LG BD670 3D Wireless Network Blu-ray Disc Player with Smart TV
December 12, 2011 by Cherry
Filed under Blu-ray Players
LG BD670 3D Wireless Network Blu-ray Disc Player with Smart TV
- Enjoy 3D Blu-ray Disc movies in Full HD 1080p
- Smart TV enables an easy way to access limitless content, thousands of movies, customizable apps, videos and browse the web all organized in a simple to use interface
- Integrated Wi-Fi Connectivity allows you take advantage of Smart TV from any available Wi-Fi connection
- Standard DVD Up-Scaling delivers exceptional image quality from standard DVDs with 1080p up scaling via HDMI output
- Dolby Digital Plus lets you experience all of the enveloping surround sound that Blu-ray Disc, high-definition (HD) broadcast, and streamed and downloaded media make possible
If you want stunning Full HD 1080p and the unlimited possibilities of entertainment access, you’ve found it with the BD670 Network Blu-ray Disc Player. With Smart TV Access and Integrated Wi-Fi Connectivity, you get thousands of movies, Apps, shows and online videos straight to your TV from your wireless Internet connection at home. This is a Blu-ray player that delivers the best in HD, while setting your entertainment free in more ways than one.(March 2011)
Internet-Ready Devices Internet-ready devices use your broadband connection to deliver dynamic content to your television, whether it’s streaming video from Netflix or a quick glance at today’s weather forecast. Although there is overlap, each manufacturer offers a unique bundle of
List Price: $ 199.99
Price: $ 199.99
LG BD640 Network Wireless Blu-ray Disc Player
- Internet access lets you stream instant content from Netflix, CinemaNow, Vudu and YouTube direct to your TV ? no computer required
- Wi-Fi Enabled with the LG dongle makes it easy to get your LG Blu-ray player connected to internet Entertainment Access
- Standard DVD Up-Scaling delivers exceptional image quality from standard DVDs with 1080p up scaling via HDMI output
- Dolby Digital Plus lets you experience all of the enveloping surround sound that Blu-ray Disc, high-definition (HD) broadcast, and streamed and downloaded media make possible
If you want stunning Full HD 1080p and streaming entertainment, you’ve found it with the BD640 Network Blu-ray Disc Player. Now experience Full HD 1080p unrivaled picture quality, the sound of Blu-ray technology along with the possibilities of having direct W-Fi access to streaming content from Netflix, CinemaNow, Vudu and YouTube.
List Price: $ 149.99
Price: $ 149.99
Great Experience Streaming, Blu-Ray & External File Playback,
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.
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, Napster 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).
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: *** Hulu-Plus just appeared on the premium services (network access) menu, as of the July 30th software update! I can’t vouch for the quality, because I am not a member. But the demo videos seem to play just fine …
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|A Couple Steps Up From the BD390, But Not Perfect. (Yet),
I bought this player a month ago and wanted to wait and get some ample use time with it before I left a review. The LG BD670 is my second standalone blu-ray player, where my first was the LG BD390 (2009 model). (It also really says something when in 2009 I paid $330 for the BD390, yet only 2 years later pay only $154 for the BD670.) I decided to go with LG again because of my experience with past performance and they give all the features I want. As with most blu-ray players like this one firmware updates are a must, so as soon as I got the player connected to my network (wireless) I got it updated to the latest firmware. So far I am pretty impressed with most, but not all aspects of this player. There are 3 main viewing methods I use to watch videos with this player: discs (30%), USB (30%) and streaming/wireless (40%). I’ll give detailed reviews of these since they’re what I use.
* DISCS: With both the ability to stream AND watch video files via the USB port (as with the 390) I don’t watch as many discs as I use to. There are now of course 2 types of video discs, DVD and blu-ray. What some people don’t understand is that DVD and blu-ray are 2 completely different formats, each with there own disc format. The only thing that they have in common (besides playing A/V streams) is that they both have the same SIZE disc.
– Blu-rays: ** See UPDATES @ the end of my review about this! ** When I first watched a blu-ray on my BD390 paired with my (then new) Vizio 42″ 1080p 120Hz HDTV I definitely saw the improvement over DVD with a much sharper, clearer picture with much more detail. In fact it sometimes sucks to have that much detail for some of the older/low budget movies that I have on blu-ray because it allows you to see just how bad some of the special effects were (wires, etc.)! I thought the picture couldn’t get any better on my Vizio because I thought that what the BD390 was giving it was as good as what the TV could produce. Well, when I watched some of my blu-rays on the same TV with the BD670…it turned out I was wrong! This player gives noticeable improvement when it comes to playing blu-rays when compared to the BD390. The picture IS actually even sharper/clearer and the colors are more vibrant; not in any grand, vast improvement kind of way, but it is noticeable. I’ve played about a dozen or so blu-rays on it thus far, but it’s been able to play them all without any problems whatsoever…say for one title (so far). “Daybreakers”. I know this title plays just fine because the disc would play in the 390. When I put this disc in to play in the 670, it starts to load up the main menu with its movie icon/progress bar, but then stops about 3/4 of the way through. However the sound will continue to play for the trailers with just a small patch of the video on the screen showing beside half of the logo. I “next track” all of the trailers to try and get to the menu (pressing the “disc menu” button only gives me the “circle cross” icon telling me it can’t do that), but once I’m past all the trailers and the menu is suppose to load up…nothing. It just sits there and doesn’t load up anything. I called LG to make them aware of this problem and the woman I talked to said she would pass along this info to their firmware dept. and look into fixing the problem. (Who knows how long that might take though?!) Hopefully this one title is a rarity, but it makes me wonder out of the over 100 titles on blu-ray I do own and have yet to play on this machine, how many of those might encounter this same kind of problem?
