Sony HES-V1000 Owners Review

[eddiscus]

HES-V1000 Review Owner Review

Not having seen a review from any other owners, if there are any. I have decided to post what my experience and findings so far have been.

I have not had a chance to test every function of the HES-V1000 but for those of those interested here goes.

After finally having the dust settle between HD-DVD and Blu Ray I decided to purchase the HES-V1000.
Why the HES-V1000? Mainly I was interested in the Disk changer capability and also hoped that it would offer some firmware upgradability to prevent obsolescence for several months. By the time I get this 3/4 full there may be a clear path as to what is available for HD movie down load and servers (that are affordable).
Let me get this out of the way up front. If you are looking for 1080P 24 video, Dolby True HD and DTS MA HD audio out of the HDMI port you can currently forget about it.
If so you can stop reading at this point.

Video
The HES-V1000 converts 1080P 24 content and outputs it as 1080P 60. The Sony tech guy’s say it outputs 1080P 24 but connected to my Pio 150 FD I had no indication it was receiving a 1080P 24. I have not run any torture tests on it but several of the movies I have watched were perfect. I did not see any issues with the conversion. I would have liked the option to switch between 1080P 24 and 1080P 60 output to judge which was a better match for my system.

Audio
The same goes for the audio. The HES-V1000 takes the Dolby true HD audio and outputs it as Dolby Digital and takes the DTS MA HD audio and outputs it as DTS. The audio tracks sounded significantly better than any DVD audio track I have ever heard. So maybe I am being overly concerned but I would still like the option of sending my receiver the raw data stream on the Blu Ray disk. PCM multi channel audio seems to be output direct and handled correctly.

Boot times:
From a server that is off to the time it displays the user interface on screen is 60 seconds plus or minus 5 seconds.

From a server that is on to the time it plays a disk that is already in the drive 30 seconds or more depending on the disk content. For example “30 Days of Night” when you press play you get a loading scroll bar for 20 seconds. After that the screen will start to draw a blood splat 1/6 of a section at a time. This takes about 30 seconds. Then the screen goes black and about 10 seconds after that the movie starts. This is the high definition disk experience I waited for ???????? Not every disk I have been through has this excruciating load time many are much better.

Add an additional 45 seconds to one minute if you select a disk that is not in the drive but has to be loaded from one of the 200 slots. I will say the changer mechanism is theater quiet. It is audible but it makes the loading sequence of the changer that comes with the sony VGX-XL series of home theater PC’s sound like Dewalt electric Palm sander. I was impressed with how quiet the HES-V1000 is in general.

Disk Loading:
Loading a disk is straight forward, you touch a square located on the lower right of the front upper glass panel and the panel moves out about a quarter of an inch. It them moves up enough to reveal a drive bay and the tray slides out to accept the disk. You then have the option if you have more than one disk to load. You press an actual button to cause the drive tray to retract. After the loading indicator goes out you can press the same button to cause the tray to extend and load another disk or else you can press the touch square and cause the panel to close. Cover art and movie info is loaded from the AMG website. So far I have 2 disks that failed to find the info from AMG. One is “No Reservations” the other is the 3rd disk from the Spiderman 3 disk set. I checked the AMG website and info for both disks are there but the server cannot seem to find them.

That covers the raw basic specs of the BD player portion.
Now to mention some of the extra features that I have used. Of the features I have not covered they are explained clearly in the operators manual.

Download of Photo’s:
You can down load photo’s from your camera’s memory card/ stick. Just press the upper right corner of the class panel and the same ominous motion of the panel opening up takes place only this time it moves down revealing the media card slots. The card slot identifiers also light up on the top panel. Loading of pictures if straight forward and worked fine with a compact flash card from my Canon DSLR. I will say load times are slightly slower than loading them on a PC using Photoshop Elements. Photos are put in a folder based on current download and this folder can be renamed.

Download of HD Video:
The HES-V1000 recognized my HD video camera right away and allowed me to import my videos without a problem. Again videos are installed in a folder as well and chapters seem to be created automatically based on the start and stop flags on the camera footage. Chapter points can be edited when initial down load is started or created after video is on the HDD.
Video played back crystal clear, welcome to the world of HD.

I have not tried the editing of video, the creation of a picture show or the importing of a music collection.

