Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

I previously gave this player 3 stars. I now would upgrade to 4 but Amazon won't let me change the rating.

The good news: the picture quality with this player is great. I won't belabor this as it's covered in the other reviews. The player has a nice low profile and setup out of the box is easy.

One thing to note: by default the player converts Dolby Digital and DTS to 2-channel PCM. There are items in the audio setup menu that let you change this.

You may find the menus to be a pain. Generally, I find navigation with this player to be confusing. The remote is not great. Tonight I hit the wrong button (in the dark, of course) about half a dozen times. Each time, I wound up staring at a message saying that the player could not resume play from the menu I had reached and I would have to start playing the movie from the beginning. So I had to hunt through the scenes to resume. My existing DVD player easily resumes; and it stores the resume points on the last 30 discs played. This player will not remember your location on a disc if you a) open the disc tray, b) play another title, or c) it just plain may not do it (manual, p. 31). Why??? (Update: This weekend I hooked up our old Rotel DVD player in parallel and my 15-year old daughter was thrilled. More than me, she really dislikes operating the Sony player.)

Many of the other reviews compare this player to an earlier generation of Blu-Ray. If you're upgrading from first generation BluRay, probably you will be pleased. If you're upgrading from DVD, you might find your existing player more convenient. But the picture when playing a Blu-Ray disc is spectacular.

If you're looking for reviews on the Sony BDP-BX1, check out the reviews for the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player. The BX1 is basically the S350 repackaged with a unique part number for Costco (so other retailers don't have to match their low prices). You'll find more than 100 reviews there that should apply to the BX1.

I've had the BDP-BX1 for a couple of months now, and I really like it. The player's crossbar menu system is very straightforward and easy to configure. Blu-Ray discs take longer to load than standard DVDs, so be patient.

I don't have a 1080p TV, so the quality for me is the same as watching a 1080i HD program on TV. You should read the reviews for the S350 to find out how well it works for 1080p.

It does a great job of upscaling standard DVDs - I have Batman Begins on both DVD and Blu-Ray, and after watching/pausing the same scenes, I've noticed the quality in 1080i of the upscaled DVD is amazingly close to the Blu-Ray.

It supports BD-Live, as long as you get the latest firmware. Go to Network Update in its menu. If you look at the System Information, the last 3 digits of the version should be 010 - that indicates BD-Live is enabled. You can confirm this by going to Sony's support site for BDP-BX1. But note - you need to insert a USB flash drive in the back and reboot the player before the BD-Live content begins working.

After mourning the death of HD-DVD for a while, which reduced my Toshiba HD-DVD player to upconverting DVD's to 1080P, I decided to buy a Blu-Ray player.
I already had a PS3 and have watched Blu-Ray movies on it. Athough it does a great job, I wanted something that was plug-and-play that would play nicely with my Logitec remote and the rest of my equipment while also fitting in my rack.
I was looking for a player that supports the new lossless HD audio, 1080P/24 video, had HDMI 1.3 and has a ethernet port for upgrading the firmware as well as possible BD Live capability. I also did not want to spend a fortune. I did not need the player to internally decode the audio since my Onkyo 606 receiver has that capability.
I reasearched several players by looking at reviews from both the Home Theater magazines and the AVS Forum before deciding on the S350.

Overall, I am very satisfied with my purchase from Amazon and the performance of the player. I would recommend it if you either have (or plan to upgrade to in the future) a receiver that decodes Bitstream over HDMI. If you are planning on sending audio directly to the TV (a big mistake if you want the full movie experience) then there are cheaper players that will "just play" Blu-Ray.

Pros:
-Loads quickly compaired to most other models (almost as fast as the PS3)

-Have had zero issues with playability of any of the discs I have watched.

-Upgradeable in a few months to BD Live

-Supports all the current audio and video codexes

-Small formfactor and silent operation

-Easy to use menus

Cons:
- Does not internally decode HD audio to PCM. It will require either a reciever that decodes HD audio bitstream (which I have and is not an issue for me) or it will send regular Dolby Digital to your receiver.

- Requires a USB memory stick for HD-Live (once it is available).

- Fast Forward is not extremely smooth and it does not perform single frame advance.

As many other reviews (including professional ones) have described, this is one of the best blu-ray players available in this price range right now.

I don't have much to add to those reviews, but will make two quick points.

(1) If you have a Bravia tv, the player and the tv work together well (e.g., you can use the remotes to control both, can have the tv automatically turn on and switch to the BD player).

(2) If you play a regular dvd in this, you will get upconversion (electronic conversion of the 480p video to 1080p video), but I found that my Oppo 981 dvd player's upconversion was noticeably better (sharper & clearer picture).

So I'd definitely recommend this player for blu-ray, but you might want to hang on to your Oppo for playing your dvd collection.

Until very recently, the conventional wisdom was that the Sony Playstation 3 -- primarily a video game console -- was universally the best option for those looking to get into Blu-Ray discs. Now with the release of the S350, and its late-September price drop, that is no longer the case. Which option is right for you?

As of this review (Oct. '08), the PS3, plus the remote which is sold separately, comes to about $420. The S350's suggested retail price of $299 undercuts that by $120. Both machines feature an ethernet port which allows it to be updated all the way to Profile 2.0, although the S350 will require a flash memory card to do this whereas the PS3 presumably uses the attached 40GB hard drive. Up to this point, Profile 2.0 features have not been very appealing, and you may have no desire to update at all. Both machines are capable of outputting 1080p at 24fps, to more accurately represent the frame-rate associated with American cinema, but you will only be able to make any use of this if you have a 120hz set. And of course both machines will function as upconverting DVD players.

The S350 seems to have eliminated the problems most reviewers were associating with the S300, Sony's previous entry-level model. There were reports indicating a higher than usual failure rate on the S300, but with the S350 on the market for a few months now it seems that this has been remedied. The load times, once a 2-3 minute inconvenience on the earliest Blu-Ray players, are barely noticeable on this player and are not much worse than the load time on a DVD. I have NOT noticed the drive being unusually loud, which another review mentions -- in fact, if I have A/C or a fan running, I can't hear the disc drive over that and the movie.

The S350 is a solid entry-level Blu-Ray player, with all of the Blu-Ray playback functionality of the PS3, but for more than $100 less. If you're interested in a Blu-Ray player, and you prefer the reliability of the Sony brand, but you have no interest in video games, the S350 should be your first choice.