– DVD’s: ** See UPDATES @ the end of my review about this! ** Surprisingly, this unit DOES have a slight problem when it comes to playing DVD’s! You think the one thing they could get right for this player is to play DVD’s with no problems whatsoever, but sadly no. The audio/video plays fine, but every chapter change there is a half-second skip in the play (more for the audio than the video). It’s barely noticeable, but it IS noticeable. It’s not enough to really bother me, but I can understand other people being bothered by it. If it happened more often in the play, then it would probably get on my nerves more. This is a problem that LG is already aware of and says is working to fix in a future firmware update, but still I contacted them via email about this just to add my complaint to the list. Other than that there is no other problems I’ve experienced. The audio/video quality is great and every single DVD loads up and plays, even some region 0/PAL DVD’s I got from Australia.
* USB: This is the main reason I bought and have stuck with the LG model blu-ray players. I have plenty of USB flash drives, not to mention external HD’s where I have all my media files backed up on, other things I download from various sources. I just transfer them to a flash drive and plug it into the port and start watching. This…
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|good support samba linux mediatomb netflix amazon vod pandora,
Upsides: Pandora works nicely. Some other nice internet radio options.
Netflix interface decent.
The best thing here is the SAMBA, CIFs or Windows file sharing (Whatever you call it) is nice. Works fine with Linux, works fine with MediaTomb upnp server. Couldn’t find right transcoding options, but didn’t need it… good with mp4′s ripped h.264 and does mp3. plays flip video files natively no problem. Pause, rewind, fast forward over streaming (cifs or upnp).
LCD display shows timecode when playing streams from samba or upnp.
Bought device to have single device for netflix and home media serving.
Plays mp3′s nicely.
Better than ROKU for me since it does SAMBA and UPNP for home streaming, wasn’t clear if Roku did that.
Wi-FI, wired.
Oh, and it plays BD’s too, I tested one, but not my primary reason for purchase.
Unit stays cool, is nice and small and does what I need.
Downsides: no screensaver in pandora, fearing burn-in.
Menus kind of laggy.
No progress meter when updating firmware. LCD indicates updating but should have separate downloading and applying progress when installing firmware. Have seen samsung do this better with progress meter.
I’d like to add a special item here. LG you did this correctly — you have a sticker for support on the device. Wow. I love you. I called, human answers. No hold time. Sat, Sun, no problem. I had an issue with firmware 268.E within 3 days there was a new 270-something to correct. 268.E added Amazon VOD for me and the other nifty items. Support was very friendly, apologized and was pleasant to work with. I’ve never owned home electronics where they actually had a support line with humans. And the humans called you back with updates on your problem!
First LG device I own… mad props for the useful human support!
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|Easy setup, great image, good value,
I was told by a friend that this unit was great but I could not find many reviews at amazon and actually it had only one review and was negative. I went to my local video store and they had the unit for a good price plus a 30 days money back guarantee so I gave it a try. Setup took me less than 10 minutes in total, from the moment I opened the box to the moment I was streaming a Netflix movie.
I have a wireless network created with an Apple Airport Express router. I connected the LG unit to the TV with an HDMI cable (not included). Connected the unit to the AC power and connected the included USB wireless adaptor. When I turned the unit ON, the HOME screen was easy to understand, went to SETUP and clicked on NETWORK. My home network was listed, entered my password and in 30 seconds it was connected. I went to HOME, clicked on the ONLINE icon and then clicked on Netflix icon. The unit connected, gave me a Netflix code that I entered in my account using my computer and in less than 1 minute I was connected and browsing titles.
Picture quality very good. Overall very satisfied. DVD quality as well as Blu-Ray quality is very good and similar to higher end units that retail for 2x more.
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|Great player!,
This product works as well as the package directions and reviews indicated. Super easy set up for a novice like me. Nice slim design makes it unobtrusive and the small footprint is appreciated amidst all the other devices (satellite, DVD/VCR, sound bar.)
The wireless LG dongle works flawlessly with great speed connected to our wireless router. Must say, though, that the wireless router is in the same room. Incredibly clear and crisp video through Netflix for movies made in 1969 & the 1970′s. Haven’t tried a blu-ray DVD yet (need to bring them back from being on loan.)
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|Flawless,
I have read a few reviews saying this player is only good for Blu-Ray movies; NOT TRUE. It connects to effortlessly to my network. Watched 7 movies straight streaming perfectly.
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