insignia brand bluray with wifi- good or bad?

TOOL460002 · #1 01-08-2010, 08:27 PM

tried to search but had connection issues, so sorry if this has been discussed before...

anyway, a couple of hours ago i swung by best buy (had a couple gift certificates) and picked up an insignia brand bluray player with wifi for a pretty reasonable price. apparently insignia is best buys own brand, and i got an extended warranty (big fan of those... have gotten four free ipods because of that), so im thinking if it keeps breaking, im in the clear... kinda... because if it keeps breaking then i bought a piece of crap.

so, the big question is this: anyone owned an insignia product for any period of time? any thoughts on it? oh, and the only thing at all i want the wifi for is streaming netflix, so thats something to consider (netflix works on insignia, and the bulk of what i would watch would play off of a flash drive, so i dont really need other services).

my other option is to get a dedicated bluray player with no wifi from either samsung or sony (i trust both brands), and then get an ethernet/usb wifi access point to connect to my tv (samsung ln46b650). that will of course cost more (and id go linksys or netgear on that, as i trust those two as well).

whats the best way to go? i can still return the one i just bought, so any advice would be much appreciated. thanks in advance for any help or insight you can provide.

DigMe · #2 01-08-2010, 10:37 PM

My buddy has really enjoyed the wifi aspect of his LG Blu Ray player. He rents HD movies through Vudu I believe and it works well. I would just google tht model and see what you come up with review wise. I would be a bit leery of that brand just because of unfamiliarity.

bc

LaklandBass · #3 01-08-2010, 10:40 PM

For the minimal savings id go with sony or panasonic instead of a housebrand.
For a good bluray overall??? PS3... super quick and does so much.

Absentia · #4 01-09-2010, 06:51 AM

wait till next christmas to get a blueray player they will be under 100$, and buy an Xbox for netflix.
Igsignia is okay I had one of their VCRs.

JimB52 · #5 01-09-2010, 06:56 AM

My wife bought a Roku for streaming Netflix. $100 and it works great.

KeiBau · #6 01-09-2010, 07:47 AM

I always try to find customer reviews for any products I might want to purchase. I weigh them more heavily than a professional review. Professional reviews comment more heavily on features, but customers report more on how a product performs in the real world. Here are links to the Best Buy website that should take you to two models of Insignia Blue Ray Players. Just click on the customer reviews tab.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insignia...&skuId=9386112

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insignia...&skuId=9386103

Keep in mind that there will always be an occasional lemon with about any product and, of course, there will be people that are disgruntled with about anything and will submit bad reviews. Look for repeats of the same comments, good or bad, to get make an opinion for yourself. As of this posting, there were 113 separate reviews to read on one of the models and 268 on the other.

kissmybASS01 · #7 01-09-2010, 08:10 AM

I'm pretty sure that although Insignia is Best Buy's "house brand, it's made by Samsung. The Insignia LCD TVs offer fairly competitive features at a pretty good price. I think all "newer" electronics aren't really meant to last longer than a few years anyways....

DigMe · #8 01-09-2010, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Absentia

wait till next christmas to get a blueray player they will be under 100$, and buy an Xbox for netflix.
Igsignia is okay I had one of their VCRs.

Why wait when they are currently popping up for that price?

Just watch slickdeals.net daily and you'll see a name-brand pop up for $100 or around that. Just this morning a Panasonic Blu-Ray popped up for $99 but it's sold out now.

bc

Chunk-O-Funk · #9 01-09-2010, 10:00 AM

Looks decent enough to me.

Of course, it's a value product so the Bluray performance may not be up to par with the videophiles, but It has all the features like both Dolby HD and DTS MA. Not all BD players have DTS MA in that price range. Something that is commonly overlooked, but only important if you plan on hooking this up to an HT system and your receiver does not decode it either.

I have to admit the Insignia model looks very similar to my Samsung, which, so far has performed well.

Getting the Wifi with Netflix is the way to go. I have my computer hard wired to my HT system and have been enjoying the Netflix streaming ability for a while now. I no longer subscribe to any movie channels because of it.