Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 16.9 x 1.8 inches ; 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B0036WS4D4
• Item model number: BDP-S570
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (553 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,698 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #34 in Electronics > Televisions & Video > Blu-ray Players & Recorders > Blu-ray Players

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Begin enjoying Blu-ray 3D movies in Full HD 1080p or DVDs in near HD quality faster than ever with the Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray Disc Player. Wirelessly stream photos, videos and music or instantly access a wide variety of entertainment apps including: Netflix, , Pandora, Slacker, Picasa, YouTube and more.

Product Description

Begin enjoying Blu-ray 3D movies in Full HD 1080p or DVDs in near HD quality faster than ever with the Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray Disc Player. Wirelessly stream photos, videos and music or instantly access a wide variety of entertainment apps including: Netflix, , Pandora, Slacker, Picasa, YouTube and more.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

435 of 458 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great player for the price, March 18, 2010

By 

William J. Willis "BWillis" (Joplin MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player (Electronics)

The sony S570 is a great player. The fast load system is excellent and much faster than the older 300s models. The setup was easy (it walks you through each step) I use the wireless N router and the speeds are awesome. Seamless integration with our Netflix account and the ability to watch Youtube videos is a great addition to what the player can do. Great 1080p picture and good upconversion of dvds. Do not be afraid of this player. If you have a netflix account or would like to watch youtube videos on your TV- this is your player. Also on a side note- you have several other choices besides Netflix and youtube. You have Amazons video on demand service and several other free video services.

116 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BDP-S570 is super fast, April 27, 2010

By 

D. Yohn - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player (Electronics)

A week or so ago I replaced my Sony BDP-S300 Blu Ray Disk player with a new model, the BDP-S570. The S570 is one of Sony's newest players, and in the middle of their consumer line as far as model lineup. It was amazingly low priced at $249.

I decided to upgrade from the S300 for two main reasons. First, the load times on the S300 are excruciatingly slow, and second it cannot bitstream the newest audio codecs so I was forced to use its on-board decoder and analog output. With my new Emotiva prepro I wanted to reduce cable complexity and use HDMI only.

I started doing some research into the newest crop of BRD players and was convinced I would probably get the Oppo 83. But a few reviews on CNET and elsewhere said the S570 had "the fastest load times ever tested" and they ranked it as faster than and 83. It also has some of the new whiz-bang stuff like wifi, SACD compatibility, Netflix and Amazon streaming, Profile 2.0, 1Gb internal memory, HDMI 1.4 and 3D capability. So I looked up the Sony and found it was half the price of the Oppo, and decided to go for it. I figured that for $250 if I hated it I could send it back or pawn it off onto someone else.

Impressions of the Sony S570:
If you are an equipment snob like me and want your gear to feel substantial, like a quality device, this machine is NOT for you. I thought the box was empty when it arrived. The machine feels like it weights a few ounces (actually it weighs 2Kg or about 4 1/2 pounds.) Upon opening it, I was even more disappointed. this thing is super cheap feeling - you know how some plastic feels "good" and other plastic feels "cheap" and flimsy? This feels cheap. The buttons on the front are almost repulsive little Chiclets about the size of the buttons on my cell phone and remind me of some kind of toy made by Coleco. The disc tray feels like I will break it if I push it in. At least the remote is pretty nice so I won't have to touch the cheesy buttons. If just feels cheap. The power cord is molded into the chassis. The chassis is a non-standard size, which always drives me mad. It is almost a standard rack width at 17" wide, but it is only 8" deep, meaning it is too shallow for any other piece of gear to sit on top of it. I had to rig some rear "feet" for my DVR to sit it on top the Sony. Initial impressions were not good at all and I thought I had made a mistake buying this thing. At least once it is in the rack it doesn't look cheap. The all-black front is not as nice as the blue tinted plastic on the S300, but it looks like it belongs in a good equipment rack. Just don't touch it.

The connectors on the back feature a single HDMI jack, component and composite video, stereo analog audio (that goes with the composite video), Ethernet, digital coax and optical, and USB. There are no multichannel analog audio outputs if you need these, and I found it odd that it would offer legacy video outputs but force anyone using those to only use digital audio or HDMI for high-resolution audio. The USB connector is interesting as it allows the user to connect a memory stick (and the promise later a hard drive) for storing downloaded video. There is also a USB connector on the front and the machine can display a variety of digital image formats and play back a variety of digital audio formats directly from the USB connections, or via its networking capability. So while I probably won't use it as such, the machine has the ability to serve as a media hub. That's pretty nice.

I plugged it in and connected via HDMI to my pre-pro. The remote codes were in the Harmony database. I fired it up and went through the very logical and intuitive setup routine on-screen without having to refer to the owner's manual. I connected it to my network wirelessly (it has 801.n wireless built in) and had it check for a firmware update. There was one, so before I could try it I let it download and update which took about 15 minutes to complete. After it rebooted, I started exploring.

The user interface looks exactly like the PS3. This is not surprising since this box is pretty much the PS3 without the gaming capability or any on-board hard drive. It was intuitive and easy to navigate. I went to the setup screens and went through all the settings to see if I needed to adjust anything. Then I popped in a Blu Ray disc (Up.)

Wow. I was shocked. Where the old S300 would give me several "loading" screens and I could almost walk the half mile to the nearest Starbucks, get a latte and walk back before a disc was ready to play, this thing flashed the screen a couple of times and boom, it was ready to go. It was literally the fastest load I'd ever seen, faster than the CD player in my car can load a CD. Very impressive. The picture quality was also outstanding, as I expected. The sound, however, was not right.

