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| Sony BDPS360 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray Player with BD Live |
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Sony BDPS360 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray Player with BD Live
Sony
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| Product Details |
ISBN/ASIN: B0027FFX4O
Release Date: 2009-06-30
Sales Rank: 1041
Average Rating: 
Media: Electronics
Audience Rating:
Product Group: CE
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| Customer Reviews: Average Rating: 4.5/5 | | All Region "DVD": Rating: 5/5 |
I purchased this model in Saudi Arabia as a standalone player to replace my PS3. It has sat there quite nicely delivering its Blu Ray magic for a number of months. Recently I became curious as to its ability to play different region DVDs (not BluRays)as I have a collection from different parts of the world. Because of the stupid limitations of the PS3, I have assumed that this Sony product would also by similarly inhibited and as a result I maintain several "all region" DVD players.
A little research showed that there is a way to make it all region free using a multi-remote. However, I noted that one article said that this unit was already DVD region free, but very hard to get hold of due to demand. Sitting there on the couch, I thought, it can't be that easy ... surely. So squat down by the Bluray player, pop a known region 1 DVD into the slim unit and wait for the inevitable message .... no message, just the machine thinking, some whirring, BINGO it plays! It cannot be; get another Region 1, then several Region 3s. This machine has freed me from the shackles of DVD region coding!!
Thank you SONY, at last, could it be that you have seen the light that Region coding does not stop piracy, it actually encourages people to copy DVDs to avoid it. Those that pirate disks do not have to worry about region coding, they can put there copies in any machine. It is only owners of genuine copies that are penalised from purchasing "originals" from other countries. I must buy another one of these machines... | | My First Blu Ray Player: Rating: 5/5 |
I was slightly dubious about blu ray to start with as I did not fully understand what it actually did. I understood that it improved the picture and sound but everything else was lost on me. The confusion started with the two possible formats you could choose from in HD-DVD (those slightly red tinged DVD cases) and the blu ray we see today.
After seeing some different blu ray players and how they were being used (Playstation 3 supports blu ray but is quite a large piece of tech. On the other hand does offer more capabilities including gaming and internet browsing) I decided to choose this Sony BDPS360. I personally found this an easy choice to make as I generally trust Sony products as quality merchandise and currently have a 42" Sony Bravia HD TV. When it arrived on my door step a few months back, I couldn't contain my excitement and was looking forward to a day of blu rays.
An important thing you should know before you purchase this product is that it does not come with all the necessary components. The HDMI Cable and also Optical Cable (if you happen to have a surround sound box) does not come within the box. A minor annoyance but easily remedied. You don't have to spend a fortune on cables, they all do the same thing so save your money on Gold tipped, carbon fibre HDMI cables and get a cheap one. If you have a Sony set up. a PS3 HDMI cable works perfectly and can be bought for little as £4.
So stage 1 over, its unboxed and ready to be plugged in. What a pleasure it is to say that the whole process from plugging the player in through to watching my first blu ray took me no more than 40 minutes. 5 minutes to set the whole thing up and another 35 minutes fiddling with all the menus to see what was on offer. It's not required to do this but I wanted to see what it could do. Without all the faffing around I did, you would be watching a blu ray in a matter of minutes.
This is an excellent bit of kit. It's an excellent size and looks the business. I placed a blu ray in and it runs quieter than my normal DVD player. When setting up the quick installation it was a matter of 3 screens so that the blu ray player, HDTV and surround system would talk to each other. How far we have come since the days of setting the clock on the VCR. That required a degree in electronics and the patience of a saint! The extra features of the player such as connecting to the internet via BDLive is a nice touch (not all players do this so be sure to check the product details) and allows for the firmware to be updated regularly and offers bonus content depending on the disc you have in there. District 9 offered excellent BDLive content and strangely enough so did Snatch. However my router is quite a distance away from the TV, which meant another little expenditure on an Ethernet cable. (Fortunately my work had loads!) There is an option to have the player running on constant mode to allow for the blu ray you watch load up quicker at the beginning but does mean it will always be on in the background when you don't need it, wasting energy albeit small amounts. It can be slow to load a disc but this is a minor point in an otherwise fantastic product
This is an excellent product and one I thoroughly recommend. It's important to me to have not the most expensive but the best quality, and this Sony delivers that in spades. Being able to search through the menus or the special features whilst still watching the main feature is the icing on the cake. I watched The Dark Knight and was so amazed by the level of detail, there were scenes that I did not even notice before, and the sound! Incredible
| | You can buy better for less: Rating: 3/5 |
I bought this shortly after buying a Philips BDP3000 Blu-ray Player. Having finally gone LCD, with the Philips 32PFL7404H/12 32-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p LCD TV with 100hz Freeview and Pixel Plus HD, I quickly realised that my lounge could accommodate a 40" set and so bought a Samsung LE40B650 and the Sony Blu-ray player to match it - relegating the Philips products to another room.
The Philips BDP3000's coming back as the main-stay disc player.
This Sony is undoubtedly a decent product. As you'd expect, the blu-ray picture quality is great, there's good connectivity and the sound's fine too. The DVD upscaling works well, although not, in my opinion, as well as the cheaper Philips model.
However - in terms of usability, you have to go through a system menu to even start playing any title, the on-screen interface is unwieldy and the menus are awkward to use (if you try to use them whilst watching a blu-ray disc, you'll go right back to the start of the film) - although it claims to have a resume-play function I've yet to find a blu-ray disc that does this on this model (although normal DVDs do).
The unit itself looks okay, slimline and with a hidden tray, but the remote looks and feels cheap and tacky, actually a bit nasty.
I'd find it hard to recommend this product in light of my (admittedly limited) experience with others.
| | Bargain Piece of Kit: Rating: 4/5 |
| I bought this from amazon when it was bundled with 3 blu ray discs and was slightly lower in price. Plugged it in to a 42" Toshiba Regza and have been wowed by the quality - yes you can see it!. Certainly a lot better than my previous philips DVD/Rec combo. On the plus side it looks the part, upscales your DVD's and has a real quality "feel". On the negative, well it can take a bit of time to warm up, flashing "wait" on the display for about 20 seconds and also there is no "eject" button on the remote which can be a pest. Another point to note is sound is played at a much lower level than tv transmission or other DVD players I have owned (Toshiba, Philips) so you have to turn TV volume up but there is discernible improvement in sound quality even with the basic Nicam sound on my TV. All in all a happy purchase. | | OK: Rating: 3/5 |
I have no experience of any other Blu-ray player.
The Sony's picture quality is, as expected, very good on Blu-ray discs. The quality achieved from my old DVD's is, surprisingly, almost as good. So good that it is tempting to buy a DVD instead of forking out the extra cash for a Blu-ray. In use, however, the machine is somewhat clunky and slow compared to my old DVD player. The menus are also particularly fiddly. | |
