The Official Sony BDP-S350 Owners Thread - Page 5

And now back to the topic of the thread... the BDP-S350!

jlangner - Did you ever get the bitstreaming working properly? Was it just a setup issue in your receiver? This would be a deal breaker for many if the bitstreaming didn't work correctly with a newer receiver.

Does anyone have additional pictures, maybe of the back panel? I assume it really is just 2.0 analog, but do we have confirmation that it isn't 5.1 like was originally thought?

I tried to order one of these on sonystyle.com. They seem to still be trying to learn how the Internet works. The web page says estimated shipment 7/8 so I ordered and the order status says 7/19. To add insult to injury, they made me create an account to place the order and then they emailed me the cleartext password that I used. They I login to get rid of that password and they're enforcing rules on the length of the new password. They seem to be aware of this thing called security but not actually know anything about it.

Is Japan really that far away that they have no clue about Internet commerce? Is this level of BS on ship dates normal for sonystyle?

Mine also had an estimated ship date of 7/19 then I received an email saying shipped with tracking info. Sadly though fed ex cannot find where it is at for the moment. I do plan to do a good A/B comparison with the PS3. I will hook them both up at the same time and see how they compare pic Q wise... I even have a couple of duplicate Blu ray titles ready... Just hope it gets here soon...

David,

I tested for you. Power up to the initial menu takes 20 seconds, then another 10 to load the disk and give you the option of accessing "BD-ROM". Once I selected BD-ROM, it took about 30 seconds to start playing Spider-Man 3 .

I was skeptical about the start time myself. I hate waiting for my PC to boot up, for example. But this being my first Blu-Ray player, it didn't seem too bad to me.

My tracking info said the exact same thing - July 19 estimated ship date, but it was on my doorstep today. I ordered it on Sunday on the SonyStyle site.

I doubt it has anything to do with Sony's site in Japan, unless you are using this website http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/
More than likely the SS site is located somewhere in US of A.

Doesn't "good BD player" include proper, full resolution & artifact-free deinterlacing of 1080i considering how many Blu-ray discs are authored in 1080i and the fact that you can't author 30fps (HD video) discs in anything but 1080i using the Blu-ray format? I don't know of any BD players under $500 that do this properly as it can be difficult, so not even having the option to output 1080i by default for discs encoded in 1080i to your TV/scaler which likely does a much better job at deinterlacing 1080i than this player does (based on its reported video chipset) is a major flaw for a BD player IMO. Also, having one player that does both DVD and Blu-ray properly is less sloppy both in look and functionality IMO.

I did not know many Blu ray discs are authored in 1080i. I sort of am thinking that I made an error in pre-ordering the s350. Instead, maybe I should just get an Oppo 983H DVD player since all my movies are DVD. I don't think my DVD's will look all that great on the s350. Not sure about getting into HD content now...

Hey guys..

Avid reader, first time poster. I already own a PS3 and just recently bought the BDP-S300. Should I stick with the S300 or buy the new S350?

Has anyone compared the 2 yet?

Joerod,

Can you also compare the 350 to the Panasonic BD30 for PQ? I know you didn't find the same result, but I found the BD30 to be slightly better at 1080p/24 than the PS3 on my 60" A3000 SXRD.

Please forgive me for mentioning this, but isn't this supposed to be the owner's thread? The thread for complaining about not having received it yet is: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...000180&page=25

BTW, the Sony Style web page will say 7/19 as the estimated ship date - but the unit should ship immediately anyway.

Yep, I was assuming that the relationship between Sony/Pioneer was continuing back then.

But after your comment and more closely examining the release timing of the new Pioneer players combined with the featureset of the S350/S550 it looked very unlikely that they would be made by Pioneer. I have been assuming for a couple of months that the Sony players would not have direct out, which is why I preordered the BDP-51FD back in June. Now we know for sure, though.

