Setup & Installation

Out of the box the BDP-S350 resembles a standard DVD player in size and weight. Sony’s blue faceplate is a staple amongst their Blu-ray players, giving it an unmistakable classy yet modern look. Around the back of the player is standard fare as far as Blu-ray players go, except for the omission of 5.1 analog outputs.

Sony obviously intended this player’s capability to be maximized by using it with HDMI compliant receivers or processor but digital audio can also be delivered via the Toslink and Coaxial connections. Analog connections are limited to two channel only. The S350 is also equipped with an Ethernet and USB port for BD-Live support. Sony promised BD-Live functionality last summer when the BDP-S350 was released and delivered in September with a firmware update downloadable from their website. BD-Live or Profile 2.0 which it is commonly called allows the player to access the Internet to download additional media such as movie trailers and other interactive content. BD-Live requires that the player support at least 1GB of local storage