Official Sony BDP-S780 Thread - Page 7

I can't find any.

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Hi
I pluged an NTFS formated extenal hatd drive with mpeg2-hd and with 1080p AVCHD files with no problème at all. dont know about MKV files but I suppose it to wotk.

Sony has recently shut down their servers and the apps they "offer" are not available. Who does that on a Tuesday (7pm PST) without any backup servers or notification???? I am seriously rethinking my choice of BluRay players because of this issue. The 780 is great, but I don't like the fact that I'm at the mercy of a company which doesn't understand the concept of redundancy.

If you are slightly interested in what I'm saying, please read my earlier statement (quoted above).

This is ridiculous.....live and learn....

Is there a "you're number one" (ie middle finger) icon available???

:-)

I wanted to share my hot date with Arthur C. Clarke's old friend Hal 9000. I first met Hal when I got pissed off because Netflix went down (again) when I was using my Sony 780. (Just the facts ma'am....the following took place post 7pm PST on 8/7/11).

Only the brave need read the transcript of my online chat with Sony's new Hal9000

The names have been changed to protect the innocent (as well as me)


Problem : Why did my netflix service go down in the early evening PST??? If this is a server problem, why doesn't a corporation as large as Sony have redundancy built into the system?
Hal9000_ > Hi InCali. Welcome to Sony Online Support. I'm Hal9000. Please allow me a moment to review your concern.
Hal9000_ > Thank you for waiting, InCali. I'm sorry that the Blu-ray player is not accessing the Netflix service and the netflix service go down. I'll be glad to assist you with this.
Hal9000_ > When was the last time it worked as expected?
InCali > Around 7pm. It went back up about 5 minutes ago. I suspect a server problem. True or no?
Hal9000_ > I'll provide this information for you.
Hal9000_ > Thank you for the information.
Hal9000_ > Are you able to access the other internet channels like Youtube, Amazon, etc in the BD player?
InCali > I was not able to access anything from my Sony 780 or 570 blu ray players, but my Roku box worked fine....trust me; this was not a netlfix, hulu, etc. problem
Hal9000_ > Okay, InCali.
Hal9000_ > Please let me know the message that appears while accessing the Netflix videos in the BD Player.
InCali > It (was) the standard 300 error
Hal9000_ > Thank you for the information.
Hal9000_ > Please confirm if you're able to access the other internet channels in the BD player.
InCali > I want to know whether your servers went down, whether this was a scheduled maintenance, and, if so, if you have redundancy built into your system.
Hal9000_ > No, InCali. You can access the Netflix in the BD player as the service not under maintenance from our side.
InCali > Everything is working fine now....let me repeat....sony 570 and 780 didn't work on anything. Roku box worked on everything. I want to know why I can't access netflix and other apps for about 1.5hrs on a fairly consistent basis around 7pm or so from my Sony Blu Rays. Doesn't Sony have redundant servers supporting your clients?
Hal9000_ > I understand that you're able to access the Netflix videos now in the BD player. Is that correct?
InCali > Now I can....but I was kicked off for about 1.5 hrs. Roku worked on everything....Sony blu ray 570 and 780 didn't work on anything and this is a recurring problem. Why???
Hal9000_ > Thank you for the confirmation.
Hal9000_ > I'll provide this information for you.
Hal9000_ > InCali, Sony performs scheduled maintenance once in a week for internet channels.
Hal9000_ > Please confirm if the issue happens every day with the Blu-ray player.
InCali > I can't confirm that this happens every hour/day/week/month because I'm not accessing internet applications 24/7. What I can say is that I've noticed that around 7pm (more or less) I get kicked off netflix and can't access any other apps from my Sony Blu Rays. I need to know why this happens....doesn't Sony have redundancy built into its system?
Hal9000_ > InCali, this is not the normal operation as there is no server maintenance daily.
Hal9000_ > Sony will perform the scheduled maintenance and if the server is down with the maintenance, the error code 300 will appear while accessing the Netflix.
Hal9000_ > The issue seems to be with the internet connectivity of the BD player as the all the other applications are also not working.
Hal9000_ > Are you using wired or wireless internet network.
Hal9000_ > I'm sorry for the typo.
Hal9000_ > Are you using wired or wireless internet network?
InCali > Roku was working during the time the time the supposed internet connectivity was a problem...as was our chat. I use a hardwire ethernet connection to my Blu Ray and a wireless connection for my computer.....this isn't an internet connectivity problem. Roku worked for everything...as did my computer....neither Sony Blu Ray would work on anything....
Hal9000_ > Thank you for the detailed information.
Hal9000_ > When did you upgrade the BD player with the latest firmware update?
InCali > I just want to know whether or not the Sony services go down during your maintenance.....do you have redundancy??? Do your services go down during your "maintenance". I'll check the firmware, but BOTH Sony Blu Rays go down at the same time for ALL of the apps offered and everything else works....be back with the update on the Blu Ray....
Hal9000_ > InCali, we are not aware of this being an issue.
Hal9000_ > The BD player should work fine even if our server are down for maintenanace.
Hal9000_ > The only service that affects during maintenance is the Netflix video service.
Hal9000_ > This doesn't seem to be the normal operation with the BD player.
Hal9000_ > Hence, I suggest that you contact our next level of support team over phone to get extensive troubleshooting steps via live communication to fix this issue.
Hal9000_ > They're our next level of support team and better equipped to handle this issue with the extensive troubleshooting steps.
Hal9000_ > I'll provide their contact information right away for you.
InCali > you have a difficult job...
Hal9000_ > Sure, I'll provide the contact information right away for you.
Hal9000_ > Please contact them at 239-768-7547.
Hal9000_ > Their working hours are: Mon-Fri 8:00AM-12:00AM(Midnight) ET/Sat-Sun 9:00AM-8:00PM ET.
Hal9000_ > You can also contact them at 1-800-222-7669.
Hal9000_ > I'm sure that they'll be more than happy to further assist you in this regard with the extensive troubleshooting steps.
InCali > So....I guess that means I can call them now.....
Hal9000_ > Yes, InCali. You're correct.
InCali > Very frustrating, but not your fault....good bye
Hal9000_ > I do understand your concern.
Hal9000_ > I have been notified that you have left the room, are you still with me?
Hal9000_ > It seems that we have lost the connection. Hence I'm closing the chat.
Hal9000_ > Good-bye and thank you for contacting Sony Online Support.
Hal9000_ > Analyst has closed chat and left the room