Overall impression:

The Good
This unit is built like a battleship. Yes it does weigh 105lbs, I don’t know if they have a lead plate in the bottom to keep it from tipping or what.
As mentioned above. It is quiet, I was actually surprised by how quiet.
It does look high tech for a tall rectangle. Motorized access door, touch zone buttons below the surface of the glass add to the cool factor.
High quality picture output.
Very detailed audio soundfield.

The Bad:
As mentioned in the beginning lack of Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA audio pass through. As well as the lack of 180P 24 video output.
Ultra glossy black exterior will show fingerprints from the little ones, you will be polishing it till the end of time.


HES-V1000 in all its glory




HES-V1000 powered off (no the LCD display is not that bright). It can also be turned off in the settings menu.



Top of HES, power button lower left. Full functionality is also on the remote.



Video Input connectors. This is normally flush with the back of the unit. Presson it and it pops out as shown. Press it back in and it locks in place. As you can see it supports I-Link, s-video and composit video.




What you get to look at while the unit boots up.



Control options that appear when the control button on the lower right is touched.



Card slot indicators that light when memory card button is touched and access to the memory slots allowed.





BD/DVD/CD loading Slot.



Clicking on the BD/DVD option brings up the titles of loaded movies.



Manuals and marketing info.
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/mod...l?mdl=HESV1000

[Donnie Eldridge]

Thanks for the review.

[COVERkreator]

only works with JPEG right? no raw?

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by COVERkreator

only works with JPEG right? no raw?

Correct JPEG that conform to the DCF image file format. Images edited by a pc may not display as well as images larger than 10 MB. JPG files whose size is 4097 x6145 dots or more.

[Tim Glover]

Nice review. Thanks for the effort you put in it. Kind of cool eventhough it's lacking somewhat in it's audio....

[Gino AUS]

Are there any plans to support bitstreaming HD audio in firmware update or would this likely be in the future model?

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by Gino AUS

Are there any plans to support bitstreaming HD audio in firmware update or would this likely be in the future model?

This is direct from their marketing spec sheet:
Audio
dts® Output: Yes
MP3 Playback: Yes (Content must be in
DVD+R/+RW/-R/-RW format.)
Dolby® Digital: Decoding: Yes; HDMI™
bitstream out: Yes
dts® Decoding: Yes; HDMI bitstream out:
Yes

My receiver is capable of handeling the 2 HD audio formats direct. My receiver never showed the HD flag. It is not clear how they send it out on the HDMI cable but according to their marketing specs I would say it is probably uncompressed DTS and Dolby digital.
In real world listening there is a very noticable increase in audio quality compared to my regular DVD. Much better clarity, depth and seperation. So i don't think I am losing any info in their conversion.

They did confirm that they would NOT be adding direct pass through of the HD audio streams with any future firmware updates. Very disappointing. They would not elude to if this was a firmware limitation or hardware limitation.
But I had the feeling that engineering and marketing were butting heads when this was being developed.

[rudolpht]

Given the firewire input can you daisy chain the other Sony Firewire SD DVD changer?

Thanks for the review. I was this close to getting it but the audio is a bummer. There are utilities now that do combine audio streams into the HDMI output.

[rudolpht]

There also seems to be a PCM (BD-ROM) setting under the DTS output. Have you tried that to see if you get multi-channel HD sound?

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by rudolpht

Given the firewire input can you daisy chain the other Sony Firewire SD DVD changer?.

Have not tried it, but since the OS for the HES-V1000 seems to be a custom sony creation I doubt it would support the functionality of the VGP-XL1B 200 disk DVD changer.

Originally Posted by rudolpht

There also seems to be a PCM (BD-ROM) setting under the DTS output. Have you tried that to see if you get multi-channel HD sound?

I believe what you are refering to is the mention on page 114 under audio settings "PCM (BD-ROM) select this when connecting an audio device without a built in DTS decoder."
Yes I have tried and it shows up as PCM with the correct channels. But my receiver can decode DTS so if PCM uncompressed is not available on the disk I will chose DTS audio as the next choice over Dolby.

Of the disks I have there is one that has Dolby True HD which the receiver see as Dolby Digital with the same # of channels. The one with DTS MA HD audio is seen as DTS audio with the same # of channels. The one with PCM uncompressed is seen as PCM with the same # of channels.

All of the above mentioned audio streams on BD sound excellent compared to a standard DVD audio stream.

[rudolpht]

Originally Posted by eddiscus

Yes I have tried and it shows up as PCM with the correct channels. But my receiver can decode DTS so if PCM uncompressed is not available on the disk I will chose DTS audio as the next choice over Dolby.

