Sony UBP-X700 4K UHD Blu-ray player

[albabe]

141 pages... dang<

I was thinking of picking-up this player from 220. Good reviews and within my price-range. It even plays a good amount of DATA (H.265!!!).

I was curious if the USB Port accepts Flash Drives formatted to eXFAT or just FAT32?

...and I just noticed in this review:

"...and while it does enhance certain colors and applies some artificial cleaning to film grain, the UBP-X700 still offers excellent image reproduction..."

https://www.techradar.com/television...bp-x700-review

I wonder how significant that is? have any of you folks who picked-up the UBP-X700 had a problem with the "some artificial cleaning?"

[Moviefan2k4]

Originally Posted by albabe

141 pages... dang<

I was thinking of picking-up this player from 220. Good reviews and within my price-range. It even plays a good amount of DATA (H.265!!!).

I was curious if the USB Port accepts Flash Drives formatted to eXFAT or just FAT32?

...and I just noticed in this review:

"...and while it does enhance certain colors and applies some artificial cleaning to film grain, the UBP-X700 still offers excellent image reproduction..."

https://www.techradar.com/television...bp-x700-review

I wonder how significant that is? have any of you folks who picked-up the UBP-X700 had a problem with the "some artificial cleaning?"

I'm no tech genius, but it seems to me that phrase could mean almost anything. Before digital capturing was invented, all movies were shot on grain-based film stock, so trying to "clean" it after the fact would always be artificial in some respect.

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by albabe

141 pages... dang<

I was thinking of picking-up this player from 220. Good reviews and within my price-range. It even plays a good amount of DATA (H.265!!!).

I was curious if the USB Port accepts Flash Drives formatted to eXFAT or just FAT32?

...and I just noticed in this review:

"...and while it does enhance certain colors and applies some artificial cleaning to film grain, the UBP-X700 still offers excellent image reproduction..."

https://www.techradar.com/television...bp-x700-review

I wonder how significant that is? have any of you folks who picked-up the UBP-X700 had a problem with the "some artificial cleaning?"

The player is defaulted to apply its own DNR. That can be disabled by pressing the Options button on the remote while a disc is playing, and setting Picture Mode to Direct instead of Auto. This won't need to be changed again once set, unless you reset the player to factory settings. It also doesn't apply to Dolby Vision since that bypasses the Picture Mode setting entirely, so you'll need to set it with an HDR-10-only disc playing.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Alister_M

The player is defaulted to apply its own DNR.

eww

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by bhampton

eww

Yep. Luckily I found out about it within a day or two of owning it.

[Homegrove]

Originally Posted by Alister_M

Yep. Luckily I found out about it within a day or two of owning it.

Lucky you, took me two years. I was wondering why my regular Blu rays didn't look as good as I remembered. D'oh.

[armus]

Originally Posted by albabe

I was curious if the USB Port accepts Flash Drives formatted to eXFAT or just FAT32?

I can't say precisely about flash drives but a conventional spinning multi-TB HD formatted with exFAT and plugged into the USB port works fine. Same story with NTFS.

[albabe]

Thanx so much, folks! Seriously appreciated!!!

After looking at the specs of so many players this year, I'm friggin' dizzy. Nothing that I could find for under $300 or so, had H.265, and I would really like that.

This player sure gets a lot of smacking-around because of the "Freezing" issue (which I understand is sorta "fixable"), but the reviews on Amazon are pretty up there: 4.5 Stars from 2,604 ratings...

The All Region version on Amazon gets 4.5 Stars from 582 ratings.

And on 220, all 25 reviews are 5 Stars.

I'm assuming the vast majority haven't had any major problems... or maybe I'm woRng.

[albabe]

Here's the Fix-It from Amazon:

*MeTheHomeViewer
4.0 out of 5 stars Fix for UBP-X700 4K FREEZING and SKIPPING
Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2024
Style: PLAYER W/ HDMI CABLE

I bought a Sony UBP-X700 at Best-Buy (replaced a BDP-S3700 that still works great) to experience 4K HDR knowing about possible freezing and skipping. Before purchasing, I found a You-tube video that solved the 4K discs freezing and skipping by changing 2 settings:

1) Set 4K Upscale Setting to OFF
2) Set Cinema Converson Mode to Video

But, only use these settings when having problems viewing 4K discs. These settings may adversely affect Upscaling of DVDs to 4K (as per a You-tube comment).

