###### Another update. LG BD570 will play PAL format DVDs ######

Below is a copy of a review I wrote for a Seekers DVD

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning – PAL format, October 26, 2009

Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

This review is from: WORLD OF THE SEEKERS (PAL/REGION 0) (DVD Audio)

This DVD is advertised as being in NTSC format but the copy I received is in PAL (European) format. Fortunately It will play on a PC using Windows Media Player. Since this was for my wife and she was content to watch it on the computer I didn’t return it. I like the Seekers very much and Judith Durham has one of the all time great voices in POP music. The DVD once we were able to watch it is a loose reenactment of the groups career and all of their top songs are there in either studio or live performances and sometimes both. Audio and video are good. Other than format issues this DVD is well worth owning.

I recently discovered that I can play PAL format DVDs on my new LG-BD570 Blue Ray Player. Works great. Yippee.

##### UPDATE #####

I was fiddling with the player a few minutes ago and discovered that the 1080P problem was fixed. I assume that this was done by a recent microcode update. I tested with all the scenarios listed below and it hung tight with a constant 1080P output through them all. Good job LG. It is nice to know that a company follows up on things. If I could I would now raise my rating to six.

Regarding LG bd570 1080P/1080I issues.

I Think LG support is blowing smoke on this problem. I hooked up my new LG BD570 to my Panasonic S2 series plasma with an HDMI connection. I was aware of the fact that the LG comes with the resolution set to 1080I so I reset it to 1080P. Here is what I found,

1. If nothing is changed, (no power off or HDMI port switch) both BDs and DVDs send a 1080P signal to the TV.

2 If I power either the TV or LG570 off the LG resolution switches to the “ANY

setting and display of the input on the TV shows the signal being sent as

1080I. According to LG the “any” setting automatically adjusts output to the

native resolution of the display as signaled to it by the TV through the

HDMI port. As my TV is native 1080P I am not believing this unless there is

a problem with the TV. I disabled the Viera Link settings on the TV as

Viera link does a bunch of communication to attached devices. This didn’t

help.

3. If I switch the TV input to another HDMI port such as the DVR the LG

switches back to the “any” setting and outputs a 1080I signal.

Bottom Line:

Although Having to cycle through to the setup menu and picture settings on the BD570 to get 1080P output is a pain (a total combination of nearly nearly a dozen key and arrow strokes) I am not going to pursue it any further. The picture from both blu ray and regular DVDs is terrific and in the limited comparisons I have done my non expert eyes can’t detect any differences between 1080I and 1080P outputs.

Other than the above issue I am very happy with the BD570 and the wireless

streaming from Netflix has worked very well.

These are problems that LG should be aware of by now and hopefully they will fix it. My preference would be an option to force whatever output you desire that can only be manually changed.

**** UPDATE ***

After having a few more days to play with this player I am raising my rating from 4 stars to 5 stars. The 1080P thing is still annoying but I have been able to halve the number of keystrokes to change it. Everything else about this player is really first rate. The Netflix streaming has worked flawlessly so far and the onscreen movie selection feature is real nice. Best of all the up conversion of regular DVDs is terrific. In the early part of “The Mission” movie the scenes with the waterfalls are amazing. The Pink Floyd “Pulse” DVD also looks great and of course sounds terrific.
Rating: 5 / 5

I purchased this player and the new Terminator Salvation DVD to test it out. The player was a breeze to hook up and I was excited to watch the movie. However, this is where the problem started. It would not play a blu-ray disc. The LG has a “home” screen as many blu-ray players do. In order to watch a movie, you select “movie.” When doing that the player was stuck in what I will refer to as a loop. The player will flash to the beginning of the movie for a second or less, then flash back to the home screen. In order to actually watch the movie you would need to continually select “movie” until the actual DVD begins with the credits. During the FBI warning, rating, etc…it continually looped back to the home screen. Just to note, standard DVDs played without an issue. I thought perhaps this was a DVD problem, but another blu-ray DVD (Spaceballs) had the same issue although not as bad. I called LG tech support whom were very unhelpful. There idea of tech support and the only support they gave after both a phone call and an e-mail was to turn the machine off and turn it back on. I could have told them that that was likely not going to fix my issue. So, knowing that something is wrong with the player I assumed I had a bad apple and returned it for the same model. After hooking up the new one, it had the same issue. Also this issue was not firmware since there are no firmware updates for this model. I checked both the wireless network connection of the player and online. After two of these models having the same issue, I returned the second and actually purchased the Sony S570 model. After hooking that one up, both of the blu-ray movies I was attempting to play worked flawlessly, thus confirming my belief that both of the LG models were poorly made and not functioning as expected.

With that being said, if you choose to purchase this model, here are my pros and cons:

Pros:

- Very easy to set up

- Wireless network was easy to set up and worked well

- As silly as it sounds, I liked the remote.

- Network options (Netflix and Pandora)

Cons:

- Issues playing blu-ray discs

- Very slow load times (which were confirmed when experiencing the Sony load times which were about half)

- Cost (the Sony is $30 less in most places)

- I did not like the flip down front

Overall, I wanted this player to be great based on what people were saying about LG models, but it didn’t. The Sony model I ended up with has all of the same functionality, short of Pandora, at less cost. The Sony also functioned perfectly out of the box. I would recommend the Sony over this model, but it is your choice. I hope you don’t get 2 bad apples like I did.
Rating: 2 / 5

Video quality of a Blu-ray disc is great, but I’ve only watched one movie so far.

