Yup, I cashed in my aeroplan miles got a $500 gift card for Futureshop and bought a Sony 550. I got it for $349 plus government share (taxes) and am price protected till January.
So far so good, I managed to get it all set up but I have a few questions or minor issues with this unit.
Reason for this model; I have an older (5 years) Rotel pre/pro with no HDMI. So I need multi out and onboard decoding on the player. This one has that. I also have a 1080i Projector with component, so I need up-converting through comp. to 1080i, and this one does that too.
So here are some very very minor issues I have with the player (keep in mind I have only had it for 24 hours)
- When you put a disk in the tray and press play, nothing, I had a Cambridge Audio CD player once like that too. No biggie, just odd.
- There is no SKIP button on the front face plate.
- The Display button doesn't tell you how many more minutes left in the movie. I suppose they might be able to fix this with a firmware update (let's hope). When stuck watching those Hugh Grant movies with my wife, I need to know how much is left.
- There is no option for setting crossover frequency on the sub. I can select the volume and distance. No I can override that at the back panel of the EP500. Does anybody know if crossover frequency is required for the new BD audio formats?
- I can live with all of the above issues, this one however is a little more annoying.
I can set Audio priority to either HDMI, Multi, or Optical/coax. So I set it to Multi, then I put in a standard DVD and the pre/pro only decodes Pro Logic II. I change the Audio Priority to Optical/Coax, and standard DVD's are now being decoded in AC3/DTS, cool, except, now I loose the HD audio formats as the blu-ray disk is only playing AC3/DTS. This is kind of a pain to have to change the Audio Priority in the setup because I want to switch between standard DVDs and Blu-ray disks.
Has anybody run into this problem??? How do you fix it???
I suppose I could let the BD player do my AC3/DTS decoding, however wouldn't the D/A converter be better in the Rotel? I also noticed when I did this that the Sub was way too loud, and only for AC3/DTS, not for the HD audio formats. Again, I could fiddle around with the volume on the EP500, but I’d rather just use the base management in the Rotel.
What I do love is the picture, very nice on a 120" plus screen. But the HD audio formats are the real reason to get Blu-ray. I literally can't believe how good HD DTS sounds. It's like a curtain has been lifted over my Axioms. Only one word; WOW!!!!
Standard DVD’s look really good too. Cd’s sound as good as they ever did with my old Toshiba DVD player, of coarse I am using the Rotel’s D/A converters, so not much surprise there.
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