Official 2012 Sony BDP-S790 Thread - Page 13

Great, I did a software per the players notification and now I have a paper weight. Will not respond to anything or power on even after unplugging for a couple of minutes.

Sorry Dr. Miller but it is not easily compared. I really can't say I see any difference for 1080P feed or 4K feed and this is only a little easier to compare than separate players. I don't understand how joerod is able to say one player has a better picture than the other. He must have a much better memory for video than I do.

If I wanted to compare a blu-ray disc I would have to hook up my Panasonic player(one hdmi to my Sony and other hdmi to my D2 for audio), insert the disc and wait for it to load, then fast forward through any previews, start the movie and find the passage I want to compare. After watching the passage I would remove the disc, then I would have to hook up the Sony in a similar manner and load the disc and find the passage again. Since the blu-ray looks excellent on both players it is hard to remember exactly how one looks better than the other.

I don't have 3d or am not using the two hdmi outputs . Hopefully another member can verify for you.

Thanks much for the reply! I do sympathize with trying to make such comparisons, and my guess is that it would be hard to see any diff.

But I guess I don't understand why it would be necessary to use your Panasonic BD player. Can't you choose on the 790 to output 1080p or 4K (upconverted from the 1080p BD disk)? I'm just curious as to whether one can tell any diff from the 790 sending 1080p to the Sony VW1000--and having it upconvert it to 1080p--or sending 4K (upconverted from 1080p) from the 790. I.e., does the 790 or the VW1000 do a better job of upconverting 1080p to 4K. (Again, I'll bet it will be hard to tell!)

Hopefully you can get a hold of Sony and do a reset to get the unit going again. Has anyone else updated their players or is there a reset procedure in the owners manual?
Let us know how you makeout...

Friendly poster here! I try to keep my ear to the ground on whats new. I personally believe the market is due to be shaken up by whats considered by some to be entry level gear, having said that, info is vital and is one of the reasons we come to sites like AVSF for info not found among the general public. The new Sony is no less than what I would expect after Oppo raised the bar on both ends of what to expect for our hard earned dollars. I'm sure the streaming is great among other things it does well! Oppo's players appear in multiple forums of various features and topics from 2ch or multi-ch,sacd, usb,bluray,flac hi-rez files redbook, netflix and just about any format you can name more so than any other player on the market. Keep in mind, the Oppo was compared with the Sony here first by yourself and many others( I count one guy in the OPPO forum to mention the Sony) because of it being the standard to which all others or judged and you guys couldn't have choosen better

All about the enjoyment in the end!

I plan on calling SONY TODAY - I find it hard to believe they didn't
TRY this. It seems like a Brain Dead Mistake.

I'm waiting on Amazon.

I can run both at the same time. That's how I do comparisons. I have for year's now...
And I did one this weekend with a room of guests and they all agreed the 790 was superior. The verdict was overwhelming with 3D but still with 2D (though not as strong).

Actually the Pionner 09FD, Denon DVD A1, Sony 5000ES and a couple others were the first elite players. Oppo changed the game for them. Now Sony is changing the game for oppo and the rest. Full circle...

I'm mostly interested in 2D Blu-ray. I enjoyed your review and your review was the main reason I purchased the 790. I don't regret the purchase as I have another location where I wanted a streaming player with the Vudu app and the Sony is a very nice player. I just don't see it being any better than my Panasonic 310 for this purpose.

When you compare Blu-ray discs could you be a bit more specific as to how you actually do this? Are you using 2 identical discs and have the players connected to HDMI 1 & 2 of your Sony projector?

As someone largely interested in the SD upscaling side of things, is this the player to beat in this price range? Though I've moved to buying BD, I have a large DVD collection and SD video on a DLNA server that I would like to get the best viewing experience from.

I've used the PS3 in the past and, flipping through the manual, notice quite a few similarities in the picture settings. How does the the S790 compare to the PS3 in terms of DVD upscaling? Better? Same?...worse?

