Sony 360 died today (1 Viewer)

[Craig W]

My Sony 360 finally gave up the ghost today. I can't even get the player to recognize a disc for calibration in the diagnostics menu. To Sony: A DVD player should last for at least 2000h of use. My unit only had about 420h of use between CD and DVD playback. I really miss that old 3000 I owned, but then sold.

So I went to BB to get a new DVD player. I decided to go progressive scan since I will move to a DTV in another year or so. It was a dilemma though since every player I looked had one bug or another. The JVC has the subtitle problem with TPM and some rumored suseptible FW issues. I was considering going with the 7-disc changer, but I did not like the design of the changing mechanism. It seemed cheap and noisy. The Panny has the CCS flicker issue since its firmware does not allow the CCS to be turned off unlike other higher end players that do. The Toshiba has the chroma bug.

I decided to go with the Panny RP56 at this point. If this player dies after 1.5 years of use. I may just say the hell with DVD. Panny had their problems also with the Ax10 line. I hope that they have their act together.

I have learned my lesson never to buy lowgrade Sony again. If I ever buy Sony again it will only be the ES line.

 

[KeithH]

Craig, I rarely buy non-ES Sony products due to quality concerns. However, my Sony MDS-JA555ES minidisc player died on me after six months of light use. The drawer got stuck, and I am still trying to get Sony to fix it properly. I have many Sony ES products that have performed flawlessly, so I am hopeful that problem with the 'JA555ES is a fluke. While that ES component has been a disappointment, I have two non-ES Sony products, an MXD-D3 minidisc deck and a DVP-C670D DVD changer, that have never once given me a problem. Go figure.

I know that Sony's single-disc DVD players from 2000-2001 (DVP-S360, 'S560D, and 'S570D) were lemons for the most part. It seems that many people observed tracking errors and the like with them. The lack of quality control there is really disappointing. A friend of mine just had an 'S560D die on him a couple of weeks ago, but he replaced it with a 'C670D, which he loves. I don't know why Sony's single-disc players have performed so poorly while the changers have worked well. For what it's worth (probably not much by now), I have not heard of problems with Sony's current line of DVD players.

Hopefully the Panasonic 'RP56 will work for you. People around here seem to be very high on your Panasonic player as well as the 'RP91. Good luck.