Customer Reviews

Sony DMXNV1 Bravia Internet Video Link

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Unless you are prepared to watch video clips, from 1-5 minutes, with poor video (Not HDTV quailty), poor sound (Not Digital quality). I was lead to believe I would be able to watch full length movies and TV shows, not trailers. What a laugh!!! Don't bite!! Don't waste your money!! Spend it on a Blu-ray player instead.

When Sony announced the Bravia Internet Video Link, the concept sounded great. VOD on my TV controlled by the same remote and all native.

BUT this product is nothing more than a dead-end. The content is lackluster at best and totally out of date. The video quality is no better than a YouTube-ish website and the sound as abysmal. Its such a sad shame that Sony botched this up. It really does not add up to a worthwhile purchase. I do hope Sony learns from this mistake and puts in a more scalable VOD system directly into their Bravia TVs.

Sony has updated the Bravia Internet Video Link but I can't run the update until I update the Sony Bravia XBR KDL-32XBR4 32" TV... and to do that I need to call some 800 Number.

IF you are looking for a VOD Product that has HD content and seems to have a direction (albiet slow one at best), I highly recommend the Apple TV 160GB.

Though the price point of $299 USD is still disproportionate to the benefit, the recently announced addition of Amazon downloads makes this a more compelling option. That said, if one already has an Apple TV and/or a Roku box, you are likely already getting better entertainment value in the long run compared to this device.

If Amazon offers a superior VOD selection than the current 'direct to TV' streaming options, this could quickly change. However, we will ALL have to wait until the new VOD service is launched to 'all' existing Internet Link users (not just select ones) later this summer.

The BIVL attaches to the back of the TV, and you control it with the TV remote. It has YouTube, clips from a variety of sources, and just recently, Amazon Unbox. The interface consists of some nice semi-transparent menus over a soothing blue background.

That's the good part.

The downsides are many, compared to the AppleTV (ATV) which is similar:

- The interface always seems to lag a little compared to the ATV.

- We have fast internet, but Amazon Unbox is much slower than ATV, and doesn't show trailers. Painful.

- Most of the other programming is junk, some of which I had to block on my home router since I didn't want my kids watching it and there aren't any parental controls that I could find (e.g. "Fright Night" movie)

- Directions on hooking it up aren't very good, took me about an hour to realize that you have to plug in the USB cable between the device and the TV to allow the remote to control it.

Bottom line, we have an AppleTV and the BIVL, but we rarely use the BIVL -- mostly when we find ourselves thinking, "Gee, there's gotta be *something* good on there..." There hasn't really been much yet that wasn't on the ATV. If you don't want an ATV, though, this at least lets you watch YouTube clips and Amazon Unbox movies/TV shows.

If hulu shows up on either, my story will change.

The Bravia Internet Link came bundled with my new TV. It also included a coupon for Amazon's Video on Demand worth $80. Setup was easy as I already had a network connection available at the TV's location for my aging ReplayTV units. Before getting this for Christmas, I had seriously been looking at getting a Vudu box, but decided to wait until I saw what the Sony DMXNV1 capabilities were. I am glad I waited.

I am not sure how the Amazon movie offerings compare in total to Vudu's, but in checking for several movie titles we were interested in viewing, I found that Amazon had every one that Vudu had. The selection is far superior to my cable company's VOD movie selection and the pricing is better too. Searching for movies on the Bravia is a little cumbersome and it would be nice if previews were available. I find it much easier to use my PC and the superior searching on Amazon.com to find what I want.

Renting the movie is very easy once your account is setup from either the PC or the TV. The movie starts almost instantly after renting. Picture quality was great and so was the sound. Never saw any streaming hiccups during playback. Pause works as it should, but the forward and rewind controls are less than ideal. When using forward and rewind, you only move a cursor along the movie's timeline, the picture onscreen does not fast forward or reverse. Once Play is pressed the picture jumps to that point selected and plays from there. It was difficult to be able to jump back a few seconds to replay something as the cursor moves rather quickly and you can not see where you are in the film except for the hour, minutes and seconds counter. I believe this is a limitation of the hardware since it is streaming the video rather than using a hard drive for buffering/storing. We watched 3 movies last night and had no problems with any of them. Besides the Amazon movies, the other content available is not all that compelling.

Overall, it is a nice product and one that I expect we will use often. I would have a hard time justifying paying $299, but bundled with my TV, it is a great bargain and useful product.

Except for bandwidth limitations of my system (Wireless G) this Bravia Internet Video Link is a great addition to my TV system. I have basic cable so I don't have video on demand other than this link. For a one time expenditure it gives me quite a lot of options. I have it connected thru a wireless game adapter and it works just fine.

I read a lot of so-so to bad reviews of this. But I got one anyway because I found out it now supports Netflix. I could not be happier with it. I have not yet tried the Amazon "on demand" feature and most of the other features are worthless. But the Netflix steaming does everything I want it to. At $199 it's a huge rip off. Buy a Ruku for less. I got mine for just over $50. Hope this simple review helps.

We just got a new Bravia TV and the Internet Link works seamlessly with it. We watch movies from Amazon.com's service. It is usually cheaper than other VOD servies, and the content is much broader. Older movies and TV shows can be streamed to the Bravia. Make sure that you do have the necessary internet speeds or you will be frustrated. We have DSL and content looks good on our HD widescreen. I am sure some of the older reviews are correct that there was limited use for the Link before Amazon started its service.

Mostly I want to underline what the other reviewers have said. The U-Tube videos (and many others) look positively horrible on my big high-def screen, and the search function is clunky, since you have to enter your searches, passwords, etc. via a phone-like display using your remote control. The other sources of content are mostly garbage. Thousands of channels of it - but garbage nonetheless. (Movie trailers for example. Yippee.) I suppose we can hope that over time, the content will improve. Until it does, this will count as one of the dumbest purchases I have ever made.

From a technical perspective, the device was easy to connect, and started up more or less okay, after about ten minutes of updates, error messages and start-overs.

I have no doubt that the combination of fiber to the home and TV will ultimately result in a revolution in television, but this ain't it.

Like many of the other reviewers, I often getting choppy video. I was using a wireless connection, but switched to a wired Ethernet to speed things up. It is better, but still not good enough. I've clocked my cable service at about 2.5 Mbps, but it varies by time of day and day of week of course. I'm hoping to switch to fiber soon. That may give me the faster, consistent bandwidth that is needed for this product.