 "It plays" | 2010-01-07 |
| - Reviewed By Disillusioned Smark from Phenomynouss@hotmail.com is my real e-mail |
When I bought this, it was the most recent one available.
So it does what it's supposed to, it plays Blu Ray discs and DVDs and upscales them. It also lets you change the output video quality to 720p or 1080i or 1080p etcetera. This is very helpful as the TV I use can technically support 1080p, but its native resolution is 720p. As a result, playing Blu Rays on 1080p tends to have the picture suffer some scratching or tearing things which are very unremarkable and the average viewer would never be able to notice.
So that's it, really. What drags this down a star is its problems and little "quirks".
The load speed. Maybe its how all Blu Ray players are these days, but the speed is atrociously slow. I wouldn't have any frame of reference though, as this is my first Blu Ray player. I would not be surprised if older players were even slower than this. Or maybe it just has to do with the size of the disc being inserted---example, inserting a disc of Star Trek the Original Series tends to take up to 30 seconds to load, but never any longer. To distract us, though, it shows us a tiny little wireframe Enterprise shooting phasers!
One of the biggest gripes I have, though, is its autoload. I have some ideas as to how this work, but here is the summary: It works sometimes. When I open up the Blu Ray after first turning it on, load in a new disc, close it, it will load... if the TV is not on, or if it's turned on to normal TV.
If I unload a disc and load in a new one while on the Blu Ray menu, it will NOT auto-load, and instead I need to select BD-ROM and press Ok in orderfor it to load. This gets troublesome.
One odd quirk which I don't think is very serious, nor that many people would take note of, is a tendency, during a Blu Ray movie, out of literally nowhere, for the movie to pause. Not freeze, not stop, but pause, as in, the movie pauses and there's the II symbol for pause on-screen. This is easily corrected by pressing the "Play" button. This has happened to me quite frequently, but not nearly enough to be of significant nuisance.
Another big huge problem which is easily resolved is the volume. For some odd reason, every Blu Ray played on this player is inherently low on volume. For reference, on my HTS, during normal TV, a volume of 10 would be very low, a volume of 16-18 is averagely loud. A volume of 25 is very loud. With my DVD player on, 16-18 is loud, and 25 is extremely loud.
By contrast, 16-18 is virtually inaudible on the Blu Ray player. A volume of 25 is of decent sound, and 21 is soft. 30 is around the reasonable volume for a cinematic experience with loud sounds. I will personally beat over the head anyone who watches a movie with me at this volume, then after its done, changes back to the television without lowering the volume.
The menu is quite good, not only easy but almost fun to navigate, as I feel like I might find some as of yet unexplored options to make for a different or more unique movie experience. Downloads happen fast and quick and efficient.
It plays. That's pretty much what it should do and it does it. I have no regrets and I would buy it again if it broke. |
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 "Stopped working after 11 months" | 2009-11-27 |
| - Reviewed By M. Kelly from MA United States |
| System worked fine for 10 months. Then it stopped recognizing blu-ray discs, even discs from our collection that it had played on numerous occasions before. SONY support says it isn't an uncommon problem and it needs to be sent to Texas for repair. Even though it is still under warranty, the cost of shipping makes it hardly worth it. I expect more than 10 months of use from a $350 product. |
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 "bad player, worse service" | 2009-10-13 |
| - Reviewed By S. Johnson from New York, NY |
| I ordered this blu-ray player from Amazon in March 2009. It stopped playing discs in August 2009. I contacted Sony service and was told that the unit was still covered by warranty and I should ship it to their Pennsylvania facility for repair at no cost (except for shipping charges, of course). I shipped the unit via FedEx and insured it for $200. Some time later I received an email from Sony saying that the unit had been damaged during shipping, and that I should put in a claim with FedEx for $104, to cover the cost of the shipping damage. FedEx promptly paid the claim. But then I was told by Sony that the unit would need to be shipped to their Texas repair facility, since they'd stopped doing repairs at their PA facility. A few weeks later (total time since I shipped the unit to Sony was now more than a month) I received a message from Sony's TX facility, saying that I needed to send them $329 to have the unit repaired. Why not $104? Because, they said, when there is physical damage to the unit, the warranty is voided. In other words, according to them, by shipping the unit to Sony as instructed and then having it damaged during shipping, I'd voided the warranty. Lesson learned: never buy another Sony product. I bought a Panasonic blu-ray player to replace the Sony, and couldn't be happier. |
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 "Very nice units" | 2009-09-30 |
| - Reviewed By Edward A. Jones |
| The bluray player i order was out of stock and they replace it with a better bluray player great service. |
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| "Over rated technology" | 2009-09-21 |
| - Reviewed By An Amazon User |
| If you are expecting high def imaging on Blu-ray disks equal to HDTV you won't get it with this unit. However, since movies will eventually only be available in this format, consumers will eventually be forced to go with it. As for now, the Sony BDP-S550 is not worth the money if you already have a high quality DVD player and are satisfied with the DVD movie offerings available to you. |
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| "-S350 / -S550 Owner Review" | 2009-09-20 |
| - Reviewed By C. Thiele from BC, Canada |
Just a quick review here, I have set up many Blu-ray players for friends, and these are my favorites. They work great, are full featured and have excellent remotes. Firmware updates are also very easy to apply. Unless you really want the backlit remote (not important if you use Harmony remotes like I do) or need the analog outputs you might as well save a bit and buy the BDP-S350. It's also smaller and a bit more sleek looking. Either choice is excellent, just don't overbuy if you don't need to. Firmware support and the interfaces are essentially identical.
Samsung are a common alternative, but they seem to have a less appealing visual interface, more firmware issues (and the process is not as simple) and my biggest beef is that they have an unrefined, noisy mechanism and sluggish responding remote. Either of those final characteristics are either unacceptable or too frustrating to endure in my books. |
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