Sony BDP-S360 and BDP-S560 Blu-ray players (and BDP-BX2) - Page 15

Post corrected. Thank you.

Got the BDP-360 from Best Buy today. I had been using a PS3, but the HDMI stopped working after a lightning strike, so this wuill be replacing it as the 1080p player. My initial thoughts...

-Set-up was a snap
-Seeking is awful. No sound at the 1x speed (which is obviously not 1x speed, not sure what Sony was thinking), it plays at like 2 frames-per-second when fast-forwarding or rewinding, and it takes about three seconds to resume play when you hit the button. I can already tell skipping to certain scenes or shots will be irritating. The PS3 has a much better seeking system. Probably because it has the guts to make something like that easy. But still.
-The HOME button is the worst thing I have ever seen on a remote. I was playing Die Hard with a Vengeance, and hit it out of curiosity...it was all over. Back to the main player menu, then you need to load the entire disc again and manually seek where you had left off. The button is gigantic, and I am probably going to accidentally hit it all the time. It's the stuff nightmares are made of.
-DVD upscaling seemed to be better than both the PS3 (which I never liked as an upscaler), and my Panny S-77S. Once I get my KDL-52v5100, I will have to do more in-depth comparison. Though, unless the BDP-S360 is the clear winner for picture quality, I will probably continue to use the Panasonic player, because even though it's only 1080i, it has all those useful features like the AV enhancer (jacking up sharpness allows you to get crisper upscaled images), variable play speeds, subtitle position control (something that should be STANDARD on BD players, IMO...get those subtitles all the way to the bottom of the screen!), a 'position memory' button (resume discs after taking them out and putting another in), etc.
-When you turn it off, the front panel displays the text: "See you". Which is just plain creepy.

I know it's not a top of the line player, but for 250 bucks I expected a little more. I kind of knew I wasn't going to get anything special, so I am not surprised. Just a tad disappointed. I wish there was an affordable player out there that can do today's tech justice. I mean, not being able to resume a disc once you've pressed 'stop', or gone to the player's menu...both PS3 (BD-Java titles, right?) and this seem to do it. Did early DVD players even do this? Position memory is such a simple concept, that probably only takes a few bytes of memory to store...why can't these super-advanced, several-hundred-dollar units handle such simple operations? Why can't these companies design these players to have adaptability like my 4-year-old Panasonic 1080i upscaling DVD player has? I expected such a bare-bones and feature-less player from somebody like Insignia, who has a 99-dollar BD player on the market right now. For over double the cost of that, shouldn't Sony at least add some features? Or are they just plain big enough to get away with laziness?

OK, I am swerving way off topic here, so I will end my rant. Looking forward to seeing how the player looks in 1080p on a 52-inch screen, though. 1080i on 34 inches is underwhelming, no matter what player you are using. Especially if it's on a crusty old CRT set that was never factory calibrated properly.

I think feature functionality is obvious, but quality is less so, so evaluating a high quality device by the features it offers or doesn't offer misses the mark. Focus on your comments that it is an excellent upconverter.

By the way, there are ways to stop a disc and return to where you left off. Don't use the Home button.

How? I tried, home button, stop button, power button.
Most of the discs do not resume. Only the relatively simple-menu discs know how to resume. I think they are non-java

I'll have to sit down with it and remember how I've done it. One thing I know works is hitting the OFF button on my Harmony remote. I don't remember what I have it programmed to do, when I do that, but I do know that when I turn the disc player back on, and select the disc, it picks up right from where it was, even in the middle of the scene.

I think your disc happens to be a non java disc.

Could be.

Is it possible that resuming on java-based discs will be available in a future firmware update, or is this something that is going to take all-new guts, IE: A whole different model of player sometime down the line?

Oh, yeah and another thing I forgot to say which was a tad troubling: I had the unit on for 20-30 minutes and it got HOT. Going to have to make sure to give it plenty of space and airflow when I hook it up permanently. Literally no room for it until I put a shelf next to my TV stand, though.

Another thing I liked was the display GUI telling you the resolution and frame-rate. This is information I really like to know, whether it's playing at 1080 or 480, 60i or 24p, etc.

I think that you can put a bookmark (I think it is the green button) and one of the other colored button let you navigate your bookmarks.

Regarding the poster a while back having problems with American Psycho. Playing with no problems on my 360. It's the Region A version.

Regarding bookmarks...none of the colored buttons are doing anything when I hit them watching American Psycho. The player's manual doesn't seem to mention anything about bookmarking. A pity.

OK, after going to the main menu to see if I had the latest firmware (I did), I was able to resume American Psycho. Must not be a BD-J disc?

One thing I am noticing...the deleted scenes of American Psycho, I think are 480i, but the player seems to be upscaling them. The PS3 didn't do that, and it always enraged me. It would display SD content from BD discs in 480p (despite upscaling normal DVDs...so watching features on a DVD looked better than watching the same features on the same movie's BD!), and stretch 4x3 stuff.

Well, the BDP-s360 is upscaling the SD content, but still not displaying it in the proper aspect ratio. Is there a way to fix this? Stretched-out 4x3 content irritates me.

