Official New Sony S370/S470 Owners Thread - Page 89

USB drives can be used for storing and playing video, music and photos through the player, by plugging the drive into the port on the front of the unit. Then from the home menu, select video, music or photo.

I've used the photo feature and it is very slow and has a severely limited folder tree depth, compared to the photo feature built into my display. I tried it a few times and dismissed it.

Any opinions on the streaming quality with cinemanow? How does it compare to netflix or amazon?

sorry, it is the 1080/24p Output setting. if set to 'off' the refresh rate is set to 60p. if set to 'auto' everything plays at 24p, even standard def DVDs w/video content...

I think the PQ is excellent. You may even still get a free rental when you sign up for the first time. That's the one and only time I used it. I don't care to pay $4 for one movie when they're only $1 at redbox and even less at netflix. I'd pay $3 to save the hassle of driving to redbox, but $4 is too much. In any case, since Cinemanow is not subscription based, just rent one of the older $1 titles and see for yourself. Amazon has a few free HD titles you can check out. I use the Yellowstone documentary for my HD amazon tests.

They gave me a free SD movie to keep, so i downloaded happy feet for the kids. PQ was worse than dvd quality.

Never tried SD myself, but HD did look very good. Are you sure your ISP is fast enough?

Actually, on the "auto" setting the player will output 1080/60p for non film based DVD and BD such as concerts.
I have a large library of concert DVDs, and they all play at 1080/60p on the 1080/24p auto setting.

I wasn't sure which setting you were referring to because the OP had stated he had the player set to output 24p.

I think the OP may have resolved the problem and left the building.

15 mbs, hard wired in

For 24p support on DVD's, it's a bit flaky. I've had disks where it would start in 60p, then change to 24p after a few minutes (causing the video to blank for a few seconds.) It's even more annoying on my new receiver now that the audio is picked up via HDMI and also mutes out (previous setup used optical to an older receiver.) It's all on how well it reads any flags and/or detects the 2:3 pulldown cadence. I've also had it sometimes get very jittery and had to do a pause/play to clear it up.

I have my S370 player connected directly to a display and I haven't had the issue that you described.

For store bought film based DVDs as soon as the movie starts I see output of 1080/24p rock solid. I will see 60p right up to the studio's logo shown just before the movie starts.

I haven't witnessed any film based DVDs that had mixed 24p and 60p during the actual movie, although with some titles that may be a possibility.

Have you ever tried connecting the player directly to your display and try to replicate what you described, to rule out the AV causing it?

When we stream movies and programs on Netflix, visually the video on our plasma is outstanding. Is there a way to get a "reading" as to what I am viewing? Some looks "HD" and the rest looks damn close. How do you know whether you are getting 720P, 1080i, or even 1080p (if possible). It certainly is better than the old std. 480.
Our "old" 50" Panny plasma only has component input.
...mike

I found it a waste of time watching dvd's via hdmi whether it iis played at 50/60 hz makes no difference iy loos crap you waould need need to re-encode the dvd's removing the telecined 1.5 image..

I was directly connected to the TV until recently. I noticed the change in the middle thing before I got a new receiver with HDMI support. In my case, I think it was either or both "Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars" and/or "Idiots and Angels".

given my experience tv series on dvd do not play well over hdmi, nevermind a regular dvd players...

if your disc has a fault on it burn a copy...

sadly in the rush to put stuff to dvd distro's haven't bothered at doing things correctly and faults appear...

I've seen this most tv show's that i own, like farscape, babylon 5, stargate sg1/atlantis/universe, I would have to say trying to dvd's under hdmi at original film spec is a waste of time and money..

"Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars" was more of a series closing movie than a normal TV episode.

doesn't matter whether it was a stand episode or part of the actual tv series, there are faults a many on the disc's qc is very lax with the movie studios, so you might need another copy to see if the fault occurs again...

Hey guys, I have a problem regarding my player that is really quite annoying, hopefully someone can help.

My player S370/S373 refuses to play mkv files. In the manual it says its supported. I have tried streaming it using DLNA from my PC, it will see all of my avi files in that folder (and play them fine) but it cannot even see the mkv files.

