Sherwood BDP-5004 - Much improved and it appears to be region free

Probably another Funai, as if there weren't enough flavors of more of less the same player.

Is this BDP-5004 player region free like its predecessor BDP-5003 using the remote codes?

How about loading the Momitsu BDP-899 firmware on it? This worked on the BDP-5003.

Would also like to know, these players are becoming harder to find.

According to the proprietor of one of our local B&M (Brick & Mortar ) A/V specialty stores, his Sherwood sales rep assures him that the 5004 is indeed multi-region.

How would one go about determining the region selection codes?
Do all Funai players use the same codes?

It's not a Funai. It's very likely a Momitsu clone -- I don't believe the Funai players and their off-shoots even have an inherent, built-in region free capability.

I would try the Momitsu codes, which work by going to the Setup screen and then entering one of the following:

973501 = DVD Region Free, Blu Ray Region A
973502 = DVD Region Free, Blu Ray Region B

Those worked on the Sherwood 5003, and seeing as this player looks similar, I would give it a shot.

I asked the local A/V shop to put aside a 5004 for me when they come in. My understanding is that they're planning to sell them instead of the comparable Panasonic players. (They sell Denon and Marantz players at the higher price points and don't try to compete with BestBuy for the cheapest ones -- there's just not enough margin.) I'm not sure when it'll arrive. Maybe next week?

I'll post my experience with it.

Selden, I would appreciate it. Those codes should work with the firmware it has, I'm guessing, if it's anything like the prior Momitsu clones (including the Sherwood 5003).

The Momitsu firmware for the BDP899 also might work on it -- I'd be interesting in that too if you were willing to try that out, but just your general experiences would be more than fine

it's been confirmed on another forum that this indeed is a region free player!!! a profile 2.0

The Sherwood BD-5004 Blu-Ray player: a brief description.

My Sherwood BD-5004 arrived today. I didn't wait until Christmas to open the package. The photographs below were taken by a hand-held Canon SD780IS and reduced in size from 4000x3000 to 800x600. The images below are thumbnails which link to the 800x600 pictures.


The box.

It's lightweight and has a plastic handle, not shown.


The contents, still in bags.

Remote, a/v cable, documents and player.
In addition to the plastic bag, the player has sheets of transparent protective plastic stuck to all of the shiny black parts of its case. The remote's two penlight batteries aren't shown. I was amused to see that their brand name was "LARGE" and that they were "extra heavy duty."



The back panel.

Captive power cord, component and composite video outs,
7.1 analog audio out, coax digital audio out,
HDMI, Ethernet and USB.

I don't know or care what kind of DACs it uses, since I'll use HDMI for audio as soon as my NR1501 comes back from getting its firmware updated. In the meantime, coax digital audio is feeding an ancient Pioneer VSX-D906S, while video is going over HDMI to the TV.

(I blanked out the serial number. It's in the low 2000s)


Powered on.

Ouch!
The lights are bright, with no way to turn them off while playing. Making an opaque cover would seem to be appropriate.

The IR sensor is just to the left of the front-panel USB connector, which is just barely visible above the buttons.

The power button (invisibly dark at the left) turns power off entirely, so the bright red standby lamp can be avoided. Since you have to go to the player to insert a disc, it's no big deal to turn it on at the same time. When powered on, the player can be put into standby using the remote.

The screenshots below were taken off the screen of a
Vizio VX240M (24" diagonal, 1080p LCD).



Power-on Sherwood logo.


Display settings.

(When playing at least some 4:3 DVDs, one must go into the service menu and change the TV Aspect to 16:9 pillarbox.)


Info.


Audio output options.

There doesn't seem to be any way to configure the HDMI output separate from the digital output.


Bass management.

Speakers can be set to large or small, with a choice of crossover frequencies for the Subwoofer. There are no distance or relative volume settings.


Title/Chapter display.

Star Trek 2009 has lots of chapters!

This one-line display format is used for all disc types, which I find disappointing. In other words, it only shows the length of the current track when playing an audio CD. I prefer to see the lengths of as many tracks as will fit on the screen.