And so it goes........

InCali: Take a look at this story reported on cnet. I wonder if this outage contributed to your Netflix outage? ...not to let Hal 9000 off the hook ;-)

"Amazon cloud outage downs Netflix, Quora"

"Amazon Web Services' cloud-computing infrastructure experienced a brief network outage this evening that knocked offline popular sites such as Netflix, Quora, Reddit, and Foursquare.

"The network connectivity issues struck Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) at Amazon's northern Virginia site, which handles AWS operations for the U.S. East Coast at 7:39 p.m. PDT and were resolved about 25 minutes later, according to the Amazon Web Services Health Dashboard."

..."At the same time, though, when a widely used service goes down, many suffer. In April, the cloud storage service experienced a two-day outage that brought many Web site operations to a halt."


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-200...#ixzz1UZ1TXm8p

Hey Guys!

Can somebody tell me if this player works with NAS - accessing BR ISOs, DVD ISOs, AVIs, MKVs etc with subtitles out of SMB / CIFS shares and not through DLNA?
Thanks!

The times don't seem to match up. I was back on around 7 or so. If netflix was down, I don't think my Roku box would have worked (my wife was using it in another room and I didn't hear any howls.....). I haven't mustered up the courage to call the "higher" level of support. I'm afraid I'll get Ash from "Alien".

It's a robot. Ash is a god damn robot.......

Interesting question, how would you share it with the player? The onscreen menu is only dlna.... you mean plug it directly into the USB?

All,

TheNerds have this unit for a pretty good price.

Are they a trusted company off fleabay?

ive got the 770 and based on feedback here, id like to get the 780.

guile,

thank you for your feedback!

no the 770 does not give me any issues. im basically a tech addict and wants the latest model... hence my reason for getting the 780.

ive had the 770 since launch... ive probably played a total of ZERO discs in it. I have used the netflix function.. but not ever used the drive. it sits in another room on a display that i use when im in that room (the room is a music and video editing/production suite).

i do like the skype function on the 780....

so was wondering if TheNerds on fleabay were a decent company...

I am with you. I bought the Sony BDP-S570 to go with my Sony LX900 TV in 2010. Love both! But I also bought the Sony BDP-S780 and paired this with my LX900 TV in 2011 and am glad I did. S780 = 16 Bit Video Processor, Skype and some excellent streaming video apps like Vudo.

I've had a good sales transaction from The Nerds in the recent past...

thank you for your feedback also!

i went ahead and grabbed it at best buy today.... impatient..

The new Sony 3D Experience Streaming app on the BD-S780. For those of you like me, waiting for this new 3D streaming app for our BD-S780's it came out today August 31, 2011. While this app provides only 3D "clips"/samples--at least its more "free" 3D content for you to look at. Enjoy!

YW! Once you get your BDP-S780 installed--check out the previous pages in this forum--you may pick up some relevant tips/info. And when you are ready, let m eknow what you think...

