Customer Reviews

Sylvania NB500SL9 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player with HDMI Cable

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Sylvania has produced a real winner in this Blu-Ray player! I hooked it up to a 42inch HDTV using the high speed HDMI cable that came with it (a big plus in itself). I connected the audio to my receiver using the coaxial digital output. I turned it on and waited a bit less than a minute for it to power up. I anxiously inserted my first blu-ray disk. It started playing perfectly a about 30 seconds later. The picture and sound are completely outstanding. This could not have been any easier!

I ran it through it's paces doing various tests (I'm an engineer at heart). Jumping backward and forward between titles was quick and flawless. Pausing and then resuming play was equally flawless. I stopped it and restarted it. It gives you the option to playback from the beginning or to resume where you left off. I chose resume and was very quickly watching it where it left off. Perfect!

Even though it worked perfectly right out of the box, I was curious to check out the menu system. Without even looking at the instructions I found the the setup menu to be very easy and intuitive. I didn't make any changes since the defaults were all what I would have chosen anyway.

Next, I wanted to try playing back a regular DVD. This unit upscales to 1080p. To my surprise, the picture I saw was actually very close to looking like blu-ray! Wow! This is going to make me want to play a lot of my regular DVDs again. Nevertheless, I'm sure I'll always want to watch my favorites using Blu-Ray when I have that option.

Finally, I tried playing back a DVD I recorded myself. Again, it played perfectly with no problem at all. Then, I tried a CD and found it to play perfectly. I also tried a CDROM that has jpeg images on it and that too worked showing the images as a slide show and giving me the ability to choose to view a specific image, or to quickly jump between them.

This is really a great bargain for the price. About the only thing it doesn't do that I would have wanted is to playback mp3 files. But that isn't really a big deal since I have other ways of playing them.

I absolutely recommend this player - 2 big thumbs up!

DO NOT!! I REPEAT..DO NOT update with the firmware for this product! We got our new player on Friday. It kept shutting off. Sunday we took it back and exchanged it. Got the new one home and yesterday (Monday 2/09/2009) it kept skipping and freezing on every disk we put in. So, I called the FUNAI Corp ( 3 times today). I was instructed to download the firmware by one of their customer service reps. ALL directions were followed to the letter. Guess what? It won't play at all now. I get a disk error on every one. So, a few minutes ago I called back and was told sorry. You should have read the terms and agreements for the Firmware update. It says we are not responsible if it damages your machine and NOW they will gladly give me a local service center to take the machine to be repaired at MY expense, because, using the firmware update has now voided my 2 day old players warranty. I was also advised by one of their supervisors to try to take it back and exchange it again and to lie about using the update. LIE? FUNAI should be ashamed of themselves! I will be sending in a consumer affairs report on this one! This isn't a dime store deal that you don't expect a lot out of.This was nearly 200 bucks tossed out the door.

02/04/09 - IMPORTANT UPDATE: Funai has released a firmware update for this player. I have high hopes that this firmware update will fix the problems with freezing on certain Blu-ray discs.

The firmware can be found at: funai-corp.com/support/Downloads.aspx

EDITED 12/03/08 - The player freezes in multiple places when playing "The X-Files: I Want to Believe." I attempted to play the movie three times and it froze three times, each time required a power-down and restart. I just finished watching the movie on the PS3 and it did not have any issues. There is apparently no way to update the firmware on this player, so I don't expect good results on some titles.

One thing that I discovered that I really do like about this player is that it will allow you to set repeat on all movies, unlike the PS3. The PS3 will not allow some movies to repeat, but I have been able to set them to repeat on the Sylvania. This is not a big deal by any means, but I do like the feature.

EDITED 10/14/08 - It looks like the price has been reduced to $199 now, so this player is more attractive. It is a four-star unit at this price point. The review was written when the price was $279 and the price reduced the star rating. This is a very reasonable price for the player and I expect that it will suit many people. Recommended.

ORIGINAL REVIEW FOLLOWS:

OVERALL 3.5 STARS

I received this unit today and tested it against my Sony Playstation 3. I timed how long it took to perform various actions on both units and the results are as follows:

The Sylvania NB500SL9:

The time from power on to display on screen was 35 seconds without a disc in the tray.

The time from inserting a Blu-ray disc (The Nightmare Before Christmas) to display on screen was also 35 seconds.

The display went black for 1 minute and 4 seconds after the previews, as the BD menu was loading. It took 2 minutes and 2 seconds before the audio handshake completed and the BD menu soundtrack started playing.