"Up" has a dts-HD soundtrack, and the Emotiva processor told me the Sony was sending it multi-channel PCM. Hmm. I went back into the setup screens and it said dts was set to output as dts, but there did not seem to be any settings associated with the HD codecs. Hmm again. So I stopped the disc and thumbed through the owners manual. No mention of anything special I need to do. Time to hit up Google. Nothing obvious came up. Back to the owner's manual and I notice in the troubleshooting section a problem called "Dolby True HD and dts HD bitstream does not work." Aha. It seems one must set a user setting called "BD Audio Mix Output" to "OFF" and then the high def codecs will bitstream. Oh really? So I did this, and boom the Emotiva told me the sound track was dts-HD. There is no where other than this troubleshooting guide that mentions this, and the setup information says the "BD Audio Mix" function has something to do with the secondary audio tracks.

So, if any of you purchase this box or it's siblings, be sure to set this function to "OFF" if you have a pre-pro that decodes the new codecs.

After enjoying "Up" I tried the Netflix streaming function and cued up "The King of California." It came up on the screen surprisingly quickly, and the video quality was not HD but acceptable for casual viewing. It did seem to have to re-buffer too often, but perhaps adding a nice big 32G memory stick to the rear USB port will help this.

Next I tried playing back an SACD (Madman Across The Water.) The S570 outputs SACD as either Multi-PCM or Multi-channel DSD. I had set it to DSD, but the Emotiva will not accept a DSD input. The Sony detected this via the HDMI handshake and output the music as multi-channel PCM. It sounded pretty darn good.

Bottom line, my bias against cheap-feeling gear was wrong and I love this box. I didn't think I'd ever use the Profile 2.0 BD-Live features or something like Netflix streaming but I was wrong, I had a good time checking it out. I still think I'll never use the 3D features but who knows. I am happy I bought this and feel it is one of the best bargain buys I have ever made for my HT.

If however it really is as cheap as it feels and it breaks down after a few months, I'll be sure to let everyone here know.

367 of 393 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good player but no DLNA support (yet), March 4, 2010

By 

SL (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player (Electronics)

OK , got my S570 and tested everything I could. This is not a professional review since I'm not a pro.

-UNPACKING AND INSTALLING:

The box is very small, half the size of the 460 box. The player is also much smaller than the 460. The installation was a breeze because I basically removed my 460 and replaced it with the 570. I don't need the wireless, just hooket it to my Ethernet switch and set a fixed IP address like I do on any device I have.
The eject button on the player is almost impossible to find. Bring the remote.

The activation of both Netflix and Amazon can be a real pain and I had to register both again.

I changed the following settings from the default:
.Audio Mix to OFF
.Gracenote to AUTO
.Network settings to manual IP address.
.SACD to DSD
.IP Noise Reduction to zero

As soon as I turned the player on, a firmware update came up and its now version 315.

-BLURAY/DVD PICTURE QUALITY

Nothing new here. Bluray is great as it is with any other player and DVD is OK, nothing to brag about but decent. Professional reviews will give more info about cadence and other things, I spend my time watching movies not calibration disks.
Only thing new is the Gracenote that gives some info on the title but will interrupt playback and return the movie to start position.

-AMAZON/NETFLIX

If you know the 460, the interface is the same (very basic) but with an interesting difference on the audio side. With the 460 I can get DD 5.1 from Amazon and only get audio from Netflix if I set HDMI AUDIO to PCM. With the 570, all the streaming comes in PCM even if HDMI AUDIO is set to AUTO. I think it's a bug with the 460 that happens only with few receivers (no audio unless PCM is set) that is now fixed with the 570. I know, a little confusing.
There is an IP video noise reduction that defaults to 2. I set it to zero because I hate any kind of NR. Picture gets softer in most cases.
Picture quality with Amazon is good and so-so with Netflix but nothing that can be blamed on the player. BTW, my Internet connection is good, 18 Mbps hard-wired.
Gracenote doesn't work with Netflix or Amazon, but you don't need it.

-OTHER WEB SERVICES

There are 1 or 2 services not present on the 460 and few "coming soon". The most important is the Qriosity, from Sony, that promises to rival Netflix/Amazon. There is a Qriosity icon as a placeholder on the menu axis. More info here: [...].

-DLNA

Doesn't exist. Firmware upgrade ? Shame on you Sony.The Sony website is now updated and has a footnote about the upgrade but it wasn't there when I bought the player.

-USB DISK AND FILES SUPPORTED.

I used a pendrive to test quite a few file formats. Here is the result:

.M2TS Both movies recorded from my Canon Camcorder and the Hauppauge HD-PVR played perfectly. Great !
.MPG No problems, as expected.
.WMV Played without a glitch.
.MKV The video recorded with Makemkv didn't play at all (msg about corrupted file). The video recorded with Handbrake played but with a lot of pixelation.
.M4V Same as above. Also created by Handbrake.
.ISO Not recognized at all. Didn't show up on the playlist.
.MOV Same as above.
.AVI Same as above.

I think the only good news so far is the flawless playback of the 2 M2TS files.


-SACD

This is the Grand Finale: Absolutely fantastic . My Pioneer 94 can take DSD direct (no PCM conversion) and the sound is great. I set the receiver to "pure direct" and the sound was warm, tube like, beautiful. Obviously the receiver plays the big role here but the 570 did everything you could expect.

MY SETUP:

.Panasonic P65V10
.Pioneer 64 receiver
.Sony BDP S570 player
.U-Verse 18 Mbps Internet Service
.Everything through HDMI links.

I hope I gave you some highlights on the 570. Overall it's a great deal and a bargain considering what it can do. Let's hope the DLNA upgrade comes soon and works as expected.