Sony BDP-S1 BD Player: USER REPORTS Here - Page 3

I got the impression YCbCr was only for use with component. When I set that while viewing through HDMI-DVI, my screen turned pink. I've been using RGB 16-235, which allows me to see BTB.

Regarding KOH, I think the darker look is intentional, especially regarding the first part of the film before we get to Jerusalem. Also, I've looked at several movies I am very familiar with (TFE BD and ROTS SD-DVD to name two), and both looked correct regarding black level. Also popped X-men 3 in briefly and thought it looked correct as well.

I just got one from Best Buy and I noticed that the box had double tape on the seal. First the standard tape then a much wider one. I was wondering if this unit might have been re-pack. The remote looks like it might have been used but not sure. The second tape was not even on the box tight. I also do not feel that the picture quality is as sharp as it should be. I have it set ti 1080I for my Sony 50 inch KDE-955 plasma (using HDMI cable).

Did any of you see double tape on the boxes or was my unit a repack especially with the question of if it is performing correctly. I have seen Ice age and Eight below, RV and Superman an they just do not seem to have the pop/sharp image in the store.


I would like others comments to help isolate if it is really a repact or just a bad unit. Should I return it or wait. Thanks



TC

They all have the double clear tape...mine was the same way....

I was just in Best Buy today and they just received more in today and they all had single tapes on them. All I want to do is make sure that I do not get a repack? Why would they have double tape on them any way? That means that some one opened the unit after it was initially sealed. One good explanation might be that the installed some new firmare and now the units coming in have it installed as they were built. Any thought.

The whole reason for this concern is less than expected picture quality that I am observing and maybe the unit has a problem. Any suggestions for testing the unit or changong settings or set up.

I appreciate your comments.

TC

Are you sure that the discs you're viewing actually have top notch video quality?

I have tried Superman Returns, Eight below, RV and Ice Age. They look good but not great. I get on some cable programming with more detail on Comcast HiDef (certain ones) than the Player. I am not sure if it is working right. These titles look great in the store demo's. I even saw the Ice age disk being played on a Sony LCD and I set it to 1080I to see how it performed and it looked alot better than MY set up. I have a Sony 50 inch KDE-50XS955 PLASMA .

Any suggestions?

TC

Further adventures: Tonight I watched Return of the Jedi. Last night the movie was Xmen 3 output at 1080i Direct over HDMI at 16-235 color space. Tonight with Jedi the unit correctly reset itself to 480i Direct output BUT I had to go into the system menu and reset color space to 16-235. Menu said it was 16-235 but when clicked on it reset and the change was obvious. Q$%&*)(!!. The unit also froze again at 1 second past the halfway point of the movie. I don'y know wherther this was the layer change point or not. What's a real pisser is that 480i over HDMI into my VP looks wonderful relatively speaking. More detail in backgrounds, tectures of clothing, and better color.

anyones thoughts on what might be going on would be welcome. My guess is that while the unit supports 480i over HDMI the firmware is buggy and doesn't completely follow thru.

Regarding the tape. Mine has 2 layers. The bottom is slighly narrower than the top layer which is placed directly over it. I had to look closely to notice that there were 2 layers. Finally and I am not trying to be an A__hole but Sony is not recognised as producing good PQ plasmas. They never produced the "glass" themselves. Their LCDs have better reps. The Sony looks great on my 65" Panny plasma.

I went up to BB today and they all have the double looking tape...I asked the Manager and he said it was probably from when they re-opened to add the "Fifth Element" DVD inside...Kinda makes sense...You need to watch "Black Hawk Down" and the "Haunted Mansion" and let us know what you think of the PQ...most blu-ray movies look a bit soft to me, but there are a few that look excellent. They will be getting better and better...Be patient or live without.

Your display has an 1366 x 768 native resolution. Have you tried setting the player to output in 720p? Setting it to 1080i is forcing your TV to deinterlace and scale the image to it's native resolution. Some TVs aren't good at doing that and by setting it to 720p your display just has to scale the image an additional 48 lines.

