Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Review On the face of it, Samsung's BD-D8900 seems to be the ideal convergence product that will allow you to get rid of the stack of boxes that hide under your TV. Not only does this deck act as a 3D-compatible Blu-ray player, but it also has an integrated twin tuner Freeview HD DVR, along with support for Samsung's Smart Hub internet platform. As well as all this, you can use it to play back a range of media formats, either locally from its USB port or across a network with a PC or Nas drive.

Samsung's BD-D8900: a convincing case for convergence?

The BD-D8900 is a good looking piece of kit, as it's not much larger than a standard Blu-ray player and is finished in a classy combination of black and chrome. The Blu-ray portion of the player uses a slot loading mechanism and there's a large 3D Blu-ray logo that glows at the top when a disc is loaded. If you don’t like this you can thankfully turn it off from the settings menu.

Behind a flip down panel at the front there's a CI slot that's handy if you want to access pay services such as Sky Sports over Freeview, and here you'll also find a USB port for digital media play back.

Around the rear there are two HDMI outputs, so you can send audio separately to AV receivers that don’t support HDMI V1.4, when you're watching 3D Blu-ray discs. There are also component and composite video connectors, as well as analogue stereo and optical digital audio outs. The player has an Ethernet port, but as there's Wi-Fi built-in you don’t actually have to run an Ethernet cable to the box to be able to use its networking features.

Essential ports on offer, Wi-Fi is built-in

The deck puts in a fine performance as a Blu-ray player. It's not the fastest player when it comes to loading titles – it took a minute and 16 seconds from putting the BD-live enabled X-Men Origins in the tray until it showed the Fox logo – but the controls are responsive and pictures over HDMI are crisp and clean.

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