Philips Blu-ray Player (BDP3406) Support NTFS ($98.00)

[imars99]

I am happy with Philips Blu-ray Player (BDP3406).Reasonable price,excellent picture quality,Wifi and above all supports NTFS so u can play movies from USB.
http://www.walmart.ca/Electronics/Pl...isc-DVD-player
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/.../10171492.aspx

[turk690]

What do you mean support NTSC? Of course it's going to support NTSC from square 1 coz it's for sale in canada. What gives?
My jaws would drop IF it supported PAL and was blu-ray and DVD region-free. But it is NOT. Nothing too special about this player to distinguish it from the pack.
Maybe you meant support MKV or somesuch?

[KBeee]

I think he meant NTFS

[imars99]

What do you mean support NTSC? Of course it's going to support NTSC from square 1 coz it's for sale in canada. What gives?
My jaws would drop IF it supported PAL and was blu-ray and DVD region-free. But it is NOT. Nothing too special about this player to distinguish it from the pack.
Maybe you meant support MKV or somesuch?

Sorry my bad i meant NTFS.

[mafioso22]

Does it play Mkv files on NTSF flash drives or Hard drives?

[imars99]

Does it play Mkv files on NTSF flash drives or Hard drives?

yes it do.

[mafioso22]

Nice thank you i might have to pick one up!

[edDV]

A great way to separate from the similar pack. I'm waiting for the thorough user tests.

I'll need a second player around "Black Friday".

[oldfart13]

Still waiting for this one:

http://www.seikidigital.com/blu-ray-players/blu-ray-sp101tt.html

Wally never got it.

I take it the Philips can't do multi region though like the Seiki BD660? Anyone tried the code to see what happens?

[jman98]

I take it the Philips can't do multi region though like the Seiki BD660? Anyone tried the code to see what happens?

Depends on what you mean by the term "multi region". If you mean for DVD only, that may still be possible with some Philips BD players. If you mean for BD, then that's a no go. I have not personally tested a Philips BD player but within the past 10 days I bought a DVP3560 and the region free hack listed here works fine still, even though Philips own US website is adamant that the player cannot be made region free. I do know that if you have a Philips player of any kind and make it region free that you cannot update the firmware or that capability will go away.

[oldfart13]

That's why I wanted to ask. The Seiki BD660 took a FW upgrade a couple months ago but the multi-region defeat is still there for DVD and Blu Ray. I saw a bunch of these new Philips players on the rack at Wal-Mart this afternoon as well as another stack of BD660s, but no 3D Seiki player. Looks like they are finally getting some new stock in so who knows if the new player will show up in the coming weeks...

[JoeLansing]

I just got one. It plays disks just fine but whenever I try to play an AVI file it makes the screen on my old 57" Mitsubishi TV start rolling. I tried playing through my stereo, direct to the TV, I'm not sure what's up. When it's scrolling the TV says it is getting a 1080i signal. I wonder if the player is feeding it 1080p and it doesn't know what to do with it? I've got about 1000 AVI movies and I really want this guy to play them. I'm starting to wish my old TV would die so I could get a new one that does HDMI. That might be my problem?

[yc1976]

I am thinking about getting this. but just wondering... does it play avi files directly from an external harddrive or usb flashdirv? thanks.

[jman98]

JoeLansing - I'm a little late to your question. Scrolling is usually a sign of what I call a PAL<->NTSC mismatch. Philips players usually default to a video output setting called with MULTI or ANY and this can cause what you are seeing with certain videos. Set the video output to NTSC and see if that eliminates the problem.

[JoeLansing]

I am thinking about getting this. but just wondering... does it play avi files directly from an external harddrive or usb flashdirv? thanks.

It does play from both ntfs and fat32 usb hard drives and memory sticks. I'm excited. I need to go try setting it to NTSC. I guess maybe that makes sense. The DVD's I was feeding it have NTSC right in the disk to tell it how to play. I wonder if the AVI files don't, so it's guessing and playing them as PAL? I'll post my results back later.
- Joe

[artaxerxes]

Great unit but one show-stopper for me: my TV is old (no HDMI port), so I planned to use the RCA port. The RCA port works great, but only for NTSC-compatible material. In other words, if you remove the Region-check, you still won't be able to play every DVD out there since the signal coming out of the unit will be PAL/SECAM instead of NTSC. I read however that the HDMI port will work.

In short, watching region 2 on this unit fails if using the RCA (composite) connector even with Region hack.

I am now selling this unit.

[jman98]

artaxerxes - We've had reports (after this thread started though) that Philips North American BD players can be made region free for DVD, but with a catch - they do NOT convert. So I think your problem is not specific to your connection but that this model simply doesn't convert video at all.

I bought a cheap ($39.95) Philips DVP 3560 at Best Buy in August of 2011 and it can easily be made region free and it converts. People who need region free DVD players are probably better off to just buy a cheap DVD player for the purpose than to try to get by with a BD player that can also be made region free for DVD playback, especially in the USA and Canada.

[Wanderlustus]

Great info, here. I was looking at getting another DVD player, namely the dvp3560, then thought I'd have a look at the BDP3406 as I just moved out of CRT-Ville a short time ago. Still love my dvp5990, and it does a pretty damn fine job upconverting on my flat screen, both the 32" and a 19" I grabbed for the bedroom. But when I read that it plays MKV and other files the 5990 won't, well, I'm pretty interested to say the least.

Also grabbed a 2T ED, formatted to FAT32 so the 5990 would read it, but now I hear (read?) this BD player can deal with both NTFS and FAT32? I'm all but sold.