When I set it to 720P the picture really looks soft, more then 1080i.

The Plasma looks very sharp on some HD cable programs and is a great set. Blew aware ther Pioneer when i bought it 1.5 years ago. Sony used NEC glass in their sets which has great detail.

I am thinking that it may set this particular unit.

The explanation of the double tape to put the disc in makes sense but what about all the others that have the single tape (just received today) and they have the disc. Maybe Sony had to update the firmware in these units before the ship the first batch.

What abour any adjustments in the set up likr the HDMI setting/ RGB setting?

Appreciate all the comments. Please advise.

TC

What's the manufactured date listed on your player? The double tape could most likely be due to the factory opening up previously sealed units to make a change or an update, but most likely we will never know.

Have you calibrated your player with either DVE or Avia? These aren't the greatest for HD, but they should get you closer to the right settings until the HD versions of the calibration discs are released.

Is the player currently outputing RGB or YCbCr? Try the other setting and see what happens to the quality of the video.

Where do you find the manufactored date of the unit?

I have calibrated it to my eye only making sure cintrast id on the low side and color are not oversaturated.

I appreciate your help.

I have been playing with the YCBCR SETTING AND USING rgb (0-255) and it looks sharpe. Do you have any idea what this is and what it does. Should I not use this adjustment?

I would appreciate suggestions on this. Thanks.

TC

The manufactured date should be listed on the back of the player.

Do you have a calibration disc? If so I'd suggest using that to get better results. If not and you have Netflix you may want to rent it to tide you over until the HD version is released.

By using YCbCr and RGB you are simply selecting the color space being used. Does one look better than the other?

The manual for the BDP-S1 recommends the following:

Y, Cb, Cr
-Select this when connecting to an HDMI device.

RGB (16-235)
-Select this if colors appear overly rich when set to RGB (0-255).

RGB (0-255)
-Gives brighter colors and deeper black. Select this if colors are weak.

I to had similar problems with sd discs, when pirates 2 new disc was played,also on a panic room super bit movie it froze complete and I had to hold the players power button down untill it shut down.I called sony and wanted too advise them in order to help them make a good player into a great player. I was told this was to be mainly for bluray playback and may cause sd freeze up,I said this unacceptable and asked to speak to a supervisor[I have over 500 sd movies,10 bluray],the supervisor came on the phone and we where cut off by poor phone reception, no call back either. SO i dont whether to keep trying play back or exchange my unit for another. I also have the green blob problem on my kds-r50xbr but thats another story,7 months old,3200 dollars later. to be continued

The Superman Returns DVD is among the worst lookng DVDs of a big-time movie I've ever seen. It is LOADED with artifacts. It's a long movie, maybe they had to compress it too much to get it on a single disc. But if the same crew did the Blu-Ray transfer, it too may be totally hosed. SR was shot in digital cinema so it SHOULD make a great transfer, and it looked perfectly fine in a IMAX theater, but the DVD was such a stinker, it wouldn't surprise me if the BR disc is hosed too.

This information is really misleading (Sony's fault for not being more complete), you can't just interchange these color space settings at will or you'll get something completely unintended. Y,Cb,Cr is "normal" home video whether HDMI or component... they both use the same color scheme. Y is luminance (the black & white part of the image) while Cb and Cr are color difference signals used to produce all the color in the image (yes, 2 signals for 3 colors!). RGB is just what it implies... red, green, blue. Computer-based imaging systems set black at 0 and white at 255. Television playback systems that rely on RGB use a truncated 16-235 range of digital values to code each color. This was really a dumb move, but it is what it is and if you use 0-255 when the device is expecting 16-235 you'll never get images that look anywhere close to right. So unless your projector says use RGB 0-255 or RGB 16-235, you should be using the YCC setting.

Ice Age 2 & Ant Bully look terrific!

btw, Miami Vice looks terrible on HDDVD.

