Sony BDP-S390 Blu-ray Disc Player with Wi-Fi (Black)

I've had this Sony unit less than 1 week. This machine has every Sony Blu-Ray feature EXCEPT the 3-D. The feature chart on Amazon's product page is very helpful. I suspect home video 3-D is a fad just as it was in theaters in the 1950's and once the novelty wears off will fade this time exactly as it did then. So I'm not interested in investing in home 3-D gear yet.Previously was watching a ROKU 2 HD hooked to an old CRT set. I enjoyed that setup because I could get by with just the most basic cable TV package, but the screen was sort of small on the old CRT TV. Just got a new 40" Toshiba HD TV last week and wanted to move the old CRT set with the ROKU to the bedroom. So, my initial plan was to get a new Roku 2XD or maybe an Apple TV box plus a new DVD player to go with the new HD TV to get me into the 21st century only a few years behind everyone else.So I shopped around. Instead of my original two unit plan I found this Sony Wi-Fi Blu-Ray streaming player combination which plays my standard DVD's, Blu-Ray discs, audio CD's and also streams Amazon, Netflix and more channels via WI-FI just like a ROKU box or Apple TV does. I bought this Sony player with streaming Wi-Fi for less money than it would cost for just a standard DVD player and a ROKU XD! It is quite a value.I can still move my old Roku back to the living room if there is something I really want to watch on a channel that isn't available on the Blu-Ray Wi-Fi Sony unit, so I just leave an extra HDMI cable hooked up for those rare times.By the same token, some channels on this Sony unit are not on any ROKU! On the Sony one example is Vudu. I have a feeling VUDU is going to really take off soon and I'm glad to have it available. While I have about 70 channels on the ROKU I was truthfully watching either Amazon and Netflix at least 95% of the time I used the ROKU.This Sony unit was fairly easy to setup, but as others have noted it did take a few minutes to update the software, but realize that every other streaming player will need an update too. Once it is updated it shuts itself off to let you know it is updated successfully.Initially I used the included component video cable until I got an HDMI cable. Using an HDMI cable made a huge improvement in video quality. There is also some differences in HDMI cables so far as functionality is concerned, but the mid priced ones on Amazon that say "Category 2" would be the best choice as they are the latest design and relatively affordable. All of the HDMI cables at retail outlets around here are overpriced and not one that I found was marked "Category 2." There are some 6 foot long $50 cables at local retail stores and frankly that is gouging when I can buy a cable that is actually better on Amazon for $10! An HDMI cable is digital, and digital either works or it doesn't. Order a decent Category 2 HDMI cable along with this Sony unit as one is not included and the included component video/audio cable is not HD.I've ran about 10 DVD's through it from various studios including Disney along with 2 Blu-Ray rentals and the player is fast and responsive to them all. The standard DVD's look better than I expected while the Blu-Ray images and sound are nothing short of stunning and even approach breathtaking at times. The rental Blu-Ray discs had lots of fingerprints and no tracking issues were observed. So the answer to the "is Blu-Ray worth it" question is, in my opinion anyway, that Blu-Ray is definitely worth it if you have an HD TV. If for no other reason than how much better your existing DVD's will look on your HD TV.When streaming HD from Amazon or Netflix the videos seem to start in SD but gradually the image improves to HD. The change in quality is subtle and not very distracting unless you specifically look for it.The ONLY real issue I've had is when trying to play movies on NETFLIX there was often NO AUDIO at all. Turns out this is because I was not changing the AUDIO OPTIONS on the Netflix preview screen to STEREO from 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL before hitting PLAY. Once I learned to do that everything is working great.I used the online chat process with Sony support over that Netflix audio issue and the issue could not be resolved via chat, so they referred me to their phone support. Sony phone support fairly quickly nailed down the cause and I learned what I was doing wrong and it turned out that the player was working just fine all along. I also found out Sony's support system works as it should. I'm very pleased with their support right now.There are unexpected features in this unit for me. One feature is that the remote for this Sony Blu-Ray streaming player also doubles as a remote control for most major TV brands and the programming codes for supported brands of TV's are listed on the next to last page of the Sony unit's manual. Once programmed for your TV brand you can turn your TV on and off and adjust the volume with the Sony Blu-Ray remote which is a pretty handy feature. I linked the TV to the Blue-Ray player so when powered down, the other shuts off automatically. This saves energy and effort and is a very green idea. Also green is the energy saving start-up option that takes a