Thanks!

I am wondering if the Film 2 is just better setting for how your display is currently calibrated. I would think Noise Reduction would improve clarity but not necessarily colors and blacks. Did you calibrate your display settings for the S390/S590 and do the same for the S790 when evaluating the colors, blacks?

Can someone test if the 790 can play big MKV files from a network drive w/Samba sharing as some other players do?
I would like to get rid of the WD TV Live (which is a great player) and avoid DLNA.

Why haven't I got any emails/PMs? I own both units. Just kidding all. Please don't email or PM me.

Perhaps joerod can verify this for you. I believe he's got 3d and using the two hdmi outputs. Joerod?

No I did no special display calibration for these players.

3D - Blu-Ray is fine.

3D - Streaming is BROKEN.

I reported it to sony. It took forever to get a 2nd Level Tech.

I asked Joe to check it.

Not supported. Haven't we covered this before? The Sony players cannot see network drives regardless of the file system used. If you are looking for this, try the new 2012 Panasonic players.

They can only see directories and files via DLNA, or direct USB connection (NTFS & FAT32)

And since we're on the subject. "Big MKV" files can mean anything. You need to be more specific with your question. MKV is merely a container.

The Sony players will play back AVC Mpeg 4 natively. VC-1 is not supported natively.

has anyone tried the 2d to 3d conversion option on this unit?

Have they started selling the 790s yet? If so, where do you buy them from? Crutchfield, BestBuy nor H.H. Gregg had them for sale.

If they are not for sale, when do you think they might go on sale?

Thanks!

I got mine next day from J&R - Also ABT has them as does Sony Style.

... and Sony Rewards has them for $224.99 (with a Sony Visa Card). Sony rewards generally ships them out in 5 days, but you do get 2 day free shipping with UPS.

I recently returned a Panasonic DMP-BDP310 -which is not a 2012 model- that promised to play all kind of files both via DLNA and from a network drive, but it did not deliver. I have really tried to make it work with no luck.
Some files can be played using DLNA but any MKV file bigger than a few MB gets stuck after a few seconds, no matter the codec was used.
By the way, every file that the DMP-BDP310 refused to play, played fine on my WD TV Live, both via DLNA and SMB. SMB is way faster in my experience and takes much less CPU than DLNA, so I am just trying to stay away from it, as performance strongly depends on the server and transcoding.

Will the 2012 Panasonics be better in this respect? I do not really care, as I need a player with 2 HDMi outputs.

Thanks for your reply. You really helped me to take the Sony out of my list.

R

I would post your question in the appropriate Panasonic thread.

The Only 2012 Panasonic with Dual HDMI is the DMP-BDT500.

It is way more money and should be released in MAY.

If you get a chance to make this comparison after calibration would be awesome since you have all three models. It may be that after calibration all the x90 players produce the same 1080P/streaming picture quality, or it may be that the S790 is always better. Your findings would help people decide which player they want to get.

I would however the S390 and S590 has now being returned (and actually so has the S790) .... so I have nothing currently !

Had a couple of issues with the S790, which I described in this thread, and will get a replacement tomorrow. Nothing earth shattering and if anything I think it wasn't a hardware issue anyway, more firmware. That said, I thought its best to be on the safe side ... and could help other later too.

As far as a comparison, I had the S590 and S790 for a short period where I attempted to make some comparisons between the two, which I described. They are subtle indeed so I wouldn't necessarily read too much into it. I would weigh up some of the other features of the S790 v s590 and decide if the extra ~$100 is worth it to you.

Another point is, that the IP Noise reduction Pro setting only applies when the Sony internet content playback engine is used. So applies to most content other than Netflix and VUDU, where they use their own engines. So if Netflix and VUDU is all you use, this setting wouldn't even come into play. Worth noting, and something I realize I didn't make clear earlier.

Yes and yes. I have two discs playing at the same time. I also use test patterns. More importantly other people sometimes get an A/B comparison.