I am hoping to pick one up today. MY local CC does not have on in stock,, only web orders..

Damn! I was hoping that I was the only one with this problem. The player puts out great SD PQ over 480i/HDMI. To restart disks I hit stop and play a few times. That seems to work although in Jedi it started up again in fast forward! I plan to play a series of DVDs without actually watching closely to see if this continues. If it does, the unit goes back to BB to exchange for another Sony. Hopefully the 30 day return policy will apply to the replacement. If that is defective also, user feedback on the Pioneer should be available. If the Pioneer has the same problem, I'll probably end up with the Panny and NO 480i/HDMI!!

Other Readers: I find it a bit unusual that other owners have not responded yea or nay. Usually people chime in when they have no problems. Thanks

Well aren't BDs mastered in the YCbCr color space like DVDs, as opposed to RGB? If that's so, then I'd agree you'd want to set the output to YCC as well, so you're not doing any in-player colorspace conversions which, from what I understand, can be a crapshoot. I know my iScan VP30 does a fine & accurate job of YCC -> RGB, but I can't vouch for the Sony.

Now, that being said, does the BDP-S1's YCC output setting pass BTB and WTW, or do you have to use RGB to get this?

I just can't get past the impression that RGB 16-235 is a (small) bit over-staturated, color wise. Perhaps I'm backward on this and the YCC is under saturated, and I need to adjust something in the rest of my display chain? Better eyes than mine will be the judge, I suspect. Where are the Secrets guys with a full-on benchmark report when you need 'em, eh?

The documentation does suck, IMHO. Must be the translation from the original Sanskrit.



-John

John: I have to do a HDMI/DVI conversion to input to my Lumagen HDP. Using DVE the only way I can get BTB is to use 16-235. The Lumagen is applieing 444 RGB to the input signal. IMO the resulting PQ is excellent for both BD and DVD. The only problem I am having is that every time the player is turned off with 480i out over HDMI, the unit apparently resets itself to I am guessing 0-255!

I bought and installed mine. I looks great.

I cant get the menu pic to show correct.

I have played with the settings and it either cuts off in the 4:3 or way to wide in the 16:9.


Anybody else having this issue?

I have watched quite a few different SD DVDs, all with no problems on the BDP-S1. I watched the entire Richard Donner version of Superman II the other day, and it played fine. No locks up, no freezes...

FYI - I am connected to a Pioneer Elite PRO940HD using HDMI. For Blu-ray discs, the Pio sees the HDMI feed as 1080p/24 (very nice). For SD, the Pio sees the HDMI feed as 1080i. My Pio is not a 1080p display, but it does support 1080p/24 via its HDMI...

Regards,

Doug

==================================

What are you connected to and how?

For example, I am connected to a Pio Elite Pro940HD using HDMI. This allows me to simply have the Pio do its auto processing, as it detects what is on the HDMI input. For other inputs (e.g., component) you will likely have to "tell" your TV what format you are sending to it from your Sony...

Regards,

Doug

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For any one who isn't satisfied with the visual appearance of all the BD movies you have watched, try this.

Take a little time and setup the black level, brightness and color space between you HDTV's settings and the BDP-S1's settings.

By this I mean, put a BD movie in the player and at the main menu hit: 7,6,6,9 Enter. This will bring up a color bar with a gray scale at the bottom. Check the gray scale at the bottom with each video mode (Standard, Theater, Bright, Custom 1, 2 and 3) and adjust your Tv's video modes and the Custom video modes until you get the propper gray scale. You should only have to do this initial setup once.

Now, here's the trick. After the initial ballancing act. When you want to watch a movie, go to the 7,6,6,9 Enter color bar and check the gray scale. Then just switch the BDP-S1 players video mode to (Standard, Theater, Bright or Custom 1,2,3) for the correct gray scale. This takes all of about 1 minute.

I have done this and all the movies I have watched look amazing. Even "Fifth Element".

