Sony BDP-S760 Blu-ray disc player Sony recently updated its range of Blu-ray players with the entry-level BDP-S560, which is listed at around £300 on Sony’s UK web site, and the BDP-S760 for £400. Shop around online though and both models can be picked up for £80 less. Sony BDP-S760 Top gear: Sony's BDP-S760 Yet, despite the mid-range price-tag, Sony …
<quote>Yet it’s disappointing that the S760 doesn’t support playback of digital music and video file formats other than the obvious audio CD, DVD and Blu-ray.</quote>
Haven't they learned from the DVD disaster? Nobody has Sony DVD-Players anymore as they were essentially worthless, not even playing VCDs.
Now they are bringing out players which can only play their own format which nobody has. You cannot even play back your legal recordings of TV with that box.
I ran a comparison of the film wolverine on blu-ray & DVD using my £40 Toshiba Up-Scaling DVD & PS3.
Up close on my LG 42LH5000 the difference was vast but as soon as i sat back down on my settee 15 foot away, the difference was not as impressive as i expected, yes it did look better, but the difference was asimilar to that of changing a regular scart to a RGB one, but not worth the over inflated prices of neither the hardware or media for it.
I then tried it on my daughters 19" lcd & the image was almost identical.
TBH unless you have a large throw away income people sick to DVD.
... it's hard to believe that SONY can produce something like the PS3 which plays nearly eveything, (and, for a small premium, is an excellent freeview box) and then expect people to buy something like this. It's probably aimed at the 'golden eared' hifi buff.
However, I have to say I gave up on 'top-end' HiFi a long time ago, what with people trying to convince me that some CD recorders produced 'more faithful' digital-to-digital copies than others, that some digitial cables have 'a better tone' than others and that supertweeters, which produce frequencies in superaural range (where virtually no-one over 20 can hear them) make a difference to ones listening experience.
Some bizarre ideas on the comments as ever.
The LG is licked in the features and quality department for things that really matter... divx playback on a Blu ray player... ok if you really want, personally i quite like it to watch blu ray on not some crappy downloaded film. As for hacking of multi region wow the Sony can be too, with an all in one remote for £4 from eBay, most blu rays are released around the same time anyway so multi region blu ray isn't necessary and requires hard ware modding anyway.
If you compare the LG to this Sony, you're missing the point of Blu ray by a margin and a half. The LG is a cracking player, but it's not in the same league as this one...
And as for the PS3, again not quite the same really is it.... picture quality isn't as good, no analogue outputs, no deep colour support etc.... fine if you have a PS3 it's a decent player, but this is a far better one if you really want to extract the best from blu ray and have the rest of the gear to go with it.
Criticising a top flight player for not being able to playback shoddy home recordings or divx etc misses the point so much... buy a WDTV for that sort of stuff it's designed for it - or build a MediaPC and try it that way, but i welcome the lack of superfluous shite that has no place in a high end player, introducing all sorts of crap in the signal path that no-one wants.
The only really sensible comment is that of taking note of the quality based on how you actually watch it... sit 15ft from a TV and you really need a 50 inch model as a minimum to really appreciate the picture difference... the audio benefits however just need decent speakers!
Can you play 1080p through component or do the movie studios assume you're a nasty pirate if you want to use those cables?
Also, I agree the PS3 is a great BluRay player, but it sucks as a DVD player if you try upscaling the image - it makes almost as noise as an XBox 360 and the image isn't any great shakes.
Just to be a total heretic, my el-cheapo Toshiba HD-DVD player does a much better job of playing upscaled DVDs, both in terms of image quality and not sounding like it's about to explode; and the few HD-DVDs that were released are indistinguishable from their Blu-Ray equivalents.
For buying a 2 year old Blu ray player. That cannot internally decode many things, probably didn't have the latest firmware etc...
But hey.... why let that get in the way of a rant. The latest S360 (junior version of the reviewed) is one of the bargains of the decade at the moment, £95 on Amazon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0027FFX4O/202-3314281-8268652?ie=UTF8&tag=spoavetstu-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=1634&creativeASIN=B0027FFX4O and an all round excellent unit, that only really lacks deep colour, analogue outs and the wifi for most people compared to the S760
Their CD and DVD products have been notorious for their flaky support of recordable discs, or any variation to the standard that Sony themselves don't have a crippling patent on.
You look in the average households attic, and there, under the thick layer of dust will be a £200 sony CD/DVD player, which can't play blue tinted CD/DVDs, usurped from it's position under the telly by a £15 player from Aldi that reads the full rainbow of disc colours, can play Divx/Xvid and nearly any other variation you can find.
This product with have a useful lifespan of approximately 2 years, max. Beyond that, the owner will become increasily frustrated by the ever increasing pile of media that he/she cannot play because this device doesn't support the clever new variations and features that have been added to the format by other organisations.
Sonys products are bought by brandname drooling idiots with more money than sense.
If you want a TRUE media center, then this is worth a look
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166561
Chuck in a £40 external writer, and a £30 DVB-T dongle, you have 100 times the functionality, 5 times the the functional lifespan, and change for a few nights down the pub!
Ahh, I see the mandatory Sony bashing force is still going strong in 2010.
Keep it up, your comments regarding 'shoddy', 'useless' and my personal favourite, 'too expensive' never fail to make me chuckle and shake my head in that slow, derisive way that offends.
