The Sony BDP-S1 Review Thread

[TJandBLU-RAY]

Originally Posted by TJandBLU-RAY

And I did buy them again. At BEST BUY, where they told me that a LOT of people are having problems with these two movies. So much so, that they are doing something rare. You take them home, (keep the receipt), and if they don't work, bring them back, and they will exchange them for you. If those don't work, bring those back, and they will give you your money back.

So, here is a quick report: PIRATES one, now works well. I was able to load it up, get into the menus, and watch the movie; even fooled around with the pop up menu during the film and it worked. So I put in PIRATES two, and that loaded in about the same time (both five to eight minutes), and then I tried to play the LIARS DICE game, and that did not work. Not until the second time, when I agreed to see the rules.

So I think I will take that one back.

I did, and got a new one. And it works. Whilst there, they came in a really PO'd person, who was sick and tired of the 'Pirates crap' as he put it. He had tried FOUR times to get one correct. And he was through, so he just had them exchange the Pirates for two other titles. He got 'Pearl Harbour' and 'Casino Royale' ; hope they work for him.

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by THE STUD

Sorry guys, I'm new to the thread, but I had a question about this first gen. sony player, does it decode DD TRue HD/DTS TRUE HD or not? If a player doesn't decoded the format, and that format is the only english track on a movie, then how the hell do you even listen to the new audio? Like Kingdom of Heaven is DTS TRUE HD 5.1, and EX foreign languages. So if I buy the 2nd gen. sony player, which doesn't even decode true hd, then I"m just out audio for the movie?

For the DTS-HD tracks, you will get the core 1.5mbps DTS track. For Dolby TrueHD, a new firmware upgrade will be released next week which will decode Dolby TrueHD. If you have HDMI, the player sends the Dolby TrueHD track to the reciever as PCM. I think you mean Kingdom of Heaven is in DTS-HDMA 5.1, and Dolby Digital for the foreign languages by the way...

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by ClaytonMG

For the DTS-HD tracks, you will get the core 1.5mbps DTS track. For Dolby TrueHD, a new firmware upgrade will be released next week which will decode Dolby TrueHD. If you have HDMI, the player sends the Dolby TrueHD track to the reciever as PCM. I think you mean Kingdom of Heaven is in DTS-HDMA 5.1, and Dolby Digital for the foreign languages by the way...

Yeah I was wrong about the TrueHD. I think I knew all this when I was researching before I bought it, but my mind must have gone slack lol...

Glad we're getting the firmware update. That's really cool

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

Yeah I was wrong about the TrueHD. I think I knew all this when I was researching before I bought it, but my mind must have gone slack lol...

Glad we're getting the firmware update. That's really cool

It is very cool, I bought Letters from Iwo Jima on Blu-Ray in hopes that I'd be able to use the Dolby TrueHD track someday and looks like I'll be able to. I also have an HD-DVD player, but since 95% of the time it doesn't function properly, I figure I'd stick with Blu-Ray.

[THE STUD]

I'm really wondering whether to buy the 1st gen or the 2nd gen since the 2nd gen doesn't decode DD or DTS True HD

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by THE STUD

I'm really wondering whether to buy the 1st gen or the 2nd gen since the 2nd gen doesn't decode DD or DTS True HD

It's Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD... I am going to go ahead and guess the 2nd Gen one will decode at least Dolby TrueHD, as there's no reason why it wouldn't. The first gen one had no indication of supporting Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital-Plus and look at it now. Same thing could happen with the 2nd gen one (or, my guess is, it will come with the decoder built in just so it can have the Dolby TrueHD logo on the front).

[fparais]

Originally Posted by tkusterb

I've had my beautiful Sony BDP-S1 for a few days and am blown away by the picture quality. (I've got a 34-inch XBR960 displaying a max of 1080i via HDMI.)

While watching "The Queen" last night, playback froze about 3/4 of the way through the movie. I shut the power off (it would not respond to STOP on the remote or the unit) and powered back up, went a little bit past the offending point and resumed play without incident. I have not performed any firmware upgrades yet. Should I be worried terribly about this? Is it a rare or common problem?

I'll watch a few more this weekend, and if it keeps happening, I'm taking it back. Too much money to blow on a flaky player or format.

Just do the Firmware update (follow the instruction to the letter). I have "the queen", and i did not experience any type of problem . Last time i watched it, the FW on my S1 was 1.55. Now it is 1.60.

