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Sony BDPS370 Blu-ray Player | 
| Brand: Sony
Category: CE
Buy New: £115.00
as of 9/9/2010 00:32 BST details
New (29) Used (1) Refurbished (1) from £99.99
Seller: CherryB
Rating:  101 reviews
Media: Electronics
Fragile: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.4
Dimensions (in): 19.1 x 11.7 x 3.9
MPN: BDPS370B.CEK
Model: BDPS370B.CEK
EAN: 8715616064491
ASIN: B0038M1UTW
Release Date: February 2, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Blu-ray & DVD Playback | | • | XrossMediaBar (GUI) | | • | BRAVIA Internet Video | | • | HDMI & Optical Output | | • | 36mm x 430mm x 206mm |
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| Similar Items:
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 101
 Great player so far and much more than a Blu-Ray player already - bring on the DLNA... April 14, 2010
Smart Gadget Man (UK)
32 out of 32 found this review helpful
This is a very nice player - faster in operation than most Blu-Ray machines I have seen operating to date. The Sony operating system is very slick and intuitive to navigate around the various types of content.
I have only watched a handful of BluRay movies so far and the picture quality seems great to my untrained eye. DVD upscaling looks good too.
I updated the firmware using a wired LAN connection no problem which added BBC iPlayer HD capability. This is a great feature, although not HD in the way blu-ray movies or Sky HD are as the compression is a lot higher, however we can't blame Sony for that. Also fair to say that iPlayer needs a broadband connection with both generous bandwidth and a willing attitude towards streaming large amounts of data. I am using a wired LAN connection to my router which ensures highest data rates available.
I have used it as much as a network device as a Blu Ray player since I installed it - just because I can, at least until my broadband provider starts throttling back the bandwidth... YouTube is also pretty good - although searching for videos without a keyboard is a bit like typing out a text message on the remote.
Sony also offer a USB wireless dongle as an optional accessory for this player but it is rather expensive (about £75 I think) - I prefer the cable (with wireless bridge if necessary) approach.
Review title says 'so far' for the simple reason that I have purchased this player in the expectation of promised DLNA support being released in next few weeks. The spec sheet on Sony's web site looks good for streaming various content from a DLNA media server on a home network (e.g. Windows Media Player) so this player could easily form the centre of a home entertainment system streaming music, viewing images and video content - assuming all works as well as anticipated.
DLNA support is still patchy in the Blu Ray player market at the moment and to be fair it probably represents a large proportion of the development budget to produce a new player with DLNA added. Assuming Sony get the next firmware release right (I have no reason to assume they won't) this player will be outstanding.
Sony Blu Ray player 370 model March 31, 2010
K. Mundell (N.Ireland)
66 out of 67 found this review helpful
Just got this today for a relatives birthday present. Extremely fast and slick but was at first disappointed that the BBC iplayer wasnt available this afternoon when i looked for it. Just got an update this evening (31/3/2010) and now BBC iplayer works perfectly, and yes, BBC HD works like a dream on iplayer. Had no problem streaming Lovefilm movies to my TV although I consider myself lucky as our Sky broadband is around 13 meg speed in real terms. Another thing is that it looks like Lovefilm will go HD with their service on this player as you can watch HD trailers of the latest films streamed from the net. Youtube HD videos also work here unlike the LG370 we have which just streams SD at the minute. Hope this helps you makin up your mind about this player. We bought it for the online and catchup tv facility. One last thing is the HD streaming to the player looks the same quality as blu ray discs although our TV is 720p only. Lovefilm SD movies are the same quality as ordinary DVDs (or near DVD at least)
Sony BDPS370 March 29, 2010
J. K. Allum (UK)
78 out of 80 found this review helpful
Got this delivered Saturday. After unpacking, was surprised how much smaller this is height wise compared with my S350. The player is now in gloss black, which I do prefer, apart from the inevitable dusting.
Very, very easy to setup and load times are also very fast, even from a cold start probably at least 75% faster than the S350.
One nice update is the removal of that bright blue 24 fps led indicator and also the eject button is now on the remote. The drawer mechansim is now a standard tray loading, so the drop down flap has gone.
Performance is quite simply outstanding with no issues. Future firmware updates promise BBC iplayer amongst other things.
Very impressed April 22, 2010
David Powell (Wales - UK)
69 out of 71 found this review helpful
I've never been one for Sony's hi-fi gear as I prefer the sound of other manufactures' equipment, but I had been looking for a blu-ray player that met my requirements for over a year now. I was waiting for Oppo's BDP-831, which was inexplicably cancelled about a week after receiving 5 star reviews in the major home cinema and hi-fi magazines. Then the Cambridge Audio 650BD came out for the about same price as the Oppo's SRP, but had worse quality DACs and Video scaler, which put me off.
Then the Sony came out that played most of the disc types that the Oppo and Cambridge Audio players (all but DVD-Audio) for less than half the price of those players. Chuck in iPlayer support and I was sold!
I'm very glad I decided to get this player. It loads Blu-Ray films faster than a Playstation 3, DVDs faster than my old Denon 1920 DVD player. DVD up-scaling is strong, with the exception of line drawn animation (like Family Guy or The Simpsons) which sometimes causes thin horizontal lines to shake and break up. Blu-Ray playback is excellent and stable, provided you have a TV that can display 720p or 1080p at 24 fps.
On-line content was fairly good, but I was unable to play HD content from LoveFilm or YouTube without buffering problems on my "up to 8Mb" from Tiscali (which was no faster than when I had their "up to 2Mb" service). iPlayer has no such problems though as the BBC's servers are much faster than the afore mentioned services.