I will compare the BD30. I am a little upset at the moment since my expected deliver time has been moved from today to the 12th! I may just refuse it when it gets here. I want to know how I ended up getting "free" overnite or 2 day to 5 day standard? The 12th is on a Saturday. Will they really deliver it then?

What are the output options for both BR and SD DVD over component?

Thanks,

I'm a little confused about the 1080i direct source thing. I have an ancient 1080i CRT RPTV that I was using with the Samsung 1500 before I returned the 1500. The 1500 had resolution options of 480p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p. I of course chose 1080i to match my TV's native resolution. Are you guys saying the BD-S350 does not output 1080i resolution? Sorry for the dumb question.

Boooooooooooring!!!!!

Don't see many owners answering questions and/or reporting.

Thanks for the response. Good to hear that it is working properly.

exactly! All I want to know is the power up time and load time for ratatouille. Funny that nobody seems to know the answer to that.

Sorry David, I would gladly time it for you if I had my unit...

No the BDP-S350 would be fine in your case.

What I and some others are talking about with "source direct" is if you have a high end display setup that is capable of 1080p & 1080p24 + external video processor or video processor builtin to a receiver like the Reons in high end onkyos.

In order to obtain maximum video quality with both Blu-ray and DVD, many are looking for the player to do this:

With the understanding that the only valid Full HD resolutions that you can encode Blu-ray in are 1080p24 and 1080i60...

1) For Blu-ray 24fps films encoded in 1080p24 (most films), pass 1080p24 directly to the HDTV
2) For Blu-ray 24fps films encoded in 1080i60 (rare), send 1080i60 to a high end video processing chip (either in TV, receiver, or external box) for proper deinterlacing
3) For Blu-ray 30fps concerts/documentaries encoded in 1080i60, send 1080i60 to a high end video processing chip (either in TV, receiver, or external box) for proper deinterlacing
4) For all DVDs, send 480i60 to a high end video processing chip (either in TV, receiver, or external box) for proper upscaling & deinterlacing

That would be optimal use of source direct for maximum quality of both Blu-ray and DVD using chips builtin to some receivers/processors such as Reon & Realta or devices such as the VP50, Lumagen, etc. This is the default behavior of Source Direct, and there is no need to juggle resolution settings in the setup menu with it.

Now, in contrast, what the Sony BDP-S350 does is only allow you to pick one output resolution. If you pick 1080p, then 1080i discs will be deinterlaced in the player to 1080p. If you pick 1080i, then 1080p discs will be processed internally to 1080i. The problem is that the video processing chip performing these operations in most players under $1000 are nowhere near as good as chips such as Reon/Realta. For instance, the Panasonic BD30 (which the S350 may be based on) bobs 1080i content to 1080p, losing lots of resolution in the process. And most people don't want to be messing with output resolution in the setup menu every other movie they watch.

And thus, in summary, people want to automatically bypass the player's internal video processing to use their own superior video processing solution for the large amount of interlaced content on Blu-ray, as well as for DVD. That is the purpose of source direct.

If you don't have a scaler, don't plan to buy a nextgen receiver like the Onkyo 875 which features Reon deinterlacing/upscaling, and your TV's deinterlacing is no prize, then source direct isn't going to help you. However if you upgrade your receiver or TV in the future, you may be sorry that the player lacks this feature. Then again, the cheapest 3rd gen player with Source Direct is the BDP-51FD ($599), so if that is out of your pricerange you may want to forget it and just go with the S350 anyway.

The power up time to the "initial menu" was reported to be 20 seconds by VenDiaJ.

Ruined,

Thanks for explaining the details of Source Direct! Now I can make a much more informed decision.

If only the folks in the Speakers forum can be this helpful as I search for a quality 5.1 speaker system.....

Thank you! It's one of the most important feature me!

Also thank to you too, Joerod for remembering my request

I have a Pioneer Elite 94 receiver. It doesnt have this Reon or Realta upscaler. Should I care about source direct? I am not sure how good the upscaler is on the Elite 94.

What is your model of HDTV?