- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 15 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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3 out of 5 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Great Picture; Bad Features; Compatibility Issues"
Pros: Picture quality
Cons: Slow at doing everything; Regular DVD's skip from time to time; No time remaining display feature; No backlit remote
Summary: I was very excited to purchase this next generation high-def DVD player. At first, I was disappointed that the remote was not backlit and there is no option to view the time remaining on a disc/chapter. But, I was willing to let that go due to the awesome picture quality and 1080i upconversion for my regular DVDs. But, I started to notice a pattern that every time I played a regular DVD (and I played several), somewhere in the movie (usually within the first 30 minutes) the movie would pause briefly and then skip ahead a few seconds. When I would rewind over the problem area (to hear all the dialog, etc.) it would play back just fine. This became very annoying -- especially for such an expensive player. This problem did not appear when playing blu-ray discs, however. So, I contacted Sony's technical support and after hours of being on the phone and being transferred from one person to another, the best they could tell me is that the unit "appears to have a problem." They recommended that I ship it to a Sony authorized service center -- at my expense! Before trying that, I exchanged the player for another one. It too produced the same problem. Again, I tried to convince Sony that there must be a design problem (perhaps firmware), but they wouldn't even log this as a known problem. They kept repeating "this player has a good review."
- 5 replies to this review
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I completely agree with this review. Great picture IF it ever decides to deem any DVD, Blu-Ray or not, suitable to play. At least 50% of the time it either will not initiate the playback OR it locks up sometime during playback. It takes so long to "warm up" that usually the sequel to the movie I am trying to watch has been released and made its way to Blockbuster already. I buy Sony product nearly exclusively and over the years have been extremely pleased. This product, however, is a piece of junk and Sony should be embarrassed to have its name on such a shoddy product. I should have known something was up when the salesman offered to sell this unit, priced at $1000, for the same $400 price of the latest model. While he represented it as "more solidly built and a better performer" than the new model, I see now he was dumping his old stock of units he knew were defective and unlikely to move once the newer units got into the market. Bad product + worse retailer = bad experience.
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Overall, I'm quite happy with this player. However I've noticed the same problem during playback of standard DVDs. In fact, it was after encountering it several times that I googled the problem and came across this review. I'm sure Sony will acknowledge it eventually - if not explicitly, then tacitly with some generic firmware update that miraculously fixes the problem.
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so you dont like the player because it cuts a few seconds out of a dvd? i understand that it is an expensive player but come on. the fact you even spent hours on the phone about such a problem is ridiculous. if it plays the blu ray discs with no problem i really don't see why you are nit picking at the rest of it.
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It's hard to be an early adopter. I'm sure it will eventually get resolved, however, it's no fun waiting.
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I never had that happen
