Sony BDP-S360 and BDP-S560 Blu-ray players (and BDP-BX2) - Page 31

My USB drives are all FAT32 because I have a PS3 in my living room and it will not work with NTFS drives. It works fine with my USB drives in FAT32, yet the Insignia couldn't even figure out that there were any files. And yes, the Sony is very good as a basic player. I don't mind startup times but since it's in my bedroom I do want a quiet player. The Sony is very quiet, which is nice.

The thing about file playback is that I have a 600 square foot apartment so it's really no big deal for me to just go to the living room to use the PS3 and bigger TV. 46 inch TV in the living room, 37 inch TV in the bedroom. It is nice to now be able to play my Blu-rays in the bedroom though.

Just one question for audio drc, i have it set to wide range, i assume this is the best option? I dont know what drc does or is refering to but can anyone confirm if drc is the proper selection.

^^^

Dynamic Range Control is personal preference. There is no "proper" setting. It usually sucks, IMO, so I leave it off. You might like it. Try it both ways and see. If you don't know what it does, just google it.

You haven't posted in a while so you are probably not coming back. But if you do, Ihope you have done some research on your own. You have a Home Theater in a Box system. There may not be any digital inputs and there are certainly no 5.1 channel analog inputs. As for the subwoofer, there is no such thing as a sub iniput, only output. That is the for a dedicated subwoofer, the .1 in the 5.1. You would hook up five surround speakers and one subwoofer, via the subwoofer output (it is usually a RCA type connection but could be a normal speaker wire connection, depending on your receiver and sub). There are four ways to get audio from your blu ray player. We will assume it has all of the necessary built in convertors, like most all do today. If your receiver has digital inputs, either optical or coaxial, and you use them you will get 5.1 sound but it will not be lossless sound, like DTS MA HD or Dolby TrueHD. It will be more along the lines of DD or DTS, but a little better because of a higher bit rate. If you have an older receiver that has analog (RCA) 5.1 channel inputs, you can decode the audio in the player and send it to the receiver this way. If you have a Home Theater in a Box, you do not have this, as no HT in a Box does. If you have a receiver with a HDMI input, you can use this to transfer both video and audio, and have the player do the decoding or, if the receiver is capable, have the it do the decoding.

It does not sound like you have the necessary inputs to do 5.1 audio from the bluray player or anything else for that matter. If you are using normal stereo RCA inputs to transfer audio from TIVO or a cable box, what you are getting is not 5.1 DD but instead Dolby Pro Logic, which is a simulated surround sound audio. It only takes a stereo signal and sends it to other speakers to simulate 5.1. You are probably only getting real 5.1 when you use the built in DVD player. I hate to tell you this but you need to junk the HTB and buy an inexpensive receiver to use with the bluray player. You can get a receiver at Best Buy, WalMart, Sam's, etc for $200 or less that will probably take care of your needs. You can continue to use the speakers you have, provided they use normal speaker wire connections and not some proprietary plugs on the end.

Apologies if this has be answered before. My friend has a S560 that will not work with his Philips plasma. Its connected via HDMI.

His cable box works fine with HDMI. Thought it might be his blu ray-player but it worked fine with my Pioneer KRP 500M. I also gave him HDMI cable I used and still does not work.

Could this be some handshake issue with HDMI? We also updated firmware on S560. I'm at a loss at this point.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

Hello,

I just want to say that I just got the Sony BDP-S360 last Friday and so far, I’m loving it. I bought it to replace my Samsung BD-P1600 which was full of issues. Will probably sell that on Ebay. The Sony BDP-S360 seems to be rock solid. I watched a few movies that the Samsung struggled with and the Sony played it without a problem. I haven’t even updated the firmware since I’m not in the mood to burn a CD and go through the 30 minute process. The player seems to play everything I throw in it, so I won’t bother to update it now. By the time I come across a disc that the Sony has problem with, an even better firmware will be out. So, I’ll wait until then. But so far, this player is awesome! Go Sony!