Folder icons are shown when playing a non-audio CD. I haven't tried playing from a USB thumb-drive yet.

One can select PCM downsampling to be off, 96KHz or 48KHz. Although its internal DACs run at 96KHz, one can hope that higher bitrates are forwarded when "Bitstream HD" is selected. There's no support for HDCD decoding. I should be able to find out next week if that's bitstreamed, too.


Why I got this player.

A screenshot of a Region 2 PAL DVD. (I don't have any Region B BD discs. Yet.)

The player decodes 50Hz, 576 line DVDs appropriately when upscaling to HD 1080p/60. Using that output format, one doesn't have to worry about the differences between NTSC and PAL video signals causing problems for the display hardware. (It supposedly can scale to 720p, too, for those with lower resolution displays. I didn't verify that.)

Mechanical aspects:

The player is very lightweight. It has no fan, so there are many slots in the sides and top for hot air to escape. Be careful not to block them. It gets vaguely warm to the touch. The drive makes high-frequency squeaks and scrapes when loading a disc, although it's very quiet when playing. Hopefully it'll last longer than its 1 year warranty.

Firmware updates:

The manual does not mention firmware updates or how one would do them. There's no obvious selection in the menu, either. Presumably the procedure will be the same as for the Momitsu BDP-899.
I currently have no plans to install Momitsu firmware: the player does what I want well enough already.

Issues:

1. It forgot the region-free configuration.
After playing several Region 2 DVDs in a row, the player stopped playing them. When a new disc was inserted, it was recognized as a DVD but the screen stayed blank.The player smelled "warm". After leaving it powered off overnight, I turned the player on, re-entered the configuration code and the same disc played fine. I dunno if this is a thermal issue (none of the vents were blocked) or something else.

2. The front panel USB connector can't be used with many USB sticks.
The hole in the plastic is too small and the plastic front panel is too thick. Although the thumb-drive's connector fits through the hole, the plastic prevents it from seating all the way: the USB connection doesn't connect. The back panel connector works fine.

3. The player sometimes generates a faint, intermittent high-pitched whistle when playing a disc.
The sound comes from within the player, not from the speakers.

Why can't more players get this right?! Man, sounds sweet! Guess I'll have to glue a Denon badge on it...

I've made some updates to my description of the player. The edits are in blue.

Is there a PDF of the users guide available anywhere online?

I bought the BDP-5004 based on the confirmation here about region free, and it works as others have stated. Hey, I even have the Blakes 7 DVDs that Selden Ball has in his screenshot (one of the reasons I got it too).

Additionally, I have some Region B Blu-ray discs (for example, Shallow Grave), and it plays them fine, including all the bonus features.

So, in short, it is an awesome player for region A, B or C Blu-rays as well as PAL or NTSC DVDs.

+1
And I thought I was the only one who liked Blake's 7.

Thanks for the link Selden!
Happy New Year to all!

I've added some issues. They're primarily annoyances.

I don't know if I looked over it, but what about picture and audio quality? On par with PS3 (or Oppo 83) for Blu-Ray?

I have Oppo 983 for SD-DVD, how would that compare in PQ (not so important, though, more interested in BD)?

Thanks for the info.

Just bought one too; semi-crazy deal online I couldn't pass up that ends today. Tried to hold off till I could find more info on this thing, but time was a tickin'.

Only thing that is lacking for my particular needs is a 7.1 analog output, despite what the OP claims. But 5.1 analog out is good enough, I'll just have to break out the Y splitters and make MY OWN matrixed sound for the 1 rear back surround channel (6.1) I have in that system.

Any more info on sound or pic quality? I have a PS3 and a Sony S550 as well in different systems. How does this Sherwood stack up????

Are you saying that they've deleted two of the analog outputs in recent production versions?

On mine, the front L&R connections are in the center , next to the RCA digital out (that's where the Momitsu's only analog audio outputs are). The other six connections (surround L&R, surround back L&R, center and sub) are separate from them, off to the left next to the component video outs. See the picture above, which shows the back panel connections.

I don't have any appropriate test discs, so I can't make any quantitative comments about the quality of its DVD upscaling or its analog audio or video outs.

