Sony BDP-S570

[PaulyT]

Well, for a variety of reasons, I decided to pull the trigger on a 570 for my black Friday treat to myself. I will post impressions here when it comes in...

 

[Huey]

I've got the same player myself. Fast load times, good picture and doesn't seem to have the problems some players have playing disks. Congratulations Pauly. No wait, you suck!

 

[DIYer]

Pauly, what will you be comparing it to?

 

[PaulyT]

Pauly, what will you be comparing it to?

My PS3. I got the 570 because I wanted a dedicated, quieter player, that I can use for streaming, for SACD without having to have the TV on, and that I can control with my Harmony.

 

[DIYer]

If you mean quieter player due to PS3's fan, I notice that S570 has fan too.

 

[Towen7]

Not all fans are created equal.

 

[DIYer]

Ok. Looking forward to hearing Pauly's evaluation.

 

[Doghart]

I replaced my PS3 a looonnng time ago with a Sony BDP-S550.

My only disappointment is the difference in load times, other than that the ultra quiet S550 is perfect for me.

Very similar menu system to the PS3.

Although the PS3 was connected with toslink, I am using the analog audio outputs to my Denon and it has performed excellently.

Can't wait to hear your impressions.



D

 

[PaulyT]

If you mean quieter player due to PS3's fan, I notice that S570 has fan too.

Yeah, I know, we'll see how quiet or loud it is in practice. I didn't see any complaints about noise in the lengthy thread about the 570 on AVS. Amazon has a 30-day return policy, so I'll definitely be testing out all the features I'm interested in before keeping it forever.

My only disappointment is the difference in load times, other than that the ultra quiet S550 is perfect for me.

Dog, you mean the 550 is slower? I've seen numerous places (including a youtube video) showing that the 570 is substantially faster at load time than the PS3 (and faster than almost any other player, apparently). I can certainly test this, too, though it's not a huge priority for me.

 

[Doghart]

Yeah the 550 is slower than the PS3.

Not so much on the startup, but the actual load screens.

D

 

[Razz]

Pauly,
I wonder if Pandora uses the same interface on the sony.. I'm sure it is. I wish the album art was a bigger. I'm really impressed with the quality of Pandora. I expected much less. Almost all internet steaming music usually sounds very compressed. This doesn't.

 

[Razz]

Well I just switched channels and found the music quality does vary. Just listened to some seriously compressed 80's music...
But most I have heard has been very good.

 

[PaulyT]

Interesting. Ok, I'll add this to the list of things to play with... my 570 should be here by Tues (amazon prime).

 

[PaulyT]

:banana-dance: Woo-hoo, it's here! :banana-dance:

Gonna hopefully hook it up and start playing with it tonight... trying to avoid the temptation to just drop work and everything to do it RIGHT NOW. :angelic-halofell:

 

[PaulyT]

Resistance is futile.

Got the player hooked up, doing a firmware update now...

For the record, I can get DD5.1 from Netflix via PS3, e.g. for Monk season 8. I'm very curious to see if I can get surround from the 570.

 

[PaulyT]

Well my first impressions are not positive. Several problems/issues, compared to using the PS3.

- Netflix won't do DD5.1. I can get DD5.1 e.g. from Monk Season 8 on Netflix on my PS3. But not on the 570, it's only stereo.

- No subtitles/closed captions from Hulu+ or Netflix; I can get CC from both on the PS3.

- The most annoying thing, to me, is that I can't play SACD without turning on the TV! It appears, from what I can tell on my processor (Onkyo 885) that it won't sync up the HDMI connection unless the TV is on. Argh, this is one of the reasons I got a standalone player, to listen to music with a quieter component than my noisy old-model PS3.


I mean, it seems to work fine for playing movies and such, and it's nice to have a player that will stream TrueHD and even DSD (from SACD). But it's sort of failing on some of the major reasons I bought it for... so unless I can figure out a way around these, it may be going back.

 

[yromj]

Well my first impressions are not positive. Several problems/issues, compared to using the PS3.

- Netflix won't do DD5.1. I can get DD5.1 e.g. from Monk Season 8 on Netflix on my PS3. But not on the 570, it's only stereo.

- No subtitles/closed captions from Hulu+ or Netflix; I can get CC from both on the PS3.

- The most annoying thing, to me, is that I can't play SACD without turning on the TV! It appears, from what I can tell on my processor (Onkyo 885) that it won't sync up the HDMI connection unless the TV is on. Argh, this is one of the reasons I got a standalone player, to listen to music with a quieter component than my noisy old-model PS3.


I mean, it seems to work fine for playing movies and such, and it's nice to have a player that will stream TrueHD and even DSD (from SACD). But it's sort of failing on some of the major reasons I bought it for... so unless I can figure out a way around these, it may be going back.

That sucks a big green fattie.

The one thing I'm curious about is will any stand-alone player do those things. I had heard a while back that Netflicks was only doing 5.1 on the PS3 (don't know about other consoles) and not players. I was hoping that had changed.

I don't know about the subtitles thing being console-only. I tried this the other night on the 370 and it didn't work on it. I didn't know if Netflix even offered it then, though, so I just shrugged and moved on.

As for the HDMI issue, that's where HDCP really gets annoying. Some part of the logic in the scheme apparently checks that a display is at the end of the chain. The question there is whether or not the player is the guilty party or the pre/pro. (A small HDMI capable computer monitor connected to the other HDMI out on the pre/pro would be an easy solution if it is the pre/pro.)

If Batman can test these same things with the Oppo, we can tell a lot. Also, Razz can test these w/ his LG.

John

 

[PaulyT]

Thanks, John. Still no luck getting SACD without TV, despite futzing around with settings etc. All hdmi control stuff is off in the 885. I'm pretty sure it's not just the 885, because I could use my older hdmi dvd/cd player (actually also a Sony) to play music without the TV, so seems it's something to do with the hdmi handshake on the player. I've tried changing the order of power-up, etc., no change.

Guess it's kinda silly to obsess over this, considering my collection of SACD is like 10 discs, but still, it's turning into kind of a pet peeve/OCD issue now. So, I've ordered a BDP-S770 to compare with the 570, which will be an interesting experiment anyway. I'll send one or both back... free shipping on both, so I'm only out some return shipping if neither works for this, as I wouldn't be able to justify keeping either one of them. Then maybe I'll hold out for a used Oppo 80 (ideally) or something once the 93 starts shipping for real. Sigh.

Anyway, I don't mean to imply that the 570 is a bad BD player, as I've only spent about 5 minutes with it playing actual BD video content... enough to see (for the first time! ) the TrueHD light come on on my 885. And it does seem to be quiet, I haven't heard any fan noise at all so far. Sure there's the usual whirring as the disc loads or changes track, but during regular play it seems to be dead quiet.

 

[Huey]

While I haven't tried SACD as I only have one, I do believe that I did not have to have the tv on while playing a cd. Try turning of CEC control, at least that's what I think it is called.
Rob

 

[PaulyT]

Rob, is that CEC control a player setting? I'll look for it, but I thought I scanned through just about every single setting on the 570... My 885 does have some "hdmi control" features in the setup menu, but they're all off.