Sony BDP-S380 - Page 2

Are there any downsides to this player? Seems like a good deal and a good quality unit (for the money). Sounds like it's pretty fast.

The only downside I see is that Netflix isn't as nice as on my Xbox 360.
Its not a huge deal to me personally bc it does many other things well

If u run it wired u can control it using the free media remote app and an Android phone. Idk about wireless/ iOS/windows phone but I use a nexus s and a hard wired bd player and it works good. And the app has been updated like 5 times since I got it. And the bluray player has been updated more than that

It can't play direct DVD rips (VIDEO_TS) from a USB drive. It can play the individual VOB files if you browse to them, and it looks great (impressive SD upscaling on this unit BTW - for the price at least), but it can't operate the DVD menu, skip between chapters, fast-foward or continue from one VOB to another if the feature is in multiple VOBs.

As I said on the other Sony thread, I can't understand this behaviour... The unit can play DVD disks, and that's basically just a drive with a VIDEO_TS folder on it, So why cant it play the same VIDEO_TS folder off a drive connected via USB?

It looks like the s380 doesn't have DLNA support, so I probably couldn't pull files off my DLNA NAS then and play them. :/ Oh well, at least I have an HTPC. Most places I've seen the s380 isn't that much cheaper than the 480 and 580... price might come down though. I wouldn't be surprised to see this for $110.

Does anyone know how to make the repeat function work? I just get an error message when I try to set a Blu Ray to Title Repeat - happens on every disk I've tried so far...

Anyone played Amazon Instant Video through S/PDIF on this player?

The previous model 370 only played 5.1 channel sound through HDMI. I have an older receiver connected with S/PDIF and only get 2.0 channel sound on movies Amazon says are supposed to be in 5.1.

Will this still be a problem for me if I get this newer model?

Thanks!

I'm confused. My old HD-DVD is connected to my pre HDMI Harman Kardon 435 through 5.1 component and digital audio output cables. I see that there is no digital audio/pcm optical jack on the 380. Does this mean I can not get 5.1 sound through it? Thanks.

I picked one of these up last weekend. The only downside I have with it is that it doesn't remember the position of the last DVD played.
My old DVD player remembered the last 5 or 6 discs played and resumed from the last watched position.

I'm new to the whole HD thing and I'm blown away by how good upscaled DVDs look.

Does the sound on Netflix streams come through as 5.1 or is the PS3 still the only product that can do that? I was hoping since it's by Sony it would have 5.1 too, but my gut says otherwise.

Thanks!

I just bought the BX-38 yesterday. It is replacing the PANASONIC BD-755 which doesn't stream very much and has an almost invisible LED indicator... but does stream NETFLIX nicely.

I'm hoping for the best. The price has come down to $99 so that was a big plus. I don't need wireless capability so I could bottom pick.

I'll hook it up tomorrow and report any unexpected snafus.

It does not sir. I use my Xbox for Netflix but even that only does stereo. I use my AV receiver to matrix up to 5.1. Netflix on the bluray has improved through updates but I'd imagine there's better gadgets for Netflix, its just not that great at it; I'd even say its barely GOOD at Netflix

Review of the 580 and comparison with the 570 here;http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blu-r...e-theater.html

Relevant as the internals are the same throughout the line, iirc.

I like this player for these features. I like the quietness of no fan. However have you noticed how hot this thing gets after a few mins? I hope this doesn't become a problem in the future

In answer to the question re: USB drives - works great, I'm watching a 1080p DTS 5.1 .mkv of Knight and Day right now, off a 1 TB USB NTFS drive. It has front and rear USB connectors, have tested both with hard drive and thumb drive. The UI is spartan, but playback is flawless.

Has anyone played SACD on this? I haven't been too impressed with audio quality with CD's on this player compared to playing MP3 of the same sound tracks through my Apple TV. The sound on DVD's and Blu-Rays though is very good. Any comments?

I bought this unit from Amazon - one of their Warehouse Deals. It is my first Blu-ray player and I love it so far.

The picture is very clear and sharp on my Bravia, and I wired it into my router and have had very good results with Netflix (which is now fully searchable), Pandora, Amazon (which is especially fantastic and clear), YouTube, and a few others that I've tried.

I haven't noticed any noise at all and I sat pretty close to it while watching Back to the Future on Blu-ray and Tropic Thunder on DVD. It is slower to load than a DVD player, which I understand is normal, but it wasn't anything crazy. My Toshiba DVD Recorder takes almost just as long to load (20-30 seconds or so).

The only issue I've had is that when I stop the movie with the disc still inside, and then press 'Play' again when I'm ready to start watching again, it takes me back to the main menu. I'm not even turning the power off, but maybe I am doing something wrong - I can't imagine the player would go back to the main menu every time it gets stopped.

I am very happy with it - it sounds like Sony has worked out most of the bugs in the last few months and I've had a great time with it so far.

You're not doing anything wrong, and neither is the player - that's a really stupid feature of the blu ray spec.

Hi all. I just bought this player. i unpacked it and connected HDMI cable and put batteries in the remote (none were supplied in my box despite it being on the list of included).
Ran set-up and tried to put a few disks in but THE TRAY WON'T STAY CLOSED!?!
I have tried powering down, changing the angle the player sits at, different disks, and even no disk - it just closes and then immediately opens.
Any suggestions please????