But what can you say about BD PQ? If no test disc, please give us general viewing appreciation if you have another BD player, real life experience comparing the same Film on the two systems.

Thanks a lot.

LOL. I guess you're right, there are 7.1 outs. But you need to tell Sherwood about this, because according to both their website and this forum in the audio support sticky thread, the 5004 has only 5.1 analog outs:
http://www.sherwoodusa.com/site/sher...ay/BDP5004.php

It was almost a deal-breaker for me with 5.1 outs, but now that I know it's 7.1, I'm happy as a clam now!!!!

Sorry, my BD setup isn't good enough to do a valid comparison between players. The two I have both look fine to me -- this Sherwood and a Pioneer BDP-120.

The Sherwood BDP-5004 uses Broadcom's BCM7601 decoder chip. See the Info screen shot above.
Quoting from one Broadcom press release:

Another claims

I haven't seen any reports of comparisons of the various BD chipsets, like Broadcom's and those from Sigma Design or Panasonic.

Thanks.

But this technical stuff is too much for me...

I've seen some pretty good reviews about the Pioneer PQ, so if the Sherwood looks similar to it, this will suffice to me... Can you then confirm that the Sherwood PQ look as fine as the Pioneer?

Thanks so much.

Just unpacked mine and have a region question.

I Put two German DVD's ( region 2) and 1 china DVD (region 6) in, all 3 played fine and I didn't have to enter any "codes". I also see no mention of codes in the manual. Why are others talking about entering codes in to play other region discs and mines doing it "automagically"? For example:


Also, transport is noisy. I get a LOUD "clunk" noise when the DVD is first loading (for 1 sec) and then there is a high frequency "whizzing" sound when playing the discs. Hopefully it will be far enough away to not be a bother! You guys getting the same noises?

I think your DVDs are playing without a problem because they actually are Region 0. Do they work in standard Region 1 DVD players? (*)

Many DVDs, especially those from Asia, are Region 0 (region-free). Often the box is labelled wrong for such discs. My understanding is that most Blu-rays of older "catalog" movies from major studios also are region-free. Certainly my Blakes7 DVDs are region 2, though. They won't play in my Sherwood unless I've entered an appropriate region code.

I don't think the region selections codes can be mentioned in the manual. My understanding is that region-free players violate the Blu-ray licensing provisions. Supposedly Oppo got into a lot of trouble for advertising that some of their players were multi-region, and that feature had to be removed from their most recent player. That's why most region-free players are modified by third parties and not by the companies making them -- and thus are not repairable.

I agree that the transport is quite noisy. I really hope it doesn't wear out too quickly.

____
* - Of course, they're probably PAL discs, so that alone would prevent them from playing in a U.S. NTSC player, independent of them having a different Region code. The mechanism used by the Sherwood player is intended for international sales, so it has to be able to play both PAL and NTSC formats.

p.s. One way to verify that the discs have a different Region code would be to try to play them in a PC's DVD drive. If they're not either Region 0 or Region 1, the operating system will complain and ask if you want to change the disc drive's default Region. You're allowed to do that 5 times.

Thanks Seldon.

No, the dvd's I'm playing are "real" region 2 and 6 dvd's, not region zero. These dvd's won't play in ANY of the dvd players I have (I have 8 of them here) besides my Pioneer 578a, which is region free. That's why I'm perplexed why I didn't need a "secret code" and others like you do. Are you sure you even NEEDED ONE??
Based on the response you gave on the Blake dvd, sounds like you did! Very odd. What code did you enter, and where?

Yes, its noisy for sure. But if its far enough away I have no beef. Just hoping the sound is OK via the 7.1 analog outs. I have the Sony 550 as well which I bought for its decoding internal of all codecs and its 7.1 outs----- wonder how it stacks up to the Sherwood.

On the remote I typed the number 973501 (0 = DVD region-free, 1 = BD region A; supposedly BD region-free doesn't work) after power up with the tray in and empty. The player does not echo the number and gives no indication that anything has changed but different region discs play.


Please let us know if you hear any differences!