*Update- I decided to upgrade the firmware after all. Since I'm on the 30 day return window right now, I have nothing to lose by updating the firmware. I did it via CD. Only took about 15 minutes and the player still works great.

I am not familiar with the Philips plasma, but do you get any error messages? What happens when you unplug the hdmi cable, and then plug it back in while both devides are turned on?

HDMI from my S360 does not work with my 4-year-old Philips plasma, as well. It did work on my newer Sony TV, so I chalked it up to being a handshake issue with the older TV.

My Philips is only 720p native anyway, so I hooked it up with component cables.

BPlayer, thanks for the reply. When the cable is plugged in the screen will move from black to white with the grain on it. It will just keep jumping from black to grainy.

TubaSaxT, thanks for the update. Good to see someone else has also had this issue. At this point, I think it is somekind of handshake issue. Just wondered if anyone knew a workaround or fix for this.

I am hooking my Sony S360 to a Toshiba 47HL167. The tv is a 1080p LCD. However it is 60 hz. I am using HDMI cables that I purchased from HH Gregg(Acoustic Research) The problem i have is that the picture is very clear but it doesn't have that live look. The look like you are watching the movie live on set. I went to Best buy and they were playing King Kong on the same Blu player as mine and it looked like you were watching the movie live. Is this because of my TV or is it a setting. How do you get it to look like that. Also, when you change you resolution to 1080p, 1080i, or any other on the Blu ray player, it ask you if you see a test screen for 30 seconds. I never see one with any resolution change. Is the countdown clock the test or am I actually suppose to see a picture of something? Thanks in advance.

I assume you're talking about MotionFlow, aka 120hz. If your TV is only 60hz, you can't get that effect. It must be 120hz. Personally, I think it just makes the picture look weird.

OMG I knew it had to have a name. I saw this on one tv and hated it. It's totally distracting and makes film look like video tape. Now I know what to stay away from.

Is what ya'll are talking about where the people on screen almost have a stop motion look to them, but there is a lot of depth? Other than the motion personally we like it. We saw it on a Samsung Class HDTV 2 years ago at Best Buy and watched 45 minutes of The Phantom of the Opera and were amazed by the clarity. We still have our 1080i Mitsu RPTV but for Christmas this year we are getting all new a/v equipment.

If we are all talking about the same thing does the BDP-BX2 work in this way with TV's with MotionFlow? Wondering if I will need to upgrade my br player.

not to restart the 360 vs. PS3 debate. but i just picked up a 360 for a second player today and the player works great, However when compared with the PS3 it just simply is not as good. The PS3 loads Live discs SO much faster, the menu responsiveness is much faster, and even firmware upgrades are faster on the PS3. I will continue to use my PS3 as my main player as it just seems like a better performer. But I Do like the 360 overall, the image quality is good, audio quality is good although it took some work to get it to pass DTS-HD. It did not seem to want to decode it, so i had to bitstream it instead. Good player overall, but its no PS3.

Dr.

As I understand it, If the player detects that the receiver can decode DTS-HD then it bitstreams else it will decode.

I am suspicious about how s360 handles lossless dts hd/ma audio, as well- specifically how it handles stereo pcm out over hdmi. Dolby TrueHD movies will read-out as 3/2.1 TrueHD via the display button. That seems fine. However, I've observed DTS MA movies read-out as simply 3/2.1 DTS. So does that mean it is pulling down from the lossless track (as is selected in the movie settings menu) to come up with 3/2.1 pcm out or does lossless go out the window (when it comes to dts on this particular player) with it just the lossy core mixed to pcm stereo that comes out? Maybe it is just another silly issue of metadata labeling which fails to indicate what is accurately occurring even though the right thing is working?

I agree that the ps3 was a helluva br player, if not for the limited lifespan of the optical drive (as it was in the 80 GB model I got).