The menu is moderately slow to respond, but not painfully so. Moving between menu items is not snappy like it is on the Sony Playstation 3 (Playstation 3 80GB, but it is not slow enough that you don't think the remote is working.

It took 5 seconds to load the Disney Blu-ray screen after pressing play (without intro by Tim Burton). After the Disney Blu-ray intro, it took 25 seconds to get to the FBI warning. It took 13 seconds from the end of the FBI warning to get to the Disney castle scene and then about 3 seconds to get to the movie.

The HDMI audio handshake failed again and I had to reset my processor to get the audio to work.

I pressed "Top Menu" to get back to the menu and it took 1 minute and 2 seconds to return to the menu screen and, once again, the audio did not work. The video and audio cut out and came back on after 1 minute and 4 seconds and the audio was back.

The video output is pretty solid and I don't believe that anyone will have many complaints here. Overall, the video output was excellent and I was very pleased with the performance.

The audio is problematic in my installation and changing the BD audio mode did not fix the handshaking issues. The audio eventually synchronized, but it took a long time and was definitely disappointing.

Apparently the HDMI handshaking is questionable on this unit. I have a Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD player and a Sony Playstation 3 Blu-ray player and neither have HDMI audio/video handshaking issues with my Integra DTC 9.8 processor. I connected the NB500SL9 with the same Audioquest HDMI cable that I use with my HD DVD player, so I know the cable is not the issue here. I tried all the various settings in the setup section and was unable to resolve the audio handshaking issue, so this is where my testing ended.

This unit might work much better with a different processor than I am using, so consider this a review of how the Sylvania unit works with the Integra DTC 9.8 pre/pro only. With this in mind, I cannot recommend this unit for anyone using the DTC, as the audio handshaking issues are a deal breaker.

I tested the same disc with the Sony Playstation 3 and the results were as follows:

Power on to display took 9 seconds.

The disc was recognized by the PS3 5 seconds after insertion.

It took 29 seconds after insertion to get to previews.

It took 26 seconds to get the the BD menu after the previews. The audio synchronized immediately. Menus are immediately responsive.

It took 3 seconds to get to the Disney castle scene after pressing play without intro.

It took 13 seconds to get to the FBI warning.

It took 26 seconds to get to the BD menu after pressing "top menu" from the movie.

If you are in the market for a Blu-ray player, I would still suggest the Sony Playstation 3, as it doesn't cost very much more and performs far better in every way. Playstation 3 80GB

IMPORTANT... see below:

When connected directly to my Mitsubish WD-73833 DLP set, the HDMI handshake was immediate, so the issue is with how this unit's HDMI port handshakes with my Integra DTC 9.8 processor. I cannot say how this handshakes with other processors, but I suspect that it will work well with many processors.

Overall, I will give this unit a 3.5 star rating, as I am certain that it will work very well in some settings, but not in mine. I would give the Sony PS3 a 4.5 star rating and would still recommend it over the unit reviewed here.

The unit was tested on a 42" Panasonic Plasma, and in conjunction with an Onkyo 605 Receiver.

The first test was load time. From power on to movie studio wallpaper the machine took 1:30 to power up and load-about 20 seconds more than my Panasonic BD30K.

The second test was with the Men in Black Blu-Ray. Picture and sound quality were excellent, and the movie played fine all the way through.

The next test was upscaling. Unfortunately at 32 minutes in a Season 9 X-File episode, the player froze. I tested the same disc in an Onkyo 805 HD DVD player, and this did not happen, so it was not a problem with the disc. The image quality on the Sylvania Test player was not as sharp as on the Onkyo 805's upscaling capabilities.

The major advantages of this player are its price point, and the HDMP cable, which comes with the player. In addition it allows decoding of all major audio codecs, including True HD.

The major disadvantages were load time, box design and player design. The box is bright orange/white and does not convey luxury or refinement quality as other brands do. The unit/remote also feel "cheaper" than compared to my other player, and is a bit "boxey" looking, so it is less attractive. Lastly the player was a bit noisey when "spinning" the discs before loading.

I've recommend this player as an extry level unit to start enjoying BD movies, but believe there are more substantial units at the same or slightly higher price points, which may be better suited for the serious HT enthusiast.

This unit has all the important features and is a bargain for the price at Amazon. Picture and sound are perfect and far better than DVD much to my shock. I am using it with a 57 inch Hitachi HDTV and the picture is still incredibly sharp. The unit actually has a Sony optical head and the rest is actually Panasonic according to other sources. Quality seems excellent with a very capable remote and included HDMI cable.

