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

The player is sleight in appearance, but solid in its construction and it feels sturdy, with a good amount of heft. It has quick load times, especially when the "Quick Menu" option is turned on. It bitstreams the advanced codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution & Master Audio) without any trouble and decodes TrueHD over HDMI flawlessly. The BonusView features work without any problems, but the player still has not received its firmware update to do BD-Live. Since the player doesn't decode DTS-HD HR or MA, any BonusView secondary audio that contains a DTS-HD mix will only be played back using the legacy DTS core.

More negatives are the confusing wordings of the player's setup menu, which make it somewhat timely to get the player to decode and/or bitstream and display the proper aspect ratios, etc. exactly as you want it to.

Other than that, it is nearly perfect, playing 1080p/24 material flawlessly, but it hiccups on interlaced material, failing the HQV tests on 1080i material, so if you have a television that de-interlaces 1080i properly, it is best that you allow the TV to do it rather than this player. Unfortunately, the player does not have a "native" mode that will automatically transmit the native resolution on the disc; you can only set it to output a particular resolution (i.e. 720p, 1080i, 1080p) so, you'll have to go into the menus and switch resolution outputs whenever you encounter a 1080i disc, assuming you have the player set to output 1080p.

With past standalone Blu-ray players, Sony has been its own greatest competition. Their PS3 provides excellent Blu-ray Disc playback, network upgradability, and a comprehensive Blu-ray feature set including BonusView and BD-Live. Previous Sony players were lacking in these areas, or were prohibitively expensive. But this is no longer the case with the BDP-S350, a solid budget Blu-ray player that has the features and performance that most Blu-ray buyers are looking for, at the lowest price yet of a name brand player.

The PS3 is still a little faster to boot up and to load, but the latest generation Sony player is catching up even on this front, and the BDP-S350, with its CE component-style design and Infrared remote capability, integrates into a home theater system more easily than the PS3. Also, with the inclusion of a network port, the BDP-S350 can enjoy the same kind of firmware upgradability that the PS3 offers, as well as support of BD-Live interactive features (don't forget to pick up a USB flash memory card as you'll need it in order to use the BD-Live features).

The Sony's closest competition in price and functionality, Samsung's BD-P1500, doesn't quite match the Sony player in its DVD upconversion or reliability. One area where the BDP-S350 is slightly bettered by other competitive players (notably, the Panasonic DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55), in its video performance, both on DVD upconversion and BD playback. Subtle details in color and complex handling of things like moving diagonal lines are handled by the newest Panasonic players better than on the Sony, but these differences only become apparent on larger screen sizes such as large flat panels and massive front projection screens.

But on 3:2 cadence detection from DVDs (where the player optimizes the picture for movies, by detecting the inherent 3:2 cadence of film-based material), the BDP-S350 performs flawlessly, eliminating artifacts like moire patterns that can plague some lesser players. And, based on the current Amazon prices, the Panasonic players are slightly more expensive than the Sony, so this does merit some consideration, particularly with the economy the way it is right now.

The player's handling of next generation surround sound formats (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) is pretty typical for the current entry-level players - bistreaming these soundtracks over HDMI for decoding in one of the latest home theater receivers with HDMI 1.3 support. But the S350 offers neither multi-channel analog outputs, nor on-board decoding of DTS-HD sountracks to PCM. These shortcomings will make a difference if you have an older home theater receiver without on-board DTS-HD decoding and you want to get the best possible sound. If this is the case, then either of the new Panasonic players or Sony's own BDP-S550 player may be a better option. But if you've got the latest home theater gear, then the S350's bitstreaming of DTS-HD over HDMI is perfectly fine.

If you're a Sony brand fan, the BDP-S350 will give you a lot to be excited about, at a price that would have seemed impossible just a few short months ago. Pick one up for the holidays and you'll finally get to see what your HDTV and home theater system is really capable of.

A more detailed review of the player is available at Big Picture Big Sound.

I was apprehensive about replacing my region-free Oppo Digital DV981HD with the Sony BDP-S350, but this player has surpassed all of my expectations. Video and audio quality is excellent, and the user interface is quite intuitive (more than I can say about many players!).

Instead of ranting about general quality, though, I'd like to point out a few things that truly made this Blu-Ray player worth it:

* You can turn off the LCD display entirely. For someone who watches movies in a dark room, this is a must.

* You can set the player to output 1080p/24 BD video, which is handy if you have a TV that supports 1080p/24 but not 1080p/60.

* The BDP-S350 can downmix to stereo (which is useful when you have a 2.1ch system).

I held out for a mature product, and the Sony unit is exactly that!

I am surprised at the negative reviews of the BDP-S350. I purchased mine just last week and have had no problems: quick start times, quiet operation, excellent picture quality.

I've determined that most of the negatives are coming from users who are not properly setting up the player before use. NOTE: The default setting on this unit is "auto," meaning that it will set the picture quality to match the disc. So, if you put in a standard DVD it is going to play it at 480p. Change the picture setting to 1080p for all playback and you are guaranteed automatic upscaling for SD DVDs and 1080p for Blu-Ray discs. And the upscaling on this unit is terrific -- your standard def dics wil look great.

Also, several negatives are coming from people who aren't playing the unit through a 1080p HDTV. Of course the picture isn't going to look better than your SD DVD in that situation. Therefore, don't buy this unit it you don't have a 1080p HDTV -- you are wasting your money. And take the time to properly set up the unit for playback. All will be fine.

I'm giving this player 4 stars because the remote isn't designed as well as it could be. It's not bad, but it's not designed for use in the dark unless you have the layout memorized.

I'll grant that I only bought it because I got it close to my $300 benchmark but this is a good solid player. I own a nice Onkyo receiver that will handle all the audio codecs out there so I have no need for advanced decoding in a player. I'm not really interested in BD Live either. The boot time is greatly improved and I can't hear the fan at all. I would like to see zoom at slo mo but given the enormous amount of data a player would have to process to accomplish that I doubt I'll ever see it on a player I'd buy. Set up is cake if you know the lingo but if you answer a few questions in quick setup anyone should be able to get it done quick. I wouldn't suggest you get into advanced setup unless you know what you're doing but should you get in trouble there is a return to factory defaults.

As expected the picture is beautiful. I can't comment much on sound until I pick up some discs with good sound tracks. Upscaling is way better than the 300 and my regular upscaling player (also Sony) but not as good as my HD DVD deck.