sony media players BDP-S370 and SMP-N100

aclareman · 15-08-2011 5:21pm #1

Hi, I was thinking of buying one of the Sony media players(BDP-S370 and SMP-N100), which can play streamed media from your home network and the Internet. How well do the Internet apps/channels work in Ireland? Has anyone tryed/bought these?
Does the BBC iPlayer app operate here? How about streaming movie rentals?

icdg · 15-08-2011 7:12pm

I think Home Entertainment would be the best place for this - obviously HE mods feel free to move if it doesn't fit in.

coylemj · 15-08-2011 7:38pm

OP, you're asking about two different boxes. The S370 was one of last year's model in the Sony Blu-Ray player range, the models for 2011 are the S380, S480 and S580, I have the S480 so will give you some details of that box and what it can do in Ireland.

As well as it's primary function of playing playing BD discs, I have the S480 connected via Ethernet cable to to my Internet router (UPC), the S580 supports a Wi-Fi connection to your router but I believe it's otherwise identical to the S480.

With the player connected to the Internet, when you insert an audio CD, the player will get the album artwork (i.e. the CD sleeve) from the Internet as well as the track names so these will display on the TV screen when you're playing the CD, otherwise you'd be looking at a list showing Track 1, Track 2, etc.

There appears to be currently no video streaming service available in Ireland, there is a Sony audio streaming service called Qriocity (pronounced 'curiosity') but I haven't signed up for it.

For news and current events there are several video channels which allow you to view prepackaged episodes of news and current affairs, TV3 even have a channel where you can view selected extracts from their programmes over the past few weeks and you can also look at Eurosport and Sky News bulletins plus there's an Internet browser and a Youtube link.

http://www.sony.ie/product/blu-ray-disc-player/bdp-s480

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/blu-ray-players-and-recorders/sony-bdp-s480-review-50003949/

Mister Gooey · 16-08-2011 7:01am

aclareman wrote: »

Hi, I was thinking of buying one of the Sony media players(BDP-S370 and SMP-N100), which can play streamed media from your home network and the Internet. How well do the Internet apps/channels work in Ireland? Has anyone tryed/bought these?
Does the BBC iPlayer app operate here? How about streaming movie rentals?

I have the 570 version. A great player of BDs. The apps are very limited and the BBC iplayer is not available in Ireland. Streaming capabilities are limited by the Sony file support so you are better off putting your hard drive on the back of the player. Also, the player only supports FAT32 hard drives ( more Sony lockdown), so you will have to use MKV2VOB to allow large files >4GB to be played. A lot of work but the picture quality is superb for both BDs and hard disk.

aclareman · 16-08-2011 9:23am

Thanks guys for the info!
Looking at the 380 Now - A big thing for me is the ability to play other media types other than the Blu-Ray. Some on other forums are saying it supports NTFS on the USB and plays mpeg2, mts, mp4, wmv, mkv and xvid (no divx) and supports even less when streamed via DLNA. I was hoping to stream media from my NAS drive, but it looks limited. I could use the DLNA for music playing I suppose and transfer the video manually :mad: via USB. Have any of anyone try-ed the streaming ? Does it work well for the audio?

bittihuduga · 23-09-2011 2:50pm

is it possible to add a streaming radio onto these players?

coylemj · 23-09-2011 3:31pm

You can't add a service to the Blu-Ray players, you basically take what's there and that's it. Sony can add new services so you're not necessarily stuck with what you see on day one, the TV3 service for example appeared a few months after I bought my S480 player.

bittihuduga · 23-09-2011 3:42pm

sad that we cannot use a proxy on these players.. we could have had bbc iplayer five player as a nice feature.
basically stuck with youtube now

Giz1007 · 28-09-2011 9:37pm

Just saw this post when searching for something completely different on the net, but hopefully you might find the information useful.

I have a Sony S370.
I use it to stream content over a Lan connection. Note my lan connection uses powerline to connect from the server (WHS) to the S370.
Performance very good, no stuttering which you will get with some other make and models it's very smooth running. note I really only use .avi files.
For streaming I use twonky media server on the WHS.
I wouldn't advise even thinking about wireless as a means to stream, it just doesn't have the bandwidth to support the stream required.

In terms on internet viewing, TV3 has just been added as an update to the firmware. I just did that update this evening and tried it out. Streaming was very good. Again the performance of any internet streaming will depend on your ISP connection speed.

You can get the S370 in Xtra vision for 120 quid, I have seen other models, LG /samsung in particular in PC world offering similar spec for 80 notes.
Cannot comment on those models though.

This is my 5th variant of streaming machine, and honestly say it's one of the best, that includes, Tvix which you will come across on the net.

Plus you get a blue ray player with BD live.

Hope the information helps.

Giz1007 · 28-09-2011 9:41pm

bittihuduga wrote: »

is it possible to add a streaming radio onto these players?

Hi Bittihuduga

You can stream radio if you use twonky media server as your backend.

coylemj · 29-09-2011 2:14pm

Giz1007 wrote: »

You can get the S370 in Xtra vision for 120 quid, I have seen other models, LG /samsung in particular in PC world offering similar spec for 80 notes.
Cannot comment on those models though.

You forgot to mention that the S370 is last year's model. The 2011 equivalent is the S380, the S480 supports 3D and DLNA and the S580 supports Wi-Fi.

All reviewed here...

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/homecinema/sony-s380-s480-s580-e280-e380-e880-and-e780w-blu-ray-players-play-up-3d-and-android-50002097/

sony media players BDP-S370 and SMP-N100

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