my old b/g router).Plays most of the video file formats with one silly exception. While it plays MKV format, it does not recognize .mkv files. I have to rename the files to .avi to play it.I have amazon membership, and the app plays the media properly. Although I am not sure it is HD quality - maybe an amazon app or streaming content quality issue, not necessarily a LG player issue.Lots of software updates since. It does take a couple of tries for the player to update. Just avoid doing this when you really need to use the player.