Customer Reviews

Sony DVP-NS975V Up-Scaling DVD/CD/SACD Player

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

I bought this in November. It used to freeze occaisionally if the buttons were pressed too quickly on the remote. The unit has now died. Any DVD put into the tray causes the player to hang. It wont even power off. To get the DVD back out, I have to cycle the power via the wall socket, then hit eject.

Sony support's response: Mail it to a repair depot, they'll repair it and mail it back. This can be very inconvenient, and given the extremely low quality of the player itself not worth the postage.

Looking at other reviews, it is clear this is a widespread issue. That Sony won't admit the issue or offer to swap it out boggles my mind ... the worst customer service I've experienced.

*** Added comment 8/16/2005. Amazon customer service gave me a refund which mostly covered shipping for repair. Sony's Loredo Exchange center indicated they have discontinued the model and have no equivalent unit to send me and offered to forward it for repair it or buy the unit back. I just received a check for the unit.

I'm not sure where all the angst came from in the negative reviews here. I've had this long enough to know that we got a good unit. The main reason I'm posting a review is to make a couple of comments about the upscaling capability of this unit. First off, the upscaling logic will NOT make a lousy DVD look as good as your favorites. The good news is that it does provide quite a bit of improvement on some discs and you don't even have to have the best TV monitor to see the improvement. Before replacing our 11+ year-old Toshiba 32" TV, we had plenty of time to verify this claim. We also had two other DVD players to compare to, both decent players by Panasonic and Pioneer, both without upsampling capability. One improvement you will notice is significant softening of noise features. DVDs that I classify as "bad" often display increased image distortion as the subjects within the frame move faster. The upsampling capability tends to make these artifacts less noticeable.

Another comment about video quality - I've asked myself and heard others ask if HDMI cables are worth the money. Our TV has HDMI inputs as well as component video inputs. There is no doubt that the HDMI input provides for better picture quality. Since this DVD player has both HDMI and component outputs, it's easy enough to switch the TV input to compare. And if you shop around, you can now get HDMI cables at a much more reasonable price than you could a few months ago. I've compared $250 Audioquest cables to $60 AR cables using this DVD player and a 1080i standard monitor and am hard pressed to say that I can see any difference. However, the Audioquest cable does seem to keep a good connection longer than the AR. More expensive HDMI cables are more supple and seem to handle being bent around in the cable quagmire much better than cheaper ones.

This is a horrible unit and should be recalled. I bought this thinking it would be a good, versitile product and suitable for future use. What a mistake. I began having disc freezes and tray locks after about 5 weeks. Sproradic at first, then worse and worse. Now after 3 months it is dead and the official Sony warranty IS INVALID !!! I have to pay $33 to get a replacment unit from Texas, which may be a refurbished one with the same problems. Hard to believe isn't it!? Go to the Sony support site and see for yourself. You don't need to have one, no need for a serial number or anything. Just go through the process of acting like you have a problem. The support process will end saying your unit is NOT eligible for (local) service (!) and your only choice is to return it, freight pre-paid, plus another $33 to get a replacement, which may/may not be new. Do a web search on all the other poor comsumers who bought this piece of junk and you'll see it is a widespread problem. I have trashed this dead Sony unit after only 3 months. Why pay $33+ for more garbage? I will buy a JVC or Panasonic; maybe Denon. I'll never buy from Sony again. The JVC XVN512 is looking pretty good and has comparable features.

DVD player worked as advertised in the first month. Picture is excellent. However after after 1 month it gave a 'Tray Locked' error and would not operate at all. At Sony's suggestion the player was returned to the service center in Texas. That was early December. Sony said that the replacement unit would take about 1 week. Here it is January 18th and no DVD player. Apparently there are none in stock and would have to wait until the end of January. Nice product but horrible support.

Sony of old is gone. The new sony is just plain crap. This DVD player is the best example of how horrible they have become. less than 5 months, very light use and it's DEAD. To replace it I have to pay $33+.