OK, I changed the 'Screen Format' from 'Original' to 'Fixed Aspect Ratio', which put the SD content in it's correct aspect ratio. Kind of weird, you'd think 'Original' would maintain the correct AR and 'Fixed Aspect Ratio' would be the setting that stretches stuff out so old people wouldn't have top gripe about 'annoying black bars'.

I'm confused. So how does one ensure that the player (mine is the 560) always outputs bitstream to my receiver? So far, on Direct, my receiver has been showing DD TrueHD, but I haven't some across any DTS HDMA yet.

Also, what is secondary audio?

Direct is correct for bit streaming. If you receiver lights up dolby truehd then it is decoding the bitstream audio from your blu ray player.

Secondary audio is the PIP stuff for audio commentary that is simultaneous with the standard audio. This secondary audio can not be bitstreamed, you will have to let the blu ray player decode all the audio to hear the secondary audio.

Does anyone know if the BDP-S560 is capable of simultaneous output of HDMI and component signal?

I think it doese. In the set up screens I had to define my as Component out1080i output that was only avaiable on the componet setup screens but I only use the HDMI cable. If I configyred the S560 to use HDMI it forced 1080p only, there swas no option for 1080i.

Briefly compared my S-77S and the BDP-S360 as an upscaler. I think I will probably just use this BD player as an upscaler, it seems to do a better job.

I am surprised how great DVDs look on a 52" screen. I was pretty sure DVD vs BD would be clear-cut, but it's not.

I have the S360 and about 15 BDs, just got Starship Troopers via amazon and the disc freezes after the red loading progress bar finishes. Screen goes blank and stays that way.

Player has latest firmware as far as I can tell, has anyone else with this player tried this movie? With success? Should I return for another copy?

regarding my previous post, I saw something in the Starship Troopers thread about this issue, plugged a 2GB flash drive into the back of the player and now the disc works. ok fine, but why? sorry, I'm not fluent with why this disc requires what seems like extra RAM to play.

Probably doesn't have enough memory in it's internal cache to load all the temp java files for the menu system and stuff. I don't know why they can't put in like 2 or 4 GBs of internal memory into these supposed 'BD-Live Ready' players, though. It's not like memory is expensive. Though at the same time, a 4gb Sandisk Cruzer runs about 12 dollars, so it's not a huge deal to just install one yourself.

You can't force bitstream with this player. You must set the player to Direct. Then, the HDMI handshake with the AVR will determine whether the player bitstreams or decodes. You are clearly good to go for bitstreaming since your AVR reports receiving TrueHD. If your receiver has a dts-MA decoder, the player will bitstream those tracks, too.


Secondary audio is commentary and sounds such as menu clicks that are not part of the movie soundtrack. With Secondary Audio, two tracks get played - the movie track and a second track with the addtional audio. The player decodes the movie and runs the PCM from both tracks through a mixer to produce a single output. With the S560, use the Mix setting when you want to hear Secondary Audio.

is there a way to enter hour:minute to go right to an exact time frame?

it would be a good way to resume java movies..

I am looking at the 560. I am also looking at the Oppo 83 but it is twice as much. I use Blu Ray 99.9 % of the time. Do you guys like the 560. I see amazon has it for 275 to my door.

Is there any thing that must be done in the menu for the 360 to see a 2 or 4 GB thumb drive? Or will it automatically see them and use them? And after having plugged in one of these drives have you guys noticed any more freezing?

Considering a 360. Good pricing. 3 FREE BD's. It's either this or an Oppo.

There is a significant price difference between the 360 and the Oppo 83.
If you are considering them both, than how about a Pioneer BDP51fd? That's a great player too.

Does that Pioneer "freeze"? Do any of the Pioneers "freeze"? And I know about the price difference between the 360 and the Oppo. I'd buy the 360 as a cheap alternative. But if I plan to go "all out" I'll get the Oppo.

Yeah Mark, how about a Pioneer 51?

Inside joke. He's been through two Pioneer 51s without sucess.

I didn't have to do anything to set-up my Sandisk Cruzer as an external storage device. It auto-detected it and worked fine. Same with the network cable.

What freezing do you speak of? Haven't had any issues, but I think I did have a handshake issue while fast-forwarding once. Had to power cycle the unit and the TV, because I lost video for some reason.

By "freezing" I mean you would be watching a BD then suddenly the a/v would pause for maybe 5 seconds then resume. "Resembling" a layer change. Just longer. Happens on a lot of the Panasonic 60/80 BD players. I have a 60 in the shop. The player "jammed" when it was reading the FRM file from a disc Panasonic Canada gave me.

Did anyone manage to program in the "pop up menu" button in their harmony remote? I have the 880.

Thanks

"Pop Up Menu" is the same as the Menu command on the harmony.

hi guys, i was watching "Happy Feet" last night on my Panny 50X1 and i got black bars on top and bottom. i believe this is a 16x9 (2.4:1) movie, but how come i got the black bars? doesn't it suppose to fill the entire screen?

the only way to remove the bars is to zoom in on the tv, but that eat off the left and right pictures. is there a setting on the S360 to remove the bars?

thanks