I bought the player in Oct 08, it was slow as heck, picture blinked occasionally on all discs, sometimes froze, then after 5 months it stopped reading discs completely.

Wouldn't recommend.

We bought this on November 7, 2008 and received it on November 21, 2008. We hooked it up using the HDMI cable and digital coaxial audio cable to Denon audio receiver and 37" Vizio HDTV. The picture and sound were great, load times were reasonable for Bluray discs and regular DVDs played nice and looked great. Yesterday (2/14/2009) was day 99 since purchase (of course, outside the warranty) and day 85 of actually potential use. The player decided that it would load a Bluray DVD and play it for a few minutes and then freeze and become totally unresponsive to use of the remote or buttons on the player itself. We had to disconnect the power and then wait a few minutes (just to be safe) before hooking back up to power to retrieve the disc. We tried this with standard DVDs, other Bluray Discs, audio CDs and the same result happened usually within a few minutes or sooner if you made the machine skip ahead chapters. Then after several minutes of waiting to get our disc back out, we tried to just leave it on and see what it would do with no disc in it. It then randomly opened and closed the disc tray (sometimes the tray only came out 1/2 or 2/3 of the way) until it finally just froze up and exhibited similar behavior as mentioned above.

This is extremely frustrating as this player was ranked pretty high by consumer reports and other users on here and is our second foray into HD movie players (we still have an HDDVD player made by Toshiba, which its only problem is that there are no new movies out on it, for the obvious reasons). I have contacted the manufacturer about having it repaired under the one year parts warranty and am awaiting to see how that works out. I will update this review based on what happens there. Of course for the price of this unit, if I have to pay for labor to fix it, it is most likely not going to be worth it and we will probably just make the switch back to DVD and use the progressive scan old player we have and see what happens with the future of Bluray players.

Thanks for giving people the opportunity to report on issues such as these both good and bad.

After returning the product to Sylvania it took six weeks to get it back, but it is working again. The only saving grace for this player is that it really only cost $75. I would suggest to anyone to wait until PS3s come down in price or get a little pricier unit with a more reputable consumer support history.

This was sort of an impulse purchase. I had done considerable research and then found this Sylvania on Amazon. After noting the the writeup on Consumer Reports mag. I decided this might be a good deal. I received it sooner than they said and tried it immediately. After setting it up,which took a few minutes,I played a Blu-Ray disc and was quite pleased with the job it did. I noted there was a firmwear update for this product so I downloaded and installed the update and everything is great. I would recommend this item very highly and would make the purchase again.

This is definitely an entry-level blu-ray player.

I got it from[...]. My setup has a Sharp 52" HDTV
and Sony DAV-HDX274 5-Disc DVD/CD Player 5.1 Channel Home
Theater System.

Good:
1) Play blu-ray disk well, video quality is excellent.
I configured the player to send video-only signal to HDTV
and send the audio signal to my Sony home theater system.

2) It comes with high-speed HDMI cable (not the regular speed
HDMI cable).

3) Low price.

So-so:
1) It's slow...but it works. Every buttom-push takes time
for the player to response.

2) Both my Sony DAV-HDX274 home theater's DVD player (not a
blu-ray player) and this blu-ray player up-convert regular
DVD to 1080P. But the video quality from Sony is better
than Sylvania NB500SL9. My guess, this Sylvania NB500SL9
is good only for playing blu-ray disk.

Bad:
1) It has only the coaxial digital audio ouput.
No optical digital autio output. Some home theater system
takes optical digital autio input only.

With $[...] price tag, it is a very good deal. I won't complain.

*************************
Additional update on 1/19/09, after 2 months usage:

1. I replaced my Sony home theater system with Panasonic. For regular DVD disk, both the Panasonic and this blu-ray player showed similar quality. So, the Sony home theater system still has the best video quality when up-converting regular DVD to 1080.

2. Once a while (about 1 out of 10), this blu-ray player hangs... I have to power-cycle the blu-ray player in order to to get it out of the hanging state.

3. On the positive side, this blu-ray player can output 1080p24 video...only if your HDTV supports 1080p24 input. This is nice.

We just received our Sylvania NB500SL9 Blu-Ray DVD player and highly recommend it. We bought it based on the Consumer Report recommendation and are not disappointed. The manual is easy to understand and hookup was very simple and quick. The remote control is also very user friendly. After hookup we popped in a blu-ray dvd and the picture quality was unbelievable. We are using it with a 46" Samsung LCD TV. Our purchase was direct from Amazon.com and included free shipping. Delivery took place within 4 days of our online purchase. Everything was nice and smooth and this player is a great value for the price.