The one with DTS MA HD audio is seen as DTS audio with the same # of channels. The one with PCM uncompressed is seen as PCM with the same # of channels.

Thank you for your review and answers.

If you can use PCM off the unit, you may be getting DTS HD or MA (likely the former) direct to the receiver, i.e., avoid the straight DTS output despite the fact that almost all receivers can use legacy DTS. My question is is you can get the high def via PCM even on non-PCM discs. (Not to be confused with discs encoded with PCM which will likely always superior to legacy Dolby & DTS).

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by rudolpht

Thank you for your review and answers.

If you can use PCM off the unit, you may be getting DTS HD or MA (likely the former) direct to the receiver, i.e., avoid the straight DTS output despite the fact that almost all receivers can use legacy DTS. My question is is you can get the high def via PCM even on non-PCM discs. (Not to be confused with discs encoded with PCM which will likely always superior to legacy Dolby & DTS).

I tried 2 disks one with a DTS HD MS audio track. If i have the HES-V100 audio setting for DTS set for PCM (BD-ROM) it only outputs 2 channel PCM stereo.
The other Disk had Dolby true HD and if the audio setting was set for Down Mix PCM that was also 2 channel stereo
So selecting Dolby Digital and DTS where applicible outputs DD or DTS when fed an DD True HD or DTS HD MA audio track.
What the hell was Sony thinking
Even though it is only sent as DD or DTS it is still superior to a DD or DTS track from a SD DVD.

[rudolpht]

Thanks for the test. Appreciated.

[CanadaPhil]

Thanks for that.

Info on this unit is very hard to come by to say the least.

I dont think this item is not going to get many takers at $ 3,500 and given Sony's track record related to all of their MCE products in the last 3 years, it will probably pull the plug on this item prematurely.

I have to admit that many moons ago I was a big Sony fan, but sadly, that all turned to disappointment. My only interest in Sony in the last few years has been in following their firewire Megachangers, but unfortunately, they have pulled the plug on those along with their 777 ES changers. Which I suppose in a way is a good thing since it has forced Escient to now go full force into the Hard Drive based media server arena which is where the future really lies.

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by CanadaPhil

Thanks for that.

Info on this unit is very hard to come by to say the least.

I dont think this item is not going to get many takers at $ 3,500 and given Sony's track record related to all of their MCE products in the last 3 years, it will probably pull the plug on this item prematurely.

I have to admit that many moons ago I was a big Sony fan, but sadly, that all turned to disappointment. My only interest in Sony in the last few years has been in following their firewire Megachangers, but unfortunately, they have pulled the plug on those along with their 777 ES changers. Which I suppose in a way is a good thing since it has forced Escient to now go full force into the Hard Drive based media server arena which is where the future really lies.

Ditto on the feelings about sony. I am now a pioneer fan. I did want a BD changer and Sony was the only game in town. The other functionality is also nice although nowhere as good as it could be.
Hopefully the studio's and content providers will get behind XStreamHD (http://www.xstreamhd.com/).

I think 200 slots should hold me over untill an affordable server based HD system is released.
Although sony didn't adhere to text book specs with the HES-V1000 the picture is excellent as well as the audio. I am not really interested in all the interactive java nonsense.

Just give me the highest quality video/audio experience current tech. can supply.

[COVERkreator]

How does this unit behave when playing back Tv series disc with the play all option that spans multiple disc? Weeds, Damages, etc.

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by COVERkreator

How does this unit behave when playing back Tv series disc with the play all option that spans multiple disc? Weeds, Damages, etc.

Sorry I do not have an answer as I do not have any TV series Disc's.
This is only an assumption: I would think it would be able to play all the shows on the disc that is in the drive but not be smart enough to load the next disc in the series.

[COVERkreator]

but can another disc be selected within changer and it will play back the next episode without the menu.

on single disc players it tell you to insert another disc, so you eject the old one and insert the next, it will play the next episode without menu loading of that disc.

[sddjd]

Eddiscus, have you had any luck in finding detail on the recent firmware update that was made available for our v1000’s? As expected, Sony Esupport has no info, not even acknowledging its existence. I was (and, foolishly, still am ) hopeful about added capability since it appeared almost in sync with the ps3’s profile 2.0 firmware update.

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by sddjd

Eddiscus, have you had any luck in finding detail on the recent firmware update that was made available for our v1000’s? As expected, Sony Esupport has no info, not even acknowledging its existence. I was (and, foolishly, still am ) hopeful about added capability since it appeared almost in sync with the ps3’s profile 2.0 firmware update.