I have just purchased, and use, the BDP-S560 in England and it connected wirelessly without problem. It updated the firmware to 07 version apparantly without problem but now it can not connect wirelessly to my router. It's as if the update has turned off the wireless adaptor. I have tried to reset the wireless properties auto and manually but it can not see my router or any of my close neighbours as it could before the update. Anyone help me? Possible service menu to turn the wireless adaptor on or off.

Really?? Really? Are we really comparing a cheap standalone to a top of the line gaming machine??? For $300, the PS3 should definitely be better! For less that $150, this Sony standalone gets the job done. As someone who has owned a fast, responsive Samsung player, I was going through hell with that unit. Always having issues. But this standalone, while not as fast, is very stable and I couldn't be more happier with it.

As for the DTS-HD issue, why not just bitstream it?

There is a very good reason that stand alone players are not as responsive or fast as the PS3..... Part of the deal with the Hidef format and even HD DVD also is that the format switched from being a mainly hardware driven procedure to a software driven one..... Essentially there is an operating system that is loaded and ran every time you do anything(Java).... so it only makes sense that what is essentially a very high end computer with a powerful processor works better. Stand alone players can not compete with that part of the equation.... it is not cost effective. Sony makes up for the loss on the "computers" PS3's it sells by selling software for it... games. Stand alones can not do that....

oh i know why the PS3 is faster, I just read some debate earlier in this thread that this was a better player then the PS3, and to that i disagree. I am still confused by the DTS-HD thing. Does it actually decode and send Lossless DTS through PCM or does it just send the core? On screen it just showed standard DTS, but when bit-streaming it showed DTS-HD Bit-streaming is fine, I just am not sure whether it was actually decoding and passing the HD track or not, i guess i should try a 7.1 disc.

Dr.

Try unplugging BD player and while unplugged reboot router. After router has rebooted, then plug in BD player and se what happens. This worked for me.

Dr_EluSivE, I'm noticing the same here. If I send it direct, my receiver's DTS HD lights up and the sony's info reveals that it is passing DTS HD Master. If I choose mix, my receiver displays PCM but the sony displays standard DTS. Wondering if this has something to do with essentials as my PS3 would properly display DTS HD Master while bitstreaming or decoding.

A tech support rep told me that supposedly it is decoding and sending DTS Master Audio to your receiver as PCM and inferred that the audio track info displayed on the player was misleading...... I would say a good test indeed would be playing a 7.1 DTS Master Audio disc under the Mix audio setting and see if you get a 7.1 PCM signal coming into your receiver. If it is only sending the core DTS, then I would think your receiver would only show an incoming 5.1 PCM signal..... I would try it myself, but I now have this player only hooked directly to living room TV.

Hi all.

I started noticing this a couple of months ago but thought it was my PVR (internal fan). It's actually the S360 (which sits above the PVR) and it's quite annoying when listening to CDs (the silence is not so "silent" between tunes) or quieter bits of some movies. There's a small rattle that is fairly constant - even when the disk is paused.

The reason I ask is that I had the Sony BDP-S300 before and it was completely silent and am worried about this unit being so noisy.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Thanks.

Rich

Mine is pretty quiet....

I'm having the same problem with my 4 year old panasonic and the bdp-bx2 with HDMI. Screen goes dark after initial bootup screen when outputting via HDMI. Very frustrating. It has the latest firmware (007). Tech support has not been able to solve it. Anyone else with this problem, or a solution?

Has this been a problem right from the get go with this TV, or did it work fine for a while and just start being an issue recently? Are you hooked up direct to the TV or through a receiver?

I bought this unit to really have a screen display with a time counter like a reg dvd player. I have a ps3 and they seem about the same as far as PQ, but you get another fancy blu light for hi def programing!

Searching aside this unit replaced my sony sacd/dvd/VCD player. The 360 won't play vcd's?

I'm hooked up directly to the TV. The same HDMI cable works fine with the cable box.