But the part about this player that I love is the wireless connection to the internet. Netflix HD movies stream perfectly and the image is amazing. Totally impressed that this is streamed content! And at no add’l cost to me…(already have a netflix account)

Pandora quality is great as well.

So thumbs up on DVD/Blu-ray playback and on streaming content wirelessly sans distortion or delay!

Rating: 5 / 5

The best features in my opinion, aside from the fact that it plays Blu-ray discs, is that it can stream Netflix right out of the box and also stream media from your networked computers. I set up the BD570 last night and played around with it a little. DVD playback seemed fine. Setting up the Wi-Fi connection wasn’t too difficult, either. It would have been much easier if our Wi-Fi SSID were being broadcast. Also, toggling to upper case letters on the on-screen keyboard for SSID/password input wasn’t immediately obvious. The built-in Wi-Fi is a definite plus, though; the Samsung I was looking at came with a Wi-Fi dongle that you had to plug in via USB and set up (seems like Wi-Fi was an afterthought). If your modem or router/access point is located close enough to your entertainment center, you could even connect the LG via Ethernet for even better streaming throughput.

Setting up Netflix was a cinch. They provide you with an activation code; you log into your Netflix account on your computer and type in the code, and presto. You can then browse through your Instant Queue, or browse by category, etc. (Other products with similar features, don’t let you watch un-queued movies. That is, you have to add them manually on your computer before they appear on your TV queue.) The quality seemed pretty decent–perhaps slightly more pixelated than hooking up my laptop Netflix stream to the TV via s-video. This might just be a matter of tweaking aspect ratio settings on the TV and/or BD player. Also, the movie cover art seemed a bit slow in loading while browsing through titles, but no biggie.

Streaming shared media on network computers via LG’s Home Link feature works great, but it took a bit of tweaking to get it set up. A couple of different shared items appeared immediately when I loaded Home Link. One was labeled “COMPUTERNAME/Username” and the other was a directory of all shared documents. The former was some form of “media server” protocol, which I couldn’t get to work (I tried enabling media streaming in Windows 7 settings, to no avail). The latter directory tree, once opened, showed all empty folders (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Downloads–i.e., all “My Documents” sub-folders, but all empty). I had “Homegroup” sharing enabled for a number of different folders in Windows 7 settings, but Home Link couldn’t access their contents until I added “Guest” as a user in the Share settings for specific folders. Once that was done, I was instantly able to browse and stream movies, music, and pictures. I tested a couple of DivX and MP3 files, and they seemed to run great.

All of this file-sharing trouble may be my unfamiliarity with the new Windows 7 networking lingo and how to configure settings properly without sharing everything with the world. Others may find it much easier to connect and stream media. Also, bundled with the LG player is a disc containing some Nero software called Home Essentials, I believe. It’s a way to share files over a network using DLNA. I’m not sure how it works, or whether it’s any good, but now that I’ve got Windows networking figured out, I might leave good enough alone.

Overall, my impression of the BD570 is very positive. The only reason I’ve given this only 4 stars is the slightly cumbersome nature of the setup process for home networking, and because some of the language used in the menus is not 100% clear (not overly technical, just poor English). We have had very good experiences with LG products–bought an LG fridge, washer, and dryer in the past 6 months or so–and I’m so far pretty pleased with this new addition. As the first to review the product, at least on here, I hope people will find my experience and remarks useful.

One final caveat: I have not tested any of the other Internet-enabled functions, such as Pandora, YouTube, etc. If they’re anything like the Netflix function, then they should be easy to set up and use.
Rating: 4 / 5

As far as load times are concerned, the BD570′s are decent but not winning any speed records. It offers a 17 second overall bootup time (while it loads all of the aforementioned content options in the menu) – this makes it 3 seconds faster than the Pioneer BDP-320 which offers no multimedia options. Standard DVDs load in about 12 seconds, Blu-rays in 23 seconds, and BD-JAVA-heavy Blu-ray Discs like “Pirates of the Caribbean” in 32 seconds. This is pretty close to parity with the fastest models of 2009 (including OPPO’s BDP-83) but it seems like they could have improved things a bit with this whole new generation of players.

In terms of performance, the BD570 delivers Blu-ray Discs in excellent audio and video clarity (as it should), and performs most of the difficult tasks of DVD upconversion right as well – excellent diagonal filtering and 3:2 cadence detection, for example. But it does not handle noisy source material very well (its noise reduction processing could use some work). Overall, as a DVD upconverter, it’s very good but not outstanding.

What is outstanding is the built-in 802.11b/g/n WiFi wireless networking. For us this worked right our of the box connecting to our wireless router, and streaming VUDU’s 1080p HDX movies like nobody’s business. And although the remote looks almost upside down compared to many other BD player remotes, the button layout is actually quite comfortable with the most popular buttons in easy reach of your thumb, and transport buttons (play/pause/FF/REW) raised and angled for improved ergonomics.

Overall, with its built-in WiFi, DLNA networking, multimedia playback and internet streaming offerings, combined with solid Blu-ray playback, the BD570 offers a good blend of performance and convenience for a fairly affordable price. Our complete review of the BD570 is available on Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).
Rating: 4 / 5