Sony BDP-BX37 Blu-Ray DVD Player & Streaming Internet
December 19, 2011 by Cherry
Filed under Blu-ray Players
Sony BDP-BX37 Blu-Ray DVD Player & Streaming Internet
- Blu-Ray, Streaming Internet
Full HD 1080p video output: Get the most out of your 1080p player with Full HD 1080p output. Enjoy Blu-ray DiscTM movies in brilliant high-definition resolution or upscale the quality of your DVDs to near HD.
List Price: $ 205.99
Price: $ 99.99
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Best bargain, latest technology, what else we want?,
This is the same model as Sony BDP-S370 Blu-ray Disc Player, made for costco; only difference between s370 and this model is you get a HDMI cable in the box.
Disclaimer: I bought BX37 model from Costco.
Just a brief review, as others have covered it: (AND A FEW TIPS for network setup at the end!)
PROS: Everything!
1. Great Blu-ray playing; fast start; just takes seconds to start playing.
2. Great standard DVD playing
3. Good functional remote but made better by the Android/iphone BD REMOTE app! it is great!
4. Excellent internet apps – Netflix plays so beautifully, browsing through my instant queue is better than in Roku! I retired Roku after buying this. Pandora and Amazon Video to boot.
5. DLNA Support: Great! I was reading some reviews that said things don’t work. I can say it WORKS GREAT! I have a NAS box in my local network, and it is able to play the music (mp3 and wav), photos and videos out of that; and it is quite fast! (read the tips below). Sony player found my NAS box automatically and added it to its menu!
CONS:
1. No Wifi! I don’t consider this as a big issue for 2 reasons:
– I have a wire running to the TV area from my cable modem, and I have a small D-LINK 1G 5 port hub near the TV to supply internet to all the devices in that area! The cable runs through the wall/basement for this.
– Even if you are using WI-FI, it is good to have a consolidator Wi-FI bridge router in the TV area providing wired internet to that area
– too many devices in a small area all talking wi-fi scares me (though I am technical enough to know it should work, I still feel bad!)
– If you put a lot of security settings in your wi-fi router (like me), then setting up each and every device becomes an issuue; in fact some devices have issues in dealing with wi-fi security! But wired internet always works!
– A couple of suggestions for wi-fi bridge router:
D-Link DAP-1522 Xtreme 4-Port GigaBit Selectable Dual Band Draft 802.11n N Duo Wireless Bridge/Access Point
Of course you can also use another 802.11n router with built-in gigabit ethernet ports as an access point.//
2. The BD REMOTE app: doing a fast forward/skip/rewind while playing Netflix is very difficult to manipulate; it would have been good, if Sony has provided a scroll bar like volume control for this also instead of pressing a forward button and correctly guessing when to stop and guessing when your button press will have effect!
3. No 3D support! If you have, or are planning to upgrade to 3D TV in the near future, you may want to consider the next higher models – BDP-S470/570/BX47/57 models. Otherwise, better save money now than future proofing!
4. Fast forward/rewind on Netflix is bad. Roku has an excellent interface for this – you will see frames in between while forwarding or rewinding. With this player, it is just a single time line bar that tells you how far in time you moved.
COUPLE OF TIPS ON NETWORK SETUP:
I have always found it better to keep the network setup in the house simple – by assigning static addresses to each device. For e.g. a typical setup can be done like this:
– Main wi-fi router’s DHCP server set up for the range 192.168.1.x
– Router access is at 192.168.1.1 (you can login and administer that router by typing [...] from your browser)
– The DHCP range can be set to 192.168.1.10 to 192.168.1.100
– Other devices: NAS drives: 192.168.1.101
Network Player/Receiver: 192.168.1.102
Gaming device (PS3/Wii/xbox) 192.168.1.103
network printer: 192.168.1.104
Blu-ray player (THIS ONE): 192.168.1.105
TV: 192.168.1.106
This is a suggestion and one can modify to suit their needs/setup/devices.
One big advantage is sticking to static IP address? Other apps, like this BD REMOTE and Denon’s remote app etc need not search every time and once registered they will continue to work without having to connect/sync up every time the dynamic addresses change. Routers are usually smart enough to give the same IP address to the same device but some time I do see changes with my D-link that surprises me once in a while. Using static addresses like this has eliminated those surprises for me.
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|Blu Ray player OK, but lacking functions,
I haven’t used this much for Blue Ray DVDs, but so far no problems.
But there are a couple of issues that really compromise this player:
1) It doesn’t come with wireless communications built in and so far I haven’t found a generic usb wireless dongle that works with it. So if you need wifi and have to buy Sony’s add-on communications device, then you might as well just buy a higher end model that already has wifi.
2) all of the above makes this especially important: BD Remote on your iphone or ipod won’t control the unit unless it’s connected to wifi.
To do over, I would have bought a model with wifi built in.
UPDATE 3/2011: I finally found a simple way to connect this to wifi in my particular system. I have an Apple Airport (handy device) plugged in behind my A/V rack and connected to my audio reciever so I can stream music wirelessly from computers on my home wifi to my A/V system. But the main designed purpose for the Airport was to serve as a bridge between wired network devices and wireless networks. So if you have an Airport, just run a network cable from the back of this BluRay player to the Airport and the player is networked! Even if you don’t have an Airport, you can buy one for not much more than Sony charges for the wifi dongle specific to this player. And with the Apple device you get a lot more functionality.
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|Excellent player for the price…,
I was a little wary of this player because it was being sold for so little money. I bought this player at Costco for $99.99 and I figured if it wasn’t a good player, I could just return it due to Costco’s great return policy.
Well, I’ve had the player for over a week and a weekend of heavy blu ray media usage and this player has been incredible.
Set up was a breeze. My house is set up with wired cat5 in every room, so I didn’t need the wireless feature. After hooking up the HDMI, HD sound, and the cat5, I fired up the player and I did the easy set up routine. After that was done, I went to set up and the player told me there was an update available. Down loaded the update and everything was ready in less than 10 minutes.
Tested the player with Avatar and the picture and sound were incredible. Next, I went on Netflix, Amazon, Youtube and tested everything. All the sites worked fine after initial sign up. I only have a 6mbps dsl, but it seems to be more than sufficent.
All in all, this is an amzing player for the price and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. To be honest, I’m thinking of going back and getting another one for the bedroom.
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