Boo, sounds like a bad unit to me

Brad I suspect you may be right but I hope not - ordered via post so to return will cost postage!

If anybody has the Sony str-dn1010 and Sony bdp-s380 the code to make the bd button on the receiver remote is 311. Speaking from personal experience

I LOVE my BDP 38.
It streams Netflix well, and has a good search function. Upscales nicely.

I have no need for Wo-Fi or 3-D so it suits me.

Only qualm is that it is the WIDEST of all my audio video components and thus my new cabinet will have to be wider than I want.

There was an update either yesterday or the day before.
I have no effing idea what it did;does anyone know?

Anyone run into this?

I have a 1 TB external USB drive that I connect to the Sony to play BD movies from. It works pretty well, except - (1) the UI is non-existent basically (no indication of how far into the movie you are), and (2) usually about 5-10 minutes into a movie, you'll get one short burst of video noise - only happens once, but a little annoying.

Has anyone else experienced (2)? Or know if any updates help in the (1) UI department?

I pulled the trigger on one of these units because Amazon had them on sale. It will replace my Samsung BD-P1600, which has worked fairly well for me but has a lot of audio sync issues and doesn't support Amazon VOD.

I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I'll be testing this as soon as my 380 arrives so I'll let you know. I have an older receiver too.

I connected a USB 2.0 Western Digital drive in the front USB port and it played M2TS files (AVCHD) very well from my Sony HD CX 150 Handycam. However, I connected a USB 3.0 Western Digital drive and it could not read it. I will upgrade the firmware to the latest (M06.R.0415) but I'm not sure it will resolve the problem. The Sony PMB software I just re-loaded DOES include better support for USB 3.0. It's notable that the Panasonic Plasma TC-P50X3 does not read the M2TS files.

Quick BDP-380 review:

I've only played with mine for a couple of days so these are just my initial thoughts to the 380, but so far I'm loving the heck out of it.

It's only my second BD player so I only have one other -- the Samsung BD-P1600 -- to compare it to, but the 380 is worlds better so far.

The unit boots pretty quickly (I don't have the Quick Start feature enabled because I prefer so conserve power), setup is easy (although activating some of the streaming services takes a few minutes and some work on a computer), and playback is great.

I have mine connected to my TV via HDMI and to a legacy DTS receiver via digital coax. I have a hard-wired network connection for it, and when I turned the unit on for the first time it notified me that a firmware update was available. I allowed the update and it worked just fine.

Blu-ray Playback
Discs load fast, the unit responds quickly to commands from the remote, and A/V quality is superb. Even though I'm not using HDMI audio I didn't have to tweak any settings out of the box to get great sound through coax. I'm not certain yet but it seems like the 380 audio is louder than what I was getting with my BD-P1600 through digital optical cable. I don't have to turn up my receiver as high when watching discs.

DVD playback
It's impossible to tell without a side-by-side comparison, but the 380 seems to upscale DVDs as well as or better than my 1600. Discs load fast too and A/V quality is excellent.

Streaming features
I only tried a couple of them but they worked great. My main interest is Amazon VOD, and it handled that beautifully. I've only watched a few TV episodes so far but they load fast and look perfect. At this price range I'm pleasantly surprised how many streaming music and movie options there are on the 380. As to Robert's question about 5.1 audio over coax, I've yet to get anything but 2.0 sound from streaming but I haven't tried any movies labeled as 5.1 yet. I'll keep you posted.

BD title comparisons with the BD-P1600
I had my 1600 for a couple of years, and despite all the firmware updates from Samsung there were still a few titles I had some trouble with on that unit, so one of the first things I did was try those titles on the 380. They all worked perfectly! Some examples:

Star Trek: The Original Series. The 1600 had a lot of trouble dealing with the seamless branching on those discs that gives you the option of viewing original or enhanced special effects. Often times during a scene transition at a branching point the audio would cut out briefly, the video would jump a bit, and suddenly the audio sync would be behind by about a second and a half.
I watched one episode on my 380 and didn't experience a single glitch.

Iron Man 2. The same sort of audio drop and sync loss would happen on my 1600 during chapter 2. It played just fine on the 380.

A Christmas Story. There was a constant audio delay on this disc when played back on my 1600. It's not that it would suddenly jump out of sync like the other discs -- it was about a half second behind from start to finish. I didn't watch the whole movie on the 380 but I tested a few scenes and it looks much better.

There are a few other titles I had minor problems with too but I haven't tested them all yet.

I ended up disabling BD Live on my 1600 long ago because updates took much too long, but I'm leaving it active on the 380 for a while with a thumb drive in the back just to see how it does. I've only encountered one disc that had an available update so far and it only took a few seconds.

I haven't decided whether I'm going to leave the Gracenote service on yet. It's not really obtrusive until you stop playback on a disc, at which point the unit pauses while Gracenote acquires the data for the disc that is playing. It's not too annoying but I'm not sure it's too helpful either.

I installed the Media Remote app on my Android phone. Setup and linking was simple. So far I've only used it to navigate menus but it works just fine. I'm sure the real value will come when I have to type in text and can use a keyboard on my phone.

Overall I'm very pleased with this unit. At the price I don't think you could beat it, and it is much better than my 1600 (so far). Worth every penny!