Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

NOTE: My player is definitely NOT region-free for DVDs. The product description above appears to be wrong. Chose this model because it had streaming, DLNA, and wireless built-in (you don't need a separate dongle). I have not been disappointed in any of its functions. Wireless connectivity was a breeze - setup was straightforward and this model accepts a 32-character WPA2 security key (unlike previous LG TVs and Blu-ray player models which were limited to 18-20 characters, as I discovered when I bought a wireless dongle for our TV!). The wireless connection seems to be much more stable than with the other wireless devices we have. I occasionally have to turn off and on again to get a connection on startup, but this is unsurprising given how flaky our router is ... :-) Blu-ray playback is really good. Our first Blu-ray disc looked grainy and I was concerned until I read various forum discussions that criticized this movie transfer. Many Blu-ray movies are apparently intentionally grainy because this duplicates the "film" experience that the director intended. You can use the movie mode on your TV to reduce graininess as this lowers the sharpness setting. Our second Blu-ray disc was really smooth and detailed, as were most of the other discs. Playback resolution is excellent, you can see every pore on someone's face and the depth of field is amazing. There were no stutters, freezes or glitches with any of the discs we have played. DVD upscaling is also good - I decided it is not worth replacing any DVDs with Blu-ray discs as the upscaled playback in 1080p looks just as good as Blu-ray playback. Wireless streaming from Netflix was absolutely painless, once I worked out that the "Netflix ESN" that the player provides in the network setup menu is NOT the code that you need to use for Netflix connection setup. You need to select the LG Premium menu icon which accesses premium streaming services, select Netflix and get the connection code from the setup menu there. Enter the code once on the Netflix website ("Activate a Netflix ready device" in your account settings) and Netflix streaming works automatically after that. Hopefully my experience will save other people hours of trying to connect with the wrong code! Netflix streaming is excellent quality, much better than broadcast TV for most shows. The player seems to stream seamlessly from Netflix with almost no stutters or degraded resolution issues, even for HD movies. The only issues I have seen are when my internet connection is congested (Comcast net access is pretty bad on Friday evenings and Saturdays in my area). I am impressed. [UPDATE: Netflix changed the registration procedure, so that you go into Netflix in the Premium menu option, then enter your login details. The player remembers this login, so you only have to enter this once. I am leaving the previous information up, as you may have to still register the device - not sure as mine is already registered!] A recent firmware update (April 2011) added Amazon Video on Demand, which also works great! It is really cool to have these services. The device also offers Vudu, Pandora, etc. but I haven't used those. Firmware updates are easy, although these do take around 5-10 minutes to load via wireless connection - you need to keep your nerve and not turn off the player, thinking nothing is happening. Eventually, you get a message saying that the download has loaded and the player turns off and on again. If the download fails (which did happen once), the device is not affected (good design). [UPDATE: there seem to be two sorts of update - firmware updates seem to upgrade the disc playing features; software updates seem to upgrade the Internet access software, for premium services such as Netflix, Hulu+, or Amazon VoD. Don't blame LG for clunky interfaces on these services, as they just use the software supplied by Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon. The YouTube interface is *really* annoying - difficult to locate specific videos and it plays the current, teeth-grindingly irritating video-of-the-day all the time you are trying to find what you want. But that is Google's fault, not LG's.] I was really impressed by how painless it was to set up media streaming from a PC using DLNA. A copy of Nero Home Media Server essentials was supplied on CD - I installed this, the player automatically detected my PC and presented me with a list of files I could play from the media folder. This was *so* easy! DLNA file-streaming has worked brilliantly: I only experienced problems with one, huge (10 GB) home movie file that stuttered and stopped. Then I discovered the USB connection on the right-front panel of the player. I had been so taken with all of the streaming solutions that I overlooked the easiest way to play media files, which is from an external hard drive or flash drive! The BD670 played the huge file from an external hard drive with no problems. Since then, the player has played everything I have thrown at it: AVI and MKV, etc. using lots of different codecs. With 3 firmware updates in the month that I have owned it, I have a lot of confidence that it is being updated constantly to play all of the latest disc and file formats. So I am a very happy bunny indeed! UPDATE: Had this for over a year and I still LOVE it. This is the most fun I have ever had with video services. The quality of Blu-Ray disc and DVD playback is stunning. The streaming video services are alone worth the price of the player. I don't for a minute regret purchasing the BD-670. I uploaded two photos of the Internet entertainment services that you can access from this player. See the customer photos at the top of the item page to see what services are available as of April 2012. UPDATE2: There is a known bug with the software - just occasionally, if you play a (DVD or BluRay) disc and then attempt to stream a video from Netflix, the Netflix player will return an error message "We're sorry, but we cannot play this video just now" (or words to that effect). Talking to LG support, there seems to be a fix for this, but LG have not yet released the software update. You need to unplug the player for 30 seconds, then plug it back in. The player will reboot and this will fix the problem.