Maybe I missed it in the discussion, but does this have something along the lines of the great firmware written for the 5990? And in fact does anyone have a major beef with this player?

Shutting up now. Cheers.

[Wanderlustus]

Nada? Ok, one more question: is there any firmware for this player that supports longer file names, like that for the DVP5990?

[travbrad]

Does this player support the mp4 container as well? Or just mkv/wmv/avi?

Can it play those files from a DVD (data) as well, or just from USB flash drives?

Thanks. I have a player right now that doesn't support NTFS which is a problem when some of the files I have are well over 4GB.

[Wanderlustus]

According to the BB site, this player doesn't play WMV but does play MP4.

From one customer's review:

Plays BD-R, MKV, MP4 and DivX very well. Wifi setup requires USB flash drive storage space and it doesn't play WMV.

Another cat says -- and this bit worries me some as most of my flics are SD AVI's.

when I tried upcomverting DVD the poiture was terrible. I check the video settings and confirmed I was on the 1080P setting and then looked at the 480i setting and there was no picture change.

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/philips-philips-wi-fi-blu-ray-player-bdp3406-bdp34.../10171492.aspx

Here's the straight guff on what it plays from the Philips site:

http://download.p4c.philips.com/files/b/bdp3406_f7/bdp3406_f7_pss_aen.pdf

Oh yeah, I just ordered one. Cheapest I could find in Canada -- even though I despise the place -- is Wallie's, for $98.00.

Amascum dot com sells them for the same price, but Amascum dot canada is selling them for approx. $60.00 more. Another reason I hate Amascum dot ca.

Cheers, all.

[jman98]

when I tried upcomverting DVD the poiture was terrible. I check the video settings and confirmed I was on the 1080P setting and then looked at the 480i setting and there was no picture change.

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/philips-philips-wi-fi-blu-ray-player-bdp3406-bdp34.../10171492.aspx

I would take such reviews with a big grain of salt. It MIGHT be correct. But I wouldn't bet on it. Here's why.
1) For about 5 years now I've been using cheap Philips DVD players set to output 480p to my 1080p HDTV and I'm getting fantastic results via component video. It's really hard for me to believe that a Philips BD player could not get this right when their cheaper DVD players can.
2) For all we know, the reviewer may have his player set up to stretch 4:3 into 16:9 and that always looks like crap no matter how you slice it. I've seen a rather large number of people bitch about how "bad" things look on their TV and invariably they are stretching SD 4:3 into 16:9.

[Wanderlustus]

Aye. I've got but a 32" and the DVP5990 does a smashing job of upconverting, I mean, in my non-professional opinion. I think you're right, it's likely some setting the reviewer has buggered up.

I see folks with HD TeeVees doing #2 all the time, and the worst of it you most of them are deaf to what they're doing wrong.

[Wanderlustus]

Player arrived, but shifting things around and waiting on wall-mounts before I put this puppy to the test. I'll definitely check back in with a report once I get it up and going.

[Wanderlustus]

Hi folks. Finally got around to hooking the player up last eve and watched a couple of burned flics. So far, so good. MKV and MP4 files played flawlessly expect for one. Well, I shouldn't say that, as it played without a hitch, but 16:9 was a no-go, and it was all scrunched into a 4:3 view box. I tried every combination of picture setting I could on both the telly and the player . . . still, no-go. I suppose first it would help to know that my telly is 720p max, LCD. Below are some specs on the file that didn't view properly.

Video ....: 1280x536 (X264 @ 23.976fps)
Bitrate ..: 4472kbps
Audio ....: DTS 1509kbps
Source ...: Retail Region A Blu-Ray

My BDP3406 is a North American player, so I'm at a loss as to why this file won't view properly.

I've yet to connect to the network through wireless, though if this will only give me access to Netflix (no VUDU in Canada) I really couldn't give a toss.

Any ideas on this file?

BTW, is there and software, like G-Spot, for MKV and the like? Thanks for any input.

PS. I don't know that it matters, but I formatted a thumb-drive to NTFS in order to transfer this large file. And as imars has said, it handles NTFS jes' fine.

[Wanderlustus]

Ok, now I'm starting to get a bit on the bothered side of things; I've just had another (much smaller) file exhibit the same behaviour, and again I went through every setting I could find on both the player and telly. At least I think I have.

I took a couple of screen-shots in the hopes that it might aid in anyone that's trying at guess at this.

Problem #1 and #2

PS. For some reason the snaps came out in reverse order. The first image is #2 problem.

[Wanderlustus]

Just for good measure, here's a file that plays just fine. All three files have the MKV extension.

[mh2360]

I have a Phillips BDP3200, which has similar specs to the 3406.

Certain 720p H.264/MKV files behave in exactly the same way on this player as well. I have tried remuxing the file using MKVToolnix, but setting the ratio to 16:9, 1:1 or even 4:3 changes nothing.

My TV's aspect ratio is normally set to "original", but manually setting it to 16:9 solved the problem for me. It's a PITA when I forget to set it back to "original" and 4:3 material appears stretched horizontally.

[Wanderlustus]

Thanks for chiming in, MH, but even when I try to set the telly to 16:9 or 16:9 widescreen, it changes nothing. I just don't get it.

edit -- My mistake. I have idiot options on my telly: wide, cinema, normal, zoom, etc. No ability to choose specific ratios, it seems. Ah, Christmas presents . . .

It was the player I had switched to 16:9 . . . and that did nada.

[wulf109]

MKV files support AR flags and the problem your having is not unusual. Remuxing with MKVmerge usually corrects this problem.