Sony BDP-S360 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

There are lots of new Blu-Ray players coming out with advanced features like network streaming of videos. But I've already got an Xbox360 hooked up to my home theater, and several PCs available as well, and all of them can handle any video streaming needs I may have. All I really needed was a Blu-Ray player that would do a really nice job playing Blu-Ray discs and my old DVDs. Thanks to the new players, the price on this one has really dropped, so I pounced.

I had one small glitch hooking it up. My HDTV is an older Sony 34" CRT that handles 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i, but not 1080p. I hooked the Blu-Ray player up through my Onkyo receiver using an HDMI cable, which then handles the connection to the TV. When I told the BDP-S360 to use the HDMI connection, all I got was a black screen. I ended up having to use the composite video cables that come with the player to get a picture, and then told the player to use 720p output. Everything then worked fine. So something in the handshake between the TV, receiver, and player thought 1080p was supported, but once forced to 720p everything was fine.

Disc loading times aren't bad, taking about the same time as booting up my Xbox360 or turning on my 400-disc DVD changer, so I really didn't notice them. The picture, even at only 720p, is FANTASTIC, showing details I just never noticed before and really enhancing the picture. An example here is that with Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure (yes, most of my viewing is for the kids), the pixie dust effects on the DVD have a lot more "glow" to them, while on the Blu-Ray they are individual sparks that don't cover the background as much. The detail improvement is really impressive.

Updating the firmware was pretty trivial. With the Xbox360 and a Wii I already have ethernet running to the entertainment center along with a hub, so I just hooked up another cable and it downloaded and upgraded easily.

So far I'm very happy. If you really want video streaming you may need to look elsewhere, or if you need a WiFi network connection, but since I did not need either this was a perfect fit at a very good price.

Sony BDP-S360 1080p Blu-ray Disc PlayerMade the transition to Blu-Ray and with my awesome Sony Bravia HD television, I am totally pleased! Go SONY!

Great product and price was very low. I would recommend this to a friend. Easily set up and played BluRay DVD's perfectly.

I bought this player after my upconverting dvd player's remote quit working, which gave me a good excuse to upgrade. For the price this player can't be beat. The picture quality is awesome, the upconverting looks good, and the sound is great too. The menus, setup, and features are very user friendly. The start up times are good, and I don't notice the long wait time some have mentioned. It does lack certain features which would be nice, such as the Netflix streaming capability. Although I have a Netflix account, I would have to set it up through wi-fi (not available with this player), and I don't think I would use it that frequently for it to be an issue.

My main concern in choosing a blu ray player was it's compatibility with recordable dvd's (dvd+r or dvd-r). I have alot of home movies on standard recordable discs and wanted to make sure that I would be able to view them on the player. This player does play my standard recorded dvd's without any problems. The issue involving the player not continuing the movie if you press stop as opposed to pause must be a disc issue. I stopped a few movies, even turned off the player, and the movie started from where it stopped. Also, the remote not having an eject button, I still need to get up to remove the disc so this isn't an issue for me.

If you want a player with great picture quality and has basic features for a great price, then I don't think you can go wrong with this player.

I hooked this baby up right out of the box, connected the network cable and was instantly informed there was a new firmware version and it installed it with no problems at all! picture quality was noticeably better than my old Samsung one, my wife even commented about that ,I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a good small nice looking blu-ray player.