So, when viewing DVDs and 1080p Blu-rays:

1) Set 4K Upscale Setting to AUTO1 (for Sony TVs), or AUTO2 (for non-Sony TVs)
2) Set Cinema Converson Mode to Auto

(you can find the You-tube video by searching "Sony 4K Player Freezing & Skipping? Try These Settings | Back to Basics #5")

I had a No-Sound problem while watching a 1080p Blu-ray.

The solution (I found by accident) was to:

1) Press STOP, then Play

[albabe]

Originally Posted by armus

I can't say precisely about flash drives but a conventional spinning multi-TB HD formatted with exFAT and plugged into the USB port works fine. Same story with NTFS.

Thanx so much!

[Moviefan2k4]

Originally Posted by albabe

So, when viewing DVDs and 1080p Blu-rays:

1) Set 4K Upscale Setting to AUTO1 (for Sony TVs), or AUTO2 (for non-Sony TVs)
2) Set Cinema Converson Mode to Auto

The video I posted said to leave the upscaler off entirely for Blu-Rays, since Sony's software was usually terrible in that regard. Instead, the host advised for customers who own a 4K TV to let their display do its own conversion.

[albabe]

Originally Posted by Moviefan2k4

The video I posted said to leave the upscaler off entirely for Blu-Rays, since Sony's software was usually terrible in that regard. Instead, the host advised for customers who own a 4K TV to let their display do its own conversion.

There was another "Fix-it" I saw where someone said to just put a USB Flash Drive in the USB Port... Who knows...

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by albabe

There was another "Fix-it" I saw where someone said to just put a USB Flash Drive in the USB Port... Who knows...

I've just done that, now I need to find time to watch a couple of previously problematic discs. Managed to find an incredibly tiny one so it only sticks out about 5mm from the port, which is great because I don't have to worry about accidentally bumping it when pressing the power button. Plus it'll help to prevent dust from getting into the otherwise uncovered port

[albabe]

Originally Posted by Alister_M

I've just done that, now I need to find time to watch a couple of previously problematic discs. Managed to find an incredibly tiny one so it only sticks out about 5mm from the port, which is great because I don't have to worry about accidentally bumping it when pressing the power button. Plus it'll help to prevent dust from getting into the otherwise uncovered port

You're a silly guy. : )

[albabe]

Sooo... I take it, that the vast majority of the UBP-X700 owners in here had little to no trouble with the unit?

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by albabe

You're a silly guy. : )

I'm also clumsy as hell. Anything I can do to offset that is always a good idea.

[stvn1974]

I changed the setting and put in a USB in and can report that I was able to play the Criterion Citizen Kane, Back The Future II and The Godfather without freezes. Those three never worked before. I use my PS5 to watch movies but it is nice that seemed to be able to get the X700 to work better. I still mostly just use it for SACD, BD audio discs and CDs.

[HDTV1080P]

The BDA should have mandated internal persistent storage, however there was no mandate and persistent storage on most brands and models of Blu-ray players require an external USB drive (like USB flash stick, USB solid state drive, or USB hard drive). Players like the year 2016 OPPO UDP-203 have 1GB of internal persistent storage, and one old Pioneer Blu-ray player model had 4GB of internal persistent storage. If in the years 2026-2028+ if a new 8K Blu-ray format is launched that is backward compatible with all optical discs, then the BDA needs to mandate a minimum of 512GB for persistent storage. 1GB is fine for most Blu-ray discs, however since the price of memory has fallen so cheap, an 8K Blu-ray player should have 512GB minimum plus a new improved version of BD-LIVE, etc. With that much storage studios could offer 8K downloads and 8K streams one day. Plug in a 22TB USB hard drive for larger storage.

[Necril]

If the external USB does indeed have some effect on the reliability of 4k disc playback, as some users here report, does this mean the player uses the external storage for buffering, or is it something else? Does the player automatically delete the data at some point, or do you have to clear the USB manually at certain intervals?

[Alister_M]

Originally Posted by Necril

If the external USB does indeed have some effect on the reliability of 4k disc playback, as some users here report, does this mean the player uses the external storage for buffering, or is it something else? Does the player automatically delete the data at some point, or do you have to clear the USB manually at certain intervals?

I just checked the one I've had in there for the last week, the BUDA folder only contains empty subfolders. So it obviously wipes the data automatically after each use.