Samsung BD-C6500

It seems crazy to think that not so long ago a DVD player was the latest luxury, and you heard people boasting that they had got one at home. With the Samsung BD-C6500, things have moved forward again. Once the investment of movie buffs, DVD players are now in virtually every home and you can buy them for £20 at the supermarket. That's the normal path for technology, with early adopters paying over the odds to be the first to get their hands on the latest gadgets.

Now the DVD technology is a common fixture of households everywhere, manufacturers are looking to new enhancements to make their product stand out from the rest. The Samsung BD-C6500 arrived with just that ambition, having positioned itself as an Internet enabled DVD player. At first this sounds like a strange combination, but most Internet providers report that online video streaming is exploding. Services like the BBC's iPlayer and Channel 4's On Demand service are what people now turn to instead of the VHS cassette, and they don't even need to remember to set programmes to record.

The BD-C6500's wifi capability means that this Samsung DVD model is truly on demand, and even works with services such as LoveFilm, who can stream the latest DVD releases via the Internet, saving you a walk to the rental store.

It may seem obvious, but we also need to mention this is a high definition player, and the BD-C6500 delivers crisp 1080 HD Blu-Ray imagery very impressively. Samsung have put extra thought into the past irritations for DVD player owners, and managed to deliver an improvement they call Ultra Fast Play. This initiative means that the Samsung BD-C6500 unit loads disc's and gets you to the movie much faster than its predecessors, no doubt a great benefit to those of us who have been known to sit through 3 disc's a night.

There's also features which will automatically convert between aspect ratios to make the most of your TV screen and USB support for other storage devices you may wish to use, encompassing a wide range of common playback formats.

The notable downside of this unit is the lack of an HDMI cable in the box, but now the technology has been with us for a while I'm sure a lot of us have a spare cable or two already.

In summary, as a DVD player this model is great. As an Internet enabled device, it's an absolute must as it solved the dilemma of getting iPlayer onto the living room TV!

You can buy the Samsung BD-C6500 here at Amazon.