tad longer but uses way less electricity.This Sony unit is reasonably small, light, quiet and durable looking but I've not dropped or abused it. The case does not seem as flimsy to me as some reviews here have made it sound. While not made out of titanium it is at least on par with most stuff on the market now and more durable than some others. The new one I received was not labeled made in China which was a pleasant surprise!This is not the easiest machine to operate compared to a basic DVD player, but one should not expect a feature rich streaming Blu-Ray combo to come without a learning curve. I'm still exploring features and still learning what all it can do.I can recommend this Sony Blu-Ray Wi-Fi streaming wonder as an excellent value. I would expect to have paid about twice this much for all these features. I like it and time will tell about durability. I've had reasonable service life from Sony products in the past and see no reason to expect otherwise. I'm considering buying some of these this year as holiday gifts because I'm sure everyone who gets one will love it.*** UPDATE 02-20-2013 *** Since writing the above in June 2012, Roku pushed out an update that added VUDU to the available Roku channels. That really hasn't changed my opinion that the Sony Wi-Fi unit is a better value than a separate Roku and DVD/Blu-Ray player. While there are still hundreds more channel options on a Roku than the Sony BDP-S390 hardly any of the extra Roku channels are worth watching. The extra Roku channels are special interest channels such as religious programming and public domain films hardly anyone is interested in. Also in light of recent 20% price drops on this Sony unit I view this Sony combo as an even better value than a separate DVD/Blu-Ray player and a HD Roku combination. Buying a separate Blu-Ray and Roku is really overkill. My 5 Star review of this Sony unit still stands 8 months later as the unit works as new. Just watched the new "SKYFALL" Blu-Ray a couple of times and it was a real treat to the eyes and ears. I'm glad I got this Sony unit and haven't ran across anything better, especially at the current lower price. Amazon Prime and Netflix remain my most watched streaming channels and mostly I watch them via this Sony unit.

Ok, where to begin. This item is described as a blu-ray player with wi-fi. Those two items seem to work very well. Set up was easy. Found my Linksys router and configured it by clicking on the wi-fi protected setup button on my router after the tv told me to. You can do it manually by adding the router pass phrase but this was so much simpler. After going through the setup and finishing it, it told me an update was available, so I clicked on update and it started and showed a progress line and said don't shut off power. Progress bar seem to be going really slow so I left the room and when I came back tv and blu-ray player were off. Don't know if that's normal for an update and was a little concerned but when I turned it back on every thing seemed to be fine and it said I had the latest update.First thing I did is to play a blu-ray disc, since this is the main reason of this purchase. Would have to give this function 5 stars. Plays flawlessly. Great picture. I choose the option during setup to always leave the machine in standby mode to start playback faster.The second reason I purchased this player was for the ability to stream Amazon prime movies. Setup was simple and straightforward. Player gives you a code to register the device on the computer at Amazon's site. Have watched 4 or 5 movies now and they run perfectly even though the network settings in the option menu says I'm only getting a 20 to 40% connection rate. That had me a bit worried because I didn't want to see a lot of buffering while trying to watch a streaming video from Amazon. It doesn't appear to be a problem but if it becomes one I'm sending this back because my router's signal is more than powerful to reach the player. I can set my laptop and kindle right next to the player and get a signal from the router with full bars. Hopefully this will not become an issue.As of now the only pay service I have is Amazon Prime so I didn't try any of the other services like Hulu. I would hope and assume they would be as easy to set up as amazon was. I did use the YouTube app and was able to view videos just fine. Navigation is a bit rough because of the onscreen text input program you have to use to input url's or search requests. I'm not planning on using this app much so wasn't to annoyed. I also tried the Web Browser app and the Facebook app. If this is a big selling point for you I think you are going to be disappointed. Pages seem to take a long time to load. Navigation within the pages by using the remote is really time consuming. Trying to input any text on a page, like a search query or a password will likely drive you mad over time. Someone mentioned something about adding a wireless keyboard in another review but I don't know if they had success with that. Others have mentioned you can control it with an app on your iphone or android phone and then use the keyboard on your phone to type in text. If I was going to use the web function on this player much, I would definitely look