As far as I can tell the firmware did not add any functionality. I have not been in recent contact with the HES support line. The last response fron them was just confirmation that they would not be adding Dolby true HD or DTS MA to this unit. They also insist it would out put 1080P 24 if the content supported it but my Pio receiver tells me otherwise. Have yet to confirm support of Deep Color as I have not found a movie release utilizing it.

Kind of disappointed in sony as this seemed to be a flagship product with potential firmware upgrade capability.
That the HD audio direct output and 1080P 24 could not be enabled is sad.

Still all in all it renders a perfect picture and the audio is better than SD DVD. Maybe someday I will add a PIO dedicated Blu Ray player and report back if there is any difference.

[eddiscus]

My financial committee (wife) was nice enough to fuel my HT obsession by buying me the Die hard collection in blu ray.
I went to play the 4th disk Live free or die hard and was quite frustrated as it would stall at the FBI anti copy warning. I decided to see if there was a firmware update for the HES-V1000, sure enough there was.

So after 45 minutes of download and update I gave it another try. Still no success. So now time to google, it seems this is an issue with some samsung players as well. Some report the firmware worked others have not.

So after sending an E-mail to 20th Century Fox telling them about the issue and my dissatisfaction i decided to try to see if the added content on the disk would play.

When I was at the setup screen for the movie I decided to enter the scene's section. I clicked on scenes 1-4, the movie started playing and continued to the end.

Do not know why the this disk acts this way but will be calling Sony on Monday morning to complain as well even though it is not their fault.

FYI: other than some hidden background updates the latest firmware update adds the Back Up to disk option. I have not tried it out so it is anyones guess as to how it would work. It would be nice if they would allow backup to a NAS storage device.

[eddiscus]

Just a follow up I did not get a response from 20th Century Fox via E-Mail. A call to them only lead to the response that I can exchange it from the place of purchase or send just disk 4 to them which would take 6-8 Weeks.

Spoke to sony and the update that I currently have is 1.04.052 is the latest for the HES-V1000 currently. He did add that other than the obvious addition of the backup to disk. The update also adds enhancments to bluray Java as well as improved interoperability to the GUI. He could not tell me if the update brought the standard up to 2.0 ir is it still at 1.0 or 1.1.

He did say that he would forward the play bug with "Live Free or Die Hard" to engineering so they were aware of it. He mentioned that the studio's add functionality to the disks without notice and it takes them a while to catch up (for what it is worth).

Other than that "Live Free or Die Hard " definatly gave the audio system a work out.

[eddiscus]

HT Mag's Review of the HES-V1000

[SRTpusher]

thanks for the updates... getting close to pulling the trigger, but the lack of 1080p 24 is a bit troubling as for $2500 it should have basic features of the PS3. I just can't click "buy it now" knowing that it isn't the "be all end all" at the price. heck, i can get a computer several large hard drives, an HD-DVD / blu-ray combo drive, and then rip the blu ray to the hdd for much less.

i think i have a new project to undertake.

[CINERAMAX]

This changer is incompatible with d-box. It must be improving the sonics of the dd and dts and it will not synch.

Any one looking for a bargain on this great audio, video source component. PM me.

[eddiscus]

Another sony original.
I recently edited and burned a BluRay disk using Adobe Premier elements to a Buffalo BluRay burner from a PC. The disk plays fine on the PC that created it but does not play on the HES-V1000.

Here is the real kicker I tried it on a freinds PS3 and it played fine. I also tried it at a local electronics store and it worked on a Panasonic BluRay player as well an early release Sony standalone BluRay player with original firmware.

Leave it to sony to create what should be a flagship product and turn it into a lump.

[lllppi]

Great reviews. I can buy a new one for $1050.00 delivered with a one year warranty. Would you buy it based on all that you've experienced to date?

Thanks!

[CINERAMAX]

Absolutely, it's the only game in town.

[CINERAMAX]

First Wall-E got freeze framed and stuck, I ejected and cleaned it, when it went back in it disappeared from the Gui. Where is it? How do I get it back?

[eddiscus]

Originally Posted by CINERAMAX

First Wall-E got freeze framed and stuck, I ejected and cleaned it, when it went back in it disappeared from the Gui. Where is it? How do I get it back?

Do you have any disks listed with no title. Check in the others folder and personal video folder. I have had some un recognized disks go to these folders instead of staying in the BD folder.

Other than that do you have a screwdriver