Lately my S570 is behaving erratically so I'm strongly considering sending it back for repair. I posted the concern I had with the Iron Man 2 disc earlier in the Official S570 thread. Basicaly, there's a flicker that occurs when Tony Stark is about to exit the door after speaking with Ivan Vanko, a.k.a., Whiplash (approximately 40 min, 10 seconds into movie). It flickers once, you lose picture for 1 second, the picture returns, but picture format is widened bit more, looking distorted, then you lose picture for 1 more second, then picture returns to normal. Problem is still there, even after upgrading to the latest firmware. Here's my other issues; Sometimes I will play a random blu ray and the audio will suddenly cut off for about 2 seconds at the beginning of the movie for no reason. It never did this before. Last night, I tried to play Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the player was not able to read the disc. It just froze for a long time. Pressing the stop and eject button did not do any good. I had to unplug the player. After waiting about 3 minutes or so, I plugged the player back in and the movie played fine.
I'm thinking of upgrading to the S780, however, are any of you guys experiencing issues such as mine? Anyone have problems playing the Iron Man 2 disc?

Audio: I still have my S570 and connected it to a Sony HX820 TV. I am not having any of the problems you are describing. I do keep up with the updates--and to date, haven't experienced these issues. I agree with you and would get it serviced--hopefully your system is still under warranty?

yeah i read this thread from cover to cover.. thats what pushed me over the edge..





and where is this 3D app? is it through the Qriocity function? and do you need a sony TV to use it? ive got a 3D display.. just asking. thank you...

EDIT: ooh i see. its under video content..

ok, i fired up vudu (totally rocks! HDX??? forget about it! ) and since this player was new they gave me the credit for a free movie.

so i watched "Unknown" with Liam Neeson (never heard of this movie before tonight) in HDX. I have the 780 on a wireless connection and the router is in another room.. so about 70 feet and straight thru one wall.

i figured vudu would be a great way to test how robust (or not?) the wireless connection is.

well it never hiccuped ONCE! not at all. solid locked in the entire movie.. even when i FFW a few times and paused. no hiccups.

so for me the wireless is working superbly.

so now ill likely sell the other 770 i have in another room and upgrade to the 780.

and a bonus! someone mentioned/asked about a keyboard...

well i have a Motorola Xoom tablet running Android. i downloaded the app to control the player and low and behold it works great. the lay out is nice and roomy.

plus when you need to type something in, the app on the tablet pops up the keyboard on the app... you type in and hit OK and instantly what you typed populates on the players screen. i used this method to sign in to a couple apps (hulu, netflix, etc..).

so i was all set in my mind to purchase a dedicated usb keyboard as someone mentioned earlier here.. no need to now it would seem...

Great! I knew you would like the BDP-S780. I agree Vudu is superb with full 1080P and Dolby Digital + sound. I don't think any other streaming app comes close (Did you know Walmart owns Vudu?)

So what's the big difference "user experience" wise between the 770 and
780? Vudu and wirless capabilities?

VUDU w/ their 24fps has been unparalleled in picture quality compared to other services on my display...

i had NO IDEA vudu was owned by wallyworld! get outta here!

im really diggin this player. i admit i didnt use the 770 much but i plan to use this one more. ive moved it into the main room here so it will now take over movie duty that the fat first gen ps3 used to do.

webcams: i saw there was a c260 (an updated model from the c250) and i ASSumed the 260 would be compatible. welp seems its not. the cam will produce an image but it is unusable. artifacts, "squiggly" lines, etc etc. ill return it and grab the microsoft lifeCam Studio. cool looking camera. will report back if that works or no.

dag-- walmart and vudu??? remarkable...

EDIT: OOH i just watched another movie on vudu in hqx (source code00never knew it existed) and the quality was amazing coming from the player. again wireless connection--never hiccuped stuttered...nothing... i plan to watch another one tomorrow...

maybe ill break out inception (i actually own this one! ) and try it in 3D...

I was able to get the LifeCam studio working as soon as I plugged it in--but it went into auto focus each time I moved. ( Perhaps because my seating area is about 14' from the TV/camera so the camera was struggling to keep focused over 14'). As you probably read in this forum I ended up with the Sony Skype camera CMUBR100 which seems to handle the distance very well.

3D: Let me know what you think about the 3D conversion on this player.

While I am still sore over the fact that Avatar 3D is exclusive to Panasonic, I do own the Avatar blu-ray and used the BDP-S780 to convert to 3D and compared that to using the TV to convert this movie to 3D. I "think" I noticed that the BDP-S780 did a better job of 3D conversion.

Of course I can't wait until I can get my hands on the Avatar 3D disk for a normal price until then I am pretty okay with the BDP-S780 3D conversion.

There is IMO a stunning "reference" 3D movie called "Grand Canyon Adventure--River at Risk" ( IMAX). I think it sells for $15-16 on line. A truly amazing 3D experience--this is the one I use to show off my 3D toys to my friends.

My .2 Cents....