I know that taking 1 minute to set the propper color space seems like a lot of time and trouble but, hey, how much instant gratification does a person need? You're going to be watching a movie for 2 hours. You might as well really enjoy it.

I have it going with HDMI into and Anthem Avm-50.. Talked to Sony for 45 min they dont know either. They said they are going to call me back.

Thanks for the reply. Played both I Robot and Men in Black today and neither one froze up. However, I didn't watch every minute so there may have been so stuttering that I missed. Perhaps my fast forwarding thru most of Attack of the Clones at 3x last night lossened something up in the disk transport and fixed the problem. Keeping my fingers crossed.

SET-UP
I have the BDP-S1, but no HD-DVD player. I connect the BDP-S1 to my HP M6580N DLP via HDMI. The HP is to supposed to take 1080P/24 via HDMI, so I have that enabled in the Sony menu. (I am not really techy enough to know what the 24hz thing means, but they tell me it is good that both my TV and BR player can do it.)

PICTURE
I have watched T2, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, and Syriana on BR. I owned all 4 on SD, and knew them reasonably well. All 4 showed major improvements in PQ. 3 things leap out at me when I watch BR films:

1. Lots more detail. You can see all the pinstripes on the suits in great detail in Syriana. I was really impressed at how much more one can simply SEE. The image is much richer. That may also be a function of the size of my TV.

2. Far greater 3-dimensionality. The images look 'deeper' or more window-like.

3. Colors. They are better defined, blur less, 'pop' more, etc.

(Syriana I thought particulary looked just great on Blu-ray. It was a major leap over the SD. Grain issues hurt 5E, Stargate and T2, but that's not the player's fault.)

Upscaling seems fine. Not really different than my previous upscaling Sony DVD player (DVPNC85HB).

INTERFACE
As far as the interface between the BDP-S1 and the MD6580N, it went smoothly. I am using HDMI, and I have had not issues. Fanboys may not like that the lack of lots of tweaks. But this is hardly a deal-breaker. It is a first-gen player on a new format, so you have to live with a basic user interface until the format ripens, or you have to keep waiting. And I got sick of that after 6 months.

I have one odd thing to report though. I have 24hz enabled. But when I set video format to Auto (in which the BDP-S1 plays at the best resolution the TV can demonstrate), I get clipping in the image. But when, I manually set the video format to 1080p, it then looks good.

So here is my question for other BDP-S1 owners: In order to get 1080p/24, do I have to have BOTH "24 Ouput" enabled AND "Video Format" set to Auto, OR if I enable 24hz, but set the video format to 1080p, will I still get 1080p/24? Take a look at pages 45-46 of the manual and tell me what you think. I can't figure it out.

OTHER
1. Remote is kinda clunky; looks like a leftover from 'I Love the 80s.' And for $1000, it should be backlit. But that said, it works fine. My Logitech Xbox Harmony remote doesn't have the codes for the BDP-S1 (yet?). Grrr. Anyone know when Logitech will get on top of this ?

2. The response time on everything is slower - on/off, open/close, FF & rewind, etc. The firmware update next year will probably improve this. It is a pain, since we are so used to SD-DVD player speed, but it is certainly no deal-breaker.

3. The lack of CD and other support doesn't bug me much. If you are reading the AVS forum, you probably have several other disc playing devices in your set-up. so just use those. I agree, the lack of CD support is kinda ridiculous, but if you are spending $1k on a DVD player, you already got enough CD players .

4. I am very pleased overall. I found the improvement in PQ so dramatic, I went out and bought 10-15 BRs, because they are so much better to watch. Now Sony just needs to improve the catalog fo available titles. Who wants to watch clunkers like Sahara or Ultraviolet on $5k in home theater equipment?

I believe you have to have "24p output" set to on and then either have "Auto" or "Direct" set for Video Format. That works for me with my Pioneer Elite PRO-FDHD1 and the BDP-S1 to get 1080p/24.

What exactly do you mean by "clipping in the image"?