A nice surprise was finding that the USB playback feature does support H.264/AVC video in a .MKV container (it's not mentioned in the blurb, but is mentioned in the manual), so you can playback all those (legally acquired) TV shows you've downloaded from the Internet.
Multi-region DVD playback can be achieved via universal remote (e.g. One4all, with the magic button, and Logitech Harmony) hacks, which are the same as they were for the BDP-S360 (easily found via a Google search). There is no such easy hack for multi-region Blu-Ray playback however. On some players multi-region Blu-Ray playback can be achieved via a hardware hack, but that would invalidate your warranty, so for most it's not worth the risk. However, region coding on Blu-Ray discs is optional and many "region A" Blu-Ray discs are actually region free.
If I had one niggle with the player it would be that it doesn't have built in wireless networking, and the Sony wireless network USB dongle is an expensive add-on which sells for 5 times the going price of other wireless network USB dongles. This alone though is not enough for me to dock a star on an otherwise exemplary player.
Sound Review (New):
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I've now had the opportunity to assess the Sony BDP-S370's sound vs. my Denon 1920 (a DVD/SACD/CD player). When playing SACDs (Super Audio CDs) the old Denon beat the Sony hands down, achieving greater detail and clarity, while delivering a more realistic sound. I somewhat expected this as the Denon has a DSD based DAC which is the native format of a SACD, while the Sony has to convert the DSD signal to a PCM one as it has a PCM based DAC.
I then moved onto an Audio CD and a 24/96 DVD, both of which are PCM based, which means the Denon should be at a disadvantage. However, the Denon once again delivered better detail and clarity, while once again delivering a more realistic sound.
So in summary while the Sony is a good performer in movie sound, it is less accomplished as a music player and could do with some UK tuning or some component upgrades. However, perhaps this is slightly unfair as the Denon's price as new was £100 more than the Sony's new price, however the Denon is also 5 years old so things should have improved since then. I believe that Sony's next player up Sony BDP-570 is supposed to have improved audio circuitry and 7.1 analogue outputs, but if other reviews are right, then this upgrade has done nothing to improve the musicality. So I guess I'm saying that if you are more of a music person than a film person, then the Sony players may not be the right fit for you.
Internet Video Update:
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Sony have just added 'Demand Five' (Five's catch-up service) to the internet video section. I watched Archer and part of Chinese Made Easy, both streamed comfortably with excellent quality, which was as good as (if not better than) Freeview (SD)!
Unfortunately I just discovered that the Drama section (i.e. CSI, Grey's Anatomy, etc.) is not available via the Bravia Internet Video version of Demand Five, which Five informed me is due to licensing issues. This majorly affects its usefulness as Five's main shows are dramas, but you can still use it to catch up on Home and Away and Neighbours.
MKV Support Update:
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The MKV support is a bit patchy. If a MKV contains AVC/H.264 video with a profile "High @ Level 5.1" then the video will not play and you'll be shown an on screen message saying "file corrupt or unsupported". This is true of many hardware MKV players and as such most new MKVs are created at "High @ level 3.1" or "High @ level 4.1" now days.
The strange thing is that the profile level is a suggestion, rather than an absolute, so if you can change the profile from Level 5.1 to Level 4.1 then most media files play fine. I used a tool called tsMuxeR to convert (not transcode) from a MKV (Level 5.1) to a M2TS (Level 4.1), which took around 8 seconds, and the resulting file played fine on the BDP-S370. This should work on the majority of files, however you may have to end up re-encoding some files which takes an age.
USB Drive Support Update:
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I also tried using the player with an external 500GB USB 2.0 hard drive. This worked fine, but the file system has to be FAT32, which Windows appears not to support FAT32 on large volumes, Windows 7 only allows ExFAT formatting, which is unsupported by the BDP-S370. The solution is to use a third party FAT32 formatter (I used Fat32Format) to format the drive. The downside of FAT32 is that it only allows a single file size of 4GB, meaning that larger videos may have to be split into several parts.
Another cool thing is that my USB SDHC memory card reader worked just like any other USB memory stick and I was able to view the AVCHD Lite video and photos taken on my Panasonic TZ7 camera. The photos in particular looked great in 1080p, much better than the TZ7's 720p HDMI.
One other thing I've noticed is that if you plug in a thumb drive or external hard drive, then you'll find the player creates a folder called BUDA, which the player uses for Blu-Ray Live data. If you want to delete the data you can do so from the players menu.
Worth every penny, if only for BBC iPlayer. April 23, 2010
Brian SW1 (London)
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
I've had the player for about a week now, and the things I like about this player are:
1) BBC iPlayer is fantastic. The quality is just like watching live TV. It's also very easy to connect to Youtube: you can log into your account and see your favourite videos, or search new ones by entering text via the remote (mobile-phone style). German Tageschau news broadcasts and Love Film on demand are also easily accessed, among other services. I just connected the unit to my router via a 10 m LAN cable.
2) The machine responds quickly, only taking about 2 seconds for the drawer to open from a cold start. My old Panasonic used to take about 30 seconds for this operation!
3) It's very thin, as it has no scart sockets, so fits in a confined space.
4) Nearly all functions can be operated from the remote control of my Sony Bravia TV, so no need to hunt for a specific remote.
5) The remote has a skip forward/back button so that you can easily skip back 10 seconds if you missed something.
6) Put in an audio CD, and it finds the track names for you from the internet.
To be honest, I haven't even viewed a blu-ray disc yet, but my DVDs look great on it.
Overall, it's well worth the price (around £159) for all the additional content it gives you.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 101
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