I've tried putting the file on USB stick, still wont play. I'm using multiple mkv files by the way, and none of them will play, one was too large (due to fat32 limitations) so i split it using mkv merge, and it came up with a pink screen when I plugged it into the player and tried to play it.

This is quite problem for me as most of my files are mkv, obviously I can try converting them but then I would lose all that 1080p quality. Any ideas guys, maybe I should contact Sony?

P.S. It is updated to the latest version

I assume your files play OK in VLC or Windows Media Player? If that's the case then either your player doesn't really play mkv files or else the files were made with codecs the player doesn't have installed to play them with. You might try renaming the files to a type the player does play, such as MP4 and see what happens.
The problem with mkv files though is that it's just a container that has audio and video streams that can be compressed with any number of codecs. Afterdawn.com has an article called "How to play MKV files" that says video files can be formatted with Mpeg-1, Mpeg-2 or RealVideo so it's likely the player doesn't have codecs to use for playing them all such as RealVideo.
You might want to examine you files with Video Inspector to see what they were made with and maybe you can determine if the player has codecs installed to play them with.

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/arch...o_play_mkv.cfm

Thanks for the reply!

Finally got it working, turns out it was the DLNA software. I was using one of the best ones (apparently) Nero MediaHome. Downloaded Mezzmo and its working perfectly, although, I guess part of the process in changing it to a playable file was converting it to a "mt2s" file? Is that right? It's a 1080p quality film, it looks a bit grainy though, might just be the effects, but it's not compromising the quality by using DLNA (wired not wireless) is it? Just want to check!

Anyway, really happy its working now, and hopefully that will help other people out who had the same problem as me..try changing your DLNA software

Good to hear. Thanks for posting.

Another good DLNA server option is Serviio. It's free. Sony UK uploaded a video on how to use it on Sony TVs and Blu-Ray players.

My bdp-s470 had been working fine until a couple of days ago, when it stopped playing dvds and cds - although it still plays blu-rays without issue. With dvds it flashes Loading for a long while, then gives an Invalid Disc error. At first I thought it might be a scratched dvd, but it's all dvd discs. I tried to reinstall the latest firmware, but it won't do a network update (latest firmware already installed) and won't do a cdr update (invalid disc). So I appear to be stuck. Also tried unplugging and leaving it off for a while.

I can't find anyone else having this issue on this forum or with a Google search. Does anyone know if this is my firmware, or perhaps the dvd laser has gone out?

I only have a DVD cleaning disc, which it won't load... just get the Invalid Disc message. It makes a lot of clunking and whirring trying to load DVDs, and yet it plays Blu Rays just fine.

Keep in mind that there are two lasers... one for DVD/CD and another for Blu Ray. I had the same problem on an older Sony BR player, but it happened only for Blu Ray discs, not DVDs. Eventually I replaced it, but a few months ago when I was about to throw it out, I decided to open the thing up and clean the lasers, for real. Put it all back together, and sure enough, it plays Blu Ray discs again. So now I have a backup if/when my 470 starts acting up.

You may not be confident in your ability to open something like this up and clean it, but if it plays one type of disc, the drive mechanism is fine, the laser is just dirty enough to cause a problem with reading the disc. The disc cleaners are rather worthless, by the way. You could try blasting some compressed air in there, in case it's just a piece of dust, but that could also spread around dust so it's a crap shoot. To really clean it well, it takes rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab. But that means being actually able to see where the laser is...

Thank you all for the cleaning suggestions. I opened the unit up and gently/thoroughly swabbed the lasers with alcohol, but it still doesn't accept dvds. I still get "invalid disc".

Sounds like either the laser or the optical pickup is blown.

On the BDP-S470, is there any way to zoom the image from Blu-ray and/or DVD to eliminate black bars? I have a new plasma TV and am trying to avoid black bars until the TV is broken in a bit.

Does your TV have a zoom/stretch mode? That might be easier.

Don't worry. Just keep the TV in Cinema or Movie mode to avoid super-bright images, and use a variety of sources. Burn-in is not really an issue these days unless you have the same image for days continuously.