I currently own the S770. Bought it back in January. When the S780 came out I decided to give it a try since it was Sony's new model. IMO, the S770 is the better player overall. The S780 could have been a killer player, but Sony decide to stripped it down by removing some features like the Internal memory, and the back lit remote, and worse of all, they downgraded the wireless antenna, the range was shortenen and it no longer has a dual antenna effectiveyl limiting the compatability with some older routers . I know this may not be a deal breaker for evrybody, but the fact remains Sony stripped it down. Design also suffered as I feel the S770 looks a lot nicer and has a better build quality, it really feels like a premium player. In terms of PQ and AQ, I think they are both very close in terms of BD playback, even though the S780 has super bit mapping, which the S770 lacks, I truly did not see any improvements over the S770. In fact, I preffer a bit better the PQ and AQ of the S770. To me eyes, it looks a bit more refined, sharper than the S780. AQ, I think is also better on the S770. Low dialog scenes are easier, clearer to hear and the overall sound is a bit more punchier. In terms of speed, I think the S770 is a bit faster, and this is because the S780 takes longer to boot up(both players with the quick start off) and when I say longer, I mean a good 5 to 7 seconds longer than the S770. Disc loading time are about the same, but the S770 just boots up quicker. I think Sony really took a step backward there.

Conclusion - The S780 is a great player, no questions about that. It has some great features and is priced right. You can't go wrong with this player. However, me personally, I just preffer the S770 for the reaons I mentioned above.....

It will come down to personal preference and the rest of the system.

I don't need wireless connectivity, internal memory or a (partially) backlit remote. In my system the 780 gives a noticeable improvement for DVD upscaling while Blu-Ray picture is the same - other than the benefits of SBM of course. Sound quality is the same - no surprise there for me.

So the 780 is definitely the better than the 770 in my system.

im going to have to jump on this bandwagon also.

cortiz, your posts were well received by me as i was weighing in on what to do. I really enjoyed your posts and they played a big roll in my decision. however since im a tech junkie i ended up getting the 780. i still have the 770 though...

there is also mention of certain features that are missing..

--from dual antennas to one: i can see Sony looking at the overall demographic which most people using a wired connection. its easier to setup for the average consumer. also most peoples' routers are in the same room as their AV setup (most) so if they were to use the wireless mode, the router would be in the same room so bandwidth limited to one receive antenna in the 780 may not make a difference. I know for me the router is about 70+ feet away and through a wall and after watching 2 vudu HDX flicks thus far ive not had one major issue with wireless.

--the lack of internal memory. i dont see this is a biggie either. one can purchase thumb sticks at gas stations just about and a 1 gb stick is super cheap now.

i think sony, in deciding how to cut costs but also deliver more performance in areas that matter (PQ, AQ, etc) to their newer model decided these were two areas they could "comprimise" on.

as far as the 770s "more substantial" weight of the unit.. well... im not holding the player whilst im using it so thats not much of a concern. electronics are getting smarter and smaller so i expect the technology to increase whilst weight of components decrease.

i know i know.. most of the members here are old school and prefer the heft of electronics to symbolize quality.. kind of like a Rolex oyster perpetual watch on ones arm... i totally understand that, however you cant deny that the 780, even in its reduced weight and chassis design, still rocks AND adds features (skype, SMB) over the previous models... added more features and reduced the weight...

just my observations and i am not meaning to sound disrespectful or mean. just want to say a different side of the coin.

Okay guys. I think I can top all of you..I own the original Sony Blu-ray player the very first BDP-S1. Talk about substantial--this thing weighs more than some modern LED TVs. It came with a substantial $999 price tag as well !

Since there was no way to connect this bad boy to the internet and no USB input I use to download and burn the updates to a dvd on my PC and then update the player. Likewise it took over a week to boot-up and start a blu-ray disk HA HA--but it is BIG, Blue and Beautiful ...and will probably last for another ten years ( as a book-end on my bookshelf)

The Bdp-S780 and no doubt the 580 and 770 at a fraction of the cost of the S1 are light-years ahead of my BDP-S1. Heck the first time I loaded a blu-ray disk on the 570 I almost burned my fingers with the disk disk load and startup speed of these new models !

I am trying to find a suitable webcam to use the SKYPE function on my BDP -S780 Blu Ray player. Now, Sony's webcam ( cmd BR-100 ) is around $150 (C'mon !). Has anyone been successful in using other webcam (with a built in microphone) to Skype ? I see one member has tried the Microsoft Lifecam Cinema (?). Anyone tried other webcam on their SONY Blu Ray please ...if so, exactly which make/model number please.

Cheers !

J&R is selling the S780 for $195, however, today they offered an additional $15 off with a labor day coupon. I couldn't pass this deal up, so I bought one earlier today. Is anyone using a particular USB flash drive for the S780? Will any USB flash drive do the job?

I bought the Kingston high-speed 2.0 8GB from Amazon $10...