Toward the bottom is a directional pad for navigating menus, surrounded by oft-used buttons-although having three menu keys (menu, disc menu, and pop-up menu) becomes a little confusing. Samsung fans will recognize the same remote control the company has packaged with most of its products for the last couple of years. We liked the stylish look, but be warned, the glossy finish is prone to collect fingerprints. When you turn the power on, the playback controls become apparent on the directional pad-play, stop, chapter forward/backward-and the LCD screen in the center becomes visible. The right side of the player is almost completely blank, except for a black directional pad that subtly blends in with the unit. The left side is the busiest, with the Samsung logo in the upper left-hand corner, a disc tray with an open/close button to the right, and the power button in the lower corner. From head-on, the player looks strikingly minimalist. Samsung seems addicted to glossy black designs and the BD-P2500 feeds the company's beast. That being said, there's no reason not to go for the extremely similar BD-P2550 if the two players cost the same, as the BD-P2550 adds Pandora streaming radio to the feature set as well. The Panasonic DMP-BD35, meanwhile, remains our basic Blu-ray favorite and the PlayStation 3 is a better value if you're into gaming, but the Samsung BD-P2500 is an solid choice for Blu-ray buyers looking for some additional media options. On the other hand, we're still a little skeptical given Samsung's troubling history when it comes to Blu-ray Disc compatibility. Sure, it has a robust set of Blu-ray features like HQV processing and 7.1 analog outputs, but it also adds additional functionality by way of Netflix's streaming movie service. The Samsung BD-P2500 addresses this criticism head-on. While we'd argue that the superior image quality can be worth it, we'd agree that many of the other features, such as BD-Live or animated, pop-up menus, don't offer a compelling reason to upgrade to Blu-ray. One of the main criticisms against Blu-ray is that the technology just doesn't offer much of an advantage over DVD.
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