[THE STUD]

Originally Posted by ClaytonMG

It's Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD... I am going to go ahead and guess the 2nd Gen one will decode at least Dolby TrueHD, as there's no reason why it wouldn't. The first gen one had no indication of supporting Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital-Plus and look at it now. Same thing could happen with the 2nd gen one (or, my guess is, it will come with the decoder built in just so it can have the Dolby TrueHD logo on the front).

No, you gotta read the press release, the 2nd gen won't decode DD True HD or DTS True HD, but it will do DD plus. It took almost a year for the 1st gen to be able to do True HD from that firmware this week, so if they made the upgrade for the 2nd gen, how long would it take I wonder? 2008? wow thats horrible,
as I said before, I saw a 250$ HD DVD player at costco that decoded those formats, sony kinda let me down, and I wish my marantz would make one

[ClaytonMG]

So, if I understand this, you think that they'd wait another year to make their player decode Dolby TrueHD? That wouldn't make any sense... And when is the 2nd gen player going to be released? A lot can change between now and then. It may not decode TrueHD out of the box, but there'd probably be a firmware upgrade pretty quick after due to the fact Sony is starting to use Dolby TrueHD on their movies.

[ClaytonMG]

Also, IT'S DTS-HD, NOT DTS TRUEHD. TrueHD is Dolby, DTS has 2 different formats. DTS-HDMA (Master Audio) and DTS-HDHR (High Res).

[THE STUD]

Originally Posted by ClaytonMG

Also, IT'S DTS-HD, NOT DTS TRUEHD. TrueHD is Dolby, DTS has 2 different formats. DTS-HDMA (Master Audio) and DTS-HDHR (High Res).

ok, thanks for the clarification about the DTS
well the player is supposedly shipping now, and is suppose to come out in the next week or weeks, maybe the 20th according to circuit city. Well yeah, I hope they have a quick firmware upgrade as well, which doesn't make sense because why don't they just do it from the factory? Oh well, just hope they do do it, and quick cause I wanna get this sony as my first blu player
so does that mean that there's 3 full audio formats that this new player won't decode? ouch
it won't do DTS HD master audio
or dts-HDHR
or DD TRue Hd?

[ClaytonMG]

I'd imagine that the firmware upgrade would be quick, it may have just not been ready when the player shipped.

[ClaytonMG]

So now that the firmware upgrade is out and I've installed it... Where's the Dolby TrueHD? I can't seem to be able to use the one I have on Letters from Iwo Jima...

[billy]

The sony blu-ray player does not recognize the menu tab "enhanced sound" on the blu-ray dvd movie The Guardian. And therefore will not play the movie. The sony blu-ray player is incredibly slow to recognize any of the menu tabs in the newly released blu-ray dvd movie, The Messengers. And it will not play the movie at all if you choose the tab, "pcm 5.1" I called the phone number on sony's blu-ray remote control and asked them what to do. Phone support said this issue would be taken care of with the new firmware upgrade 1.6. However, the firmware description does not address this issure.

[kinglm]

Thanks for the heads up about the 2.0 firmware update being available. I successfully installed. I'll have to play with it later to see what it actually updated for me...

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by billy

The sony blu-ray player does not recognize the menu tab "enhanced sound" on the blu-ray dvd movie The Guardian. And therefore will not play the movie. The sony blu-ray player is incredibly slow to recognize any of the menu tabs in the newly released blu-ray dvd movie, The Messengers. And it will not play the movie at all if you choose the tab, "pcm 5.1" I called the phone number on sony's blu-ray remote control and asked them what to do. Phone support said this issue would be taken care of with the new firmware upgrade 1.6. However, the firmware description does not address this issure.

That's weird, even before 1.6 I didn't have problems with The Guardian. Even though it might not be described on the upgrade page, it still will probably fix it. I think the new firmware (2.0) fixed my HDMI problems even though it didn't say it would. But now I can't get Dolby TrueHD to work...

[dentalrep]

I just tried to download 2.0 and it was not available....Does anyone have it on a server I could download from? I can't believe they pulled the download off the site.

[kinglm]

I wonder why it was pulled. Hope there isn't a problem with it considering I used it...

[Knight-Errant]

Well I watched Dog Day Afternoon last night and the loading times seem to have improved. The picture and sound were great, no problems.

[ClaytonMG]

Originally Posted by kinglm

I wonder why it was pulled. Hope there isn't a problem with it considering I used it...

Same here... except my Dolby TrueHD ended up not working, which I am thinking might be because of a problem with the firmware (uh oh!). But I am confident that come Monday it'll be an easy fix.