into that, but I'm not.Another selling point of this player that swayed me into purchasing it was the ability to use a DLNA server to see and play music and video files from your computer. The easiest way to do this if you are using a Windows computer is by using Windows Media Player which comes bundled with most windows computers. I think version 11 and 12 both have the ability to act as a DLNA server. I won't go into how to set it up, but it's very easy. You can google "How do I set up WMP to be a DLNA server" and you find all you need. If you set it up correctly you'll see a new icon under the Video and Music settings on the onscreen list of the blu-ray menu. Found and played my music. Most are in mp3 format. All seemed to play fine. Now playing my videos off the computer had issues. I can see all my videos but getting them all to play is a work in progress. All my vids are in .avi format. It can see all of them, but the player will only play some of them and I can't figure out why it will play some and not others. I can play everyone of my avi movies in Windows Media Player on my computer but once I stream it to the Blu-ray player some will get a message saying "can not play file. may not be a supported file type or may be corrupt" So this is obviously an issue with the player. I chose avi's to convert my videos to because it gives decent quality and can be seen and recognized by almost every player I've ever used. So I'm a bit disappointed with this feature. My LG HDTV has a usb port that has played every avi file that I've plugged in and more. So I can still play movies this way but I was hoping to get them all in one place and save transferring back and forth to a usb stick. I'll keep playing with this and if I find an answer I'll post it here.Ok, to sum up I'd say this is a very good purchase. The price point is excellent, especially if what you want is a blu-ray player with wireless capability to stream pay per movie and tv services. Really that alone should get 5 stars. At this price that would be more than fair. But,,, what I think they did was try to make this a swiss army knife of blu-ray players and add every darn capability from every player on the market. Unfortunately most of the capabilities it adds on are frustrating to use, to be kind. That being said, would I recommend this to a friend, YES. If they wanted the main functions, but not if they wanted a web browser and dlna capable device that could handle multiple video formats.Update 6-5-12 Found what file types that the sony supplies native support for through DLNA. For picutes it's JPEG , for music it support file types, MP3 & LPCM and for video it support MPEG-2 PS & MPEG-2 TS. I'll provide the link below and also their instruction on how to set up the DLNA server.Update 9-16-12 Just thought I'd give a 3 month update. Still very happy with the player. All disks I have triedhave worked in the player, including non retail ones. Have also subscribed to Hulu and set up was as easy asthe Amazon Prime set-up. Still highly recommend this blu ray player.Update 12-14-12 Thought I'd give a 6 month update because I know I always appreciate people that update their reviews as opposed to the folks that review an item the day they get it and say it's the worst thing they ever saw or it's the best thing since sliced bread,<g> and then you never hear from them again.Still super happy with this purchase. It's nice to get an electronic item that works like it should and doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to set it up. Should really give this 5 stars but I guess I'm a tough reviewer. One of the only things that's stopping me is the dlna aspect of the player, only being able to support a select few movie formats that can be streamed from your computer. Mainly mpeg is supported. I can play other movie formats occasionally, but it's hit and miss.The player has updated twice over the internet since I got it. I don't know what the updates did specifically but I do know I have more apps now than I did initially. I saw Crackle on it the other day and didn't know much about it, but I tried it out and watched a movie for free with no sign ups. They insert an add in the movie about every 10 minutes or so. Not very bothersome or annoying. I'm sure they don't have the library of a Netflix but a nice way to see a movie that's been out a while. I'll use that app again I'm sure. Starting to wonder why I still need Dish!Blu-ray disks and regular dvd's play as well today as when I got it. Have never lost my internet connection either, like some other blu-ray players on Amazon that I read the reviews about.I still say get it, don't think you'll find anything better for the price out there. Happy Holidays!Update 12-28-12 This is important information regarding the DLNA aspect of this player. Leonardo left a comment letting us know that Sony does have it's own DLNA server software called Homestream. I installed it and all my media is now playing on the blu-ray player. If you have avi's, mp4's, mkv's, vobs that you haven't been able to play, this should work. Google 'Sony Homestream' to find the software. Thanks again Leaonardo for that information!Update 8-27-13 Still have it. Still working. Still completely happy with it!