Need reliable 3D Blu-ray player (2 Viewers)

rob kilbride · Nov 28, 2013

I finally took the plunge and bought a 50 inch Panasonic Viera Plasma 3D Smart HDTV. My old 46 inch Sanyo 60Hz has an issue where there are horizontal lines flickering across the top of the screen so I need to replace it. I was surprised this TV is dying so fast, its only about 2 years old. My Sony BDP-S360 has basically been a nightmare. Several disks freeze up at usually just one point in the movie, but when I play it on my friends cheapo player, it plays fine. It won't play Biutiful or Clue at all. I have done all updates and it still won't even recognize them as Blu-ray disks. It has all the same DVD glitches that my old Sony DVD player had and even some cd's skip that play fine on other players. I would appreciate any recommendations for a quality, reliable 3D Blu-ray player, as reliable as possible for Blu-rays, DVD's and cd's. I just want a player that won't have me so frustrated so often as I have been with this Sony.

schan1269 · Nov 28, 2013

If you want one you'll have for a while...Oppo.Otherwise, I've never had issues with Panasonic or LG. The only LG I've had though was an original profile 2.0 that had an on-board hard drive. Those were fabulous(I sold it cause I wasn't using its featurrs).

Matt Hough · Nov 28, 2013

I swear by Panasonic Blu-ray players. And their DVD upconversion is second-to-none since that's of importance.

FoxyMulder · Nov 28, 2013

I have a question.

Where is your blu ray player located, do you have it in a cabinet and is there much space between the top and sides, i have found that players really need room to breathe or they can heat up substantially and then you get freezing and other reliability issues.

I would also suggest an Oppo if you can afford it, alternatively i would also suggest a Panasonic, i'm not that keen on LG or Samsung when it comes to blu ray players due to issues with calibration when using some of those players.

Robert Crawford · Nov 28, 2013

rob kilbride said:
I finally took the plunge and bought a 50 inch Panasonic Viera Plasma 3D Smart HDTV. My old 46 inch Sanyo 60Hz has an issue where there are horizontal lines flickering across the top of the screen so I need to replace it. I was surprised this TV is dying so fast, its only about 2 years old. My Sony BDP-S360 has basically been a nightmare. Several disks freeze up at usually just one point in the movie, but when I play it on my friends cheapo player, it plays fine. It won't play Biutiful or Clue at all. I have done all updates and it still won't even recognize them as Blu-ray disks. It has all the same DVD glitches that my old Sony DVD player had and even some cd's skip that play fine on other players. I would appreciate any recommendations for a quality, reliable 3D Blu-ray player, as reliable as possible for Blu-rays, DVD's and cd's. I just want a player that won't have me so frustrated so often as I have been with this Sony.

Depending on how much money you want to spend will determine your final decision. I have the Oppo 93 and 103 players with both region free modified. I love them to death, but I do have three Panny players too. I use two of the Panny's to access some internet functions in my bedroom and main HT setups as well as another player is in my home office HT setup which I use to listen to commentaries while I'm multi-tasking. Panasonic makes good BD players.

rob kilbride · Nov 28, 2013

Thanks for the feedback guys! It seems like I should get Panasonic or Oppo. I do have plenty of space for the player to breath and because it freezes up in the exact same spot, I don't think it is overheating. My theory is that it sometimes has trouble buffering during the layer change, but I'm not sure. It had an issue where it would freeze up after a certain amount of time on a few of the Rocky blu-rays, which I could avoid if I periodically paused it. I also thought this seemed like a buffer issue. Anyway I'm done with Sony for now. Back in 99 Sony was the only player I could find which didn't have glitches left and right with various disks. That's why I stuck with them so long even if the players didn't last that long. Also, did I make a good choice on the TV? Amazon reviews were mostly very positive. I've read that plasmas are favored by HT enthusiasts and wanted to get one before they are discontinued. And I read a question someone posted about priming plasma TV's because they are more vulnerable to burning in of images during the first 200 hours. Is it true that I should leave it on for 8 or so days and If so I would appreciate any advice on how to avoid any stationary images that could get burned in.

rob kilbride · Nov 28, 2013

Is the only difference between the DMP-BDT230 and the DMP-BDT330 4K upscaling?

FoxyMulder · Nov 28, 2013

rob kilbride said:
Thanks for the feedback guys! It seems like I should get Panasonic or Oppo. I do have plenty of space for the player to breath and because it freezes up in the exact same spot, I don't think it is overheating. My theory is that it sometimes has trouble buffering during the layer change, but I'm not sure. It had an issue where it would freeze up after a certain amount of time on a few of the Rocky blu-rays, which I could avoid if I periodically paused it. I also thought this seemed like a buffer issue. Anyway I'm done with Sony for now. Back in 99 Sony was the only player I could find which didn't have glitches left and right with various disks. That's why I stuck with them so long even if the players didn't last that long.Also, did I make a good choice on the TV? Amazon reviews were mostly very positive. I've read that plasmas are favored by HT enthusiasts and wanted to get one before they are discontinued. And I read a question someone posted about priming plasma TV's because they are more vulnerable to burning in of images during the first 200 hours. Is it true that I should leave it on for 8 or so days and If so I would appreciate any advice on how to avoid any stationary images that could get burned in.

You don't have to worry about burn in on a modern plasma, image retention can happen but that goes away, just make sure your contrast is set correctly and sharpness is set very low, indeed on a Panasonic plasma and watching HD content you should set sharpness at zero, if i was you i'd buy the Spears and Munsil 2nd edition disc from Amazon and do a simple calibration of the set.

Get the Panasonic 230 model, the 330 model does have twin HDMI outputs and 4K upscaling, they are the only differences i can see, you don't need 4K upscaling as you don't have a 4K television.

rob kilbride · Nov 29, 2013

Thanks FoxyMulder. I think I have a free Geek Squad visit, but I'm guessing this disk would be better? Any thoughts on Geek Squad?

Stephen_J_H · Dec 5, 2013

The Panny plasmas are great at handling image retention. I accidentally left mine set on game mode while my son was playing XBox, and static elements in the corners of the screen appeared to have burned into those areas. I was mortified. However, approximately 6 months later, what was apparently burned in is gone, thanks to Panny's pixel orbiters. My panel is now properly calibrated, and works great.

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