Product Description plays Blu-ray high-definition discs (selectable output resolution: 1080p signals available through HDMI output only; 720p/1080i signals available through HDMI or component video) * built-in audio decoding to PCM for Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS * bitstream audio output for Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD, and DTS-HD Master Audio * BD-Java interactive capability * BRAVIA Sync for control of compatible Sony TVs and components via HDMI *
Save your money, this product is not worth purchasing!August 28, 2008 I purchased this product with hopes of finding out what all of the "blu-ray disc" hype was about. I bought the Sony BDP-S350 directly from Sony style and was anxious to see the HD quality that has been advertised with the blu-ray disc technology. I own several HD tvs and decided to match it up with my Sony Bravia. Of course, I hadn't invested in any blu-ray discs yet so I was eager to see how it would transform my current dvd collection into a near hd quality as advertised.
I immediately unpacked the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player, hooked it up and put it through my tests. My first complaint was it seem to take forever to boot up before the disc drawer would open. However, I waited patiently, eventually it opened and I put in the Transformers dvd. And to my delight it provided me with great hd picture quality. I then tried an old movie, "Get Shorty" that I recently purchased new! The results this time were quite disappointing. In fact, the picture looked more analog than digital. It resembled a tv picture using rabbit ears for an antenna.
I was completely baffled as to the difference in the two picture qualities. I figured to continue my test by playing a recently recorded dvd+rw disc. I went up stairs to get the dvd+rw disc, then to my disbelief my test came to an abrupt end. The disc drawer never opened again!! The Sony BDP-S350 only blinked the message "wait". I went away for 45 minutes, came back the the "wait" message was still blinking on the face of the disc player. I called Sony tech support and for 1 solid hour, the support person tried everything in his handbook and could not get the player's disc drawer to reopen! I even packed the player and then unpacked it the next day with hopes that the player would somehow reset itself over night. No such luck!
Did I have a defective machine, absolutely. However that doesn't account for its performance when it was working. I subsequently purchased a Panasonic DMR-EZ27 up conversion HDMI 1080p recorder and matched it up with my Sony Bravia. I immediately played the movie "Get Shorty" and was able to get the HD quality picture I expected to get with the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player. (Plus the Panasonic DMR-EZ27 gives me the capability to record).
In conclusion, I love my Sony tvs. However my past experience with the Sony DVD recorders and now the Sony Blu-ray disc player has been quite frustrating. Who wants a Sony dvd recorder that won't record an HBO movie because it can't distinguish "protected" content from an ordinary home recording?? And as far as the "blu-ray disc hype", I've lost my inquisitiveness.
I give the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player "1 star'. The star is for it being a Sony. Usually, I love my Sony products but MY ADVICE IS SAFE YOUR MONEY, THIS PRODUCT HAS FLAWS!
Improvement over previous modelsAugust 28, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The BDP-S350 has much faster startup speeds and is smaller in size than past models. I've had it for a couple weeks and there have been no freezes, a problem I've had with other players.
One thing I don't like about it is that the TV display does not show what chapter the movie is in. It shows the title, but who cares about that? And the front panel display doesn't show the chapter either. It seems like some technician screwed up and thought the title is what people would want to see, instead of the chapter. It would also be nice to show, like most players do, the elapsed time within the chapter.
Also, the front panel display is very small, so if you are sitting ten feet away from the unit, forget about using it for information. Use the display button on the remote and see the info on the screen.
It doesn't do as well with upconversion of SD movies as my Toshiba HD-A20 player, so I will continue to use that one for SDs.
Does great with the big things, such as picture quality of BD discs, audio and reliability.
Some little things I like: (1) you are able to display on the screen the total time remaining of the movie - not all players do that on screen, (2) it remembers where you left off on all SD movies and some BD movies. With some BD movies though, once you hit stop you have to start all over again from the beginning, including all the copyright notices, etc. I'm not sure why that varies from BD disc to disc. (3) It has a handy dandy chapter search feature so you can go directly to whatever chapter you want, quickly.
There are all sorts of interesting additional features which I haven't fully exlpored yet, but will over time. All in all I'm happy with it - I just hope the do a firmware upgrade soon so it will be able to display chapter number and elapsed time within the chapter. But lack of that feature isn't a deal killer for me.
As Good As ExpectedAugust 27, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This player works great. I've watched Hollywood produced blue-ray movies on this player and a blue-ray movie I burned myself using an LG GGW-H20L blue-ray burner on my computer using Pinnacle Studio 12 movie making software. The only negative I can see is that after spending over $250 for the player, it seems kind of cheap for Sony to still require that you buy one of their camera memory cards in order to fully use the Internet download features of the player.
Faster than the Panasonic DMPBD30kAugust 27, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have always been a Sony fan up until it was time to get a blu ray player. I leaned towards the Panasonic DMPBD30K a few months ago since Sony's bluray just did not do it for me. I decided to purchase the panasonic bluray as an interim while Sony worked out its quirks with the current ones. Alas, the Sony BDP-S350 came out, thought about it, do I really want to sacrifice selling the pani bluray at a loss of $150 even though I was very happy with it? It just did not seem right having an all Sony system except for the bluray player. I took the plunge, got the Sony bluray and I am very happy with it. Load time was faster than the panasonic. You can also adjust the sync using the Sony bd remote which saves me plenty of time. As for the picture, I use Planet Earth as my guide. With the pani, there are images that blur or pixelate a lot even after upgrading the software. NOT the case with Sony which delivers those images without blurring or "snow effect" it simply plays the movie AS IS but flawlessly. Very happy, especially the compact size.
Four steps forward, two steps backAugust 25, 2008 2 out of 4 found this review helpful
As most will say - the picture is glorious. This is my first exposure to blu-ray players, it IS a small footprint. Read others for the positives, these are problems/issues I have in my first week:
Main Point: In this day and age, can't we expect a player that plays cds, dvds and blu-ray disks will also play mp3 disks??? Today, the Amazon specs do say it will not play MP3s. If it was there when I bought, I missed it. Also it is not on the CNET review as of today which I did read thoroughly before I bought. If I had known no mp3 playback I might have bought the Panasonic DMP-BD30K which does play mp3s on CR-R/RW.
Point 2. On some screens playing DVD or blu-ray a screen hangs saying essentially: you can't do that. I say hangs because the can't message is on too many seconds and you can't do anything else while it is up. As mentioned by others, this frequently happens when you want to resume - it can't do it. (But a 3 year old DVD player could?) So while being punished with the error message on the screen, you can't recover because you have to look at that error screen. It's like a standing 8 count in boxing, you can't do anything but see the error message. It is probably only 3 or 4 seconds, but it seems like forever when you are trying to get playback back. Another reason for 1 out of 5, poor resume. Even if that is common to all blu-ray players - that is still Sony's fault the way I see it.
Point 3. Under original 005 firmware, my unit would not power on with original and two other remotes. Once on, all three remotes worked including power on and off. But after being off for 3+ hours, again the three remotes could not turn it on. Sony online chat guy was unaware of this as an "issue". Standard reset to default settings did not fix. But FW 007 does appear to have fixed this. (What do you expect from 007?)
Point 4. On updating firmware on a disk instead of network cable. I could have used better directions on making an "image" file on a disk. (Not .iso) Yeah, I know each burning software is different and I floundered through it with Nero, but Sony docs could have been better.
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