I bet most of you own iPhones too...
Author writes, "Yet it’s disappointing that the S760 doesn’t support playback of digital music and video file formats other than the obvious audio CD, DVD and Blu-ray."
Scott Mckenzie posts, "Criticising a top flight player for not being able to playback shoddy home recordings or divx etc misses the point so much"
I want to know whether the VideoCD's that I have created over the past 10 years will run on it.
How about the Kodak Photo CD's, from the weddings I attended and wish to remember with friends on anniversaries?
When people had video taped and burned to CD weddings, graduations, and various other events in the lives of their friends, families, and church - they pull them out to show others, the same way they pull out photo albums. Now a days, we burn MPEG2 to DVD, but before DVD, that was not an option.
I purchased legal video from Asia as well in the North America on VideoCD format. Phillips had released VideoCD's that I have in my collection. Sometimes I want to watch these videos with friends. In particular, I have entire video seasons recorded in Japan of some of my favorite shows! Some of the older media is re-released on DVD, but will occasionally have poorer translation or poorer subtitles, so many prefer the former VideoCD releases.
If a top-flight player can not play back former standard (VideoCD) media, then it is not a low-end player.
If a "top-flilght" player can not play back not-so-standard (DiVX) videos, then it is certainly not "high-end" (doesn't a high-end car offer more options than a low-end car???)
If I can't even transfer the old media to shared network drives to play them on this player, then it is useless.
Sony misses the point - a Blu-Ray player was supposed to be backward compatible with former media. If they can't charge more on the "top-flight" players for more features, then they are not worth spending a dime on.
It is not about the player, it is about the media - the media costs people WAY MORE than a player does. I would rather spend an extra £100 on a player that will play back my £10,000 in media!
Personally, I'd love to see the 5 disc carousel again. It's nice not to have to get off of my fat a$$ and change a disc.
The Sony players that I've bought have held up pretty well. My three year old sister ripped the front of the tray off my parents and it still plays (although it has to have the dust sprayed out). I get a decent picture and the one time I had to use their warranty, the service was excellent (for the ES line). They're not made like they used to be, mostly cheap plastic nowadays, but a lot of companies have gone that route. I bought a plextor drive based on past purchases and was surprised that they'd also started building shoddy products.
I would expect the USB to play multi-media files beyond picture files. This isn't high-end, but the price is a bit high for limited features and I'm doubting the sound and picture quality are that stunning to make up for it.
Sadly in many cases a high end car doesn't offer 'more' it offers 'better'. I welcome the fact it focuses on core attributes rather than backward compatability.
A Ferrari F430 is a far more enjoyable drive than a Mercedes S Class, however it lacks the individual zone climate control, seat massaging that tightens in corners, in car DVD players and TV stations, hugely complex menu driven system for controlling every nuance of the car etc etc... mainly because you buy a Ferrari to offer the very best driving experience, assuming that if people really wish to partake in former, lesser methods of enjoyment - such as VideoCD, or photo CD's (all of which play fine in my experience but that is by the by) and to continue the car analogy that the person in question may also own another vehicle.... consequently buy a £20 player from Aldi or wherever that will play whatever you want.
Or as pointed out above, probably the best player currently on sale anywhere this side of the uber top end Denon or Pioneer units, the Oppo BD83.
You want Sony bashing with a *good* reason? How about the fact that they don't care about the buyer after the purchase?
I have a Sony amplifier and a Walkman MP3 player. Sony sells a docking station to connect the MP3 player to the Walkman... the catch? you can't control the Walkman via the amplifier. Oh, but you *can* buy a Sony-made docking station for the iPod which *does* allow the amplifier to control the iPod.
Or how about the large number of Sony-made stereos and alarm clocks with iPod docking stations... but none for the Sony-made Walkman?
Fracking morons.
I was just in Smallmart a few days ago. An entry level Bluray player is $128.
Divx support is now a must have.
I'm with AC though, I'd like a multidisk player like the 2 x 5 disk DVD players I currently have stacked, 1 Toshiba and 1 Sony. But neither of them supports Divx so I have a third player in the stack for that.
And that brings up the next feature I want, a way to address a remote to a player so I can have 2 of the same players in a stack and have the remote work properly.
Brian 6 posts, "But it IS A PREMIUM PLAYER..... Did u even read the article ?"
uhhh... yea... that's why I commented. Even did word search in the article looking for key features I was interested inold...
Brian 6 posts, "Sony describes the S760 as its new ‘top of the line’ model"
That's why one should expect more. When people have bought and continue to buy premium content on commercial media, one should expect that a top of the line player will play it back.
Brian 6 posts, "Top of the line...How PREMIUM can u get ???"
The Sony player has composite outputs for video - I have not seen any composite signals carrying crystal clear 1080P lately. With your line of suggestion, the player should not have composite output.
Brian 6 posts, "And it WILL play CD's and DVD, Even VIDEO CD's."
Thanks for clearing up what the reviewer did not cover, regarding Video CD's!
VideoCD was pretty much the standard in China and South East Asia for a decade. There could be close as many VideoCD players as there are DVD players in active global use today that need to be replaced with a player like BlueRay.
Good to hear Sony did not abandon half the global premium media market!
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