Avoid!

Sorry Sony, but I simply don't trust your products anymore.

Unbelievable!!!! I bought this DVD player in March assuming that Sony MUST have fixed the problem after all of the initial problems with the player -- but just like every other post, I received the dreaded tray lock after just 30 days of use. What a piece of garbage and, I agree, a huge black eye for sony. Why is Amazon even continuing to sell this model?

I bought this player in November 2004. It had intermittent issues including video signal loss, audio drop-outs, etc., though
the picture quality was good while it lasted. Around April 2005, the DVD player stopped working entirely after the infamous "Off" error where the tray locks and the disc cannot be retrieved.

I am sending it back to Sony to give them a chance to fix it, as I have noticed there may be a firmware upgrade which fixes the problem. If this doesn't work, I will either be requesting a refund of my money or, if Sony refuses to do so, initiating legal action against them to recover my money. It is quite obvious that this product was released with numerous defects, and Sony's QC appears to be non-existent. Clearly a 93A claim is in order here for this defective product.

Was impressed with the initial quality of the sound (when set to 96k hz/24 bit) and video but only got to enjoy it for a few movies. I purchased my first unit in Nov 04 but it tray locked within 30 days. I got a second unit and it tray locked after 45 days (a few hours of movies). I had to pay to send it in for repair. I was without the unit for several weeks. After it came back, the HDMI port stopped working (after a few hours). It's in the service center again. I've now been informed they want to charge me $321 for the repair. I have spent many hours on the phone with these guys (or on hold) and their attitude is robotic at best. "Customer Satisfaction" has never come up in the conversation. Sony's very open approach is to leave a dud with the customer (multiple repairs ok by them) or send you a second rate refurbished model, all without any consideration for the inconvenience, the hassle, or that your now inferior unit doesn't come with additional warranty. I'm not convinced this entire investment won't be lost through no fault of my own. It's not what I expected from Sony. They seem to have lost their way.

Yeah, count me in too. I got to play about 9 full length DVD's until I put Scarface in and then nothing happened. I had to shut off the unit to be able to eject the disc. It ejected. Tried to go to the setup menu and got a bunch of garble... oh great.. turned it off.. changed movies and the same thing.. now nothing plays. Using a monster cable hdmi cable and 42' plasma screen from sony.. also new. Also, Sony new DA3000 ES model receiver. Strangely enough the receiver says "unlock" under DVD now after it screwed up... and no the child lock is not on... i've tried everything. PLEASE DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY IT WILL DEFINATELY BREAK. For God's sakes I should have spent a little extra and gone with an entire pioneer elite setup or samsung... sony looks great.. but all my sony pieces in prior setups have broke one way or another and these are bound to break now I'm sure... I figured it had been a few years since the last stuff broke maybe they are better. Looks like I was wrong. Stay clear unless you plan on watching less than 10 movies or something.

I felt the need to write a review since I have quite a bit of experience with this player. When shopping for an upconverting player I did a lot of research and I was aware of the "tray lock" problem but decided to take a chance based on the positive results related to PQ. I purchased my player in March with the hope that I would get one that had the newer firmware. The unit worked great for about 100 days and roughly 200 hours of playing before I experienced the "tray lock". I knew there was the possibility as it had 1.80 firmware and the problem wasn't resolved until 1.90 was released. Even though it was past the 90 labor warranty Sony did not charge me for the repair. Yes, I decided to have it repaired as I was more than pleased with this unit when it was working. It took around 2 weeks to get it back and I am still more than pleased with this player.

My words of wisdom are that this is a great upconverting player. There was a problem with this player but if you can get your hands on one with 1.90 or later firmware you should not have to worry about the "tray lock" problem. If you're not willing to take a chance I can understand that but for <$300 this IS one of the best upconverting players. If you think there is a player for any price that doesn't have some problems then do the research and you will find that all of them have some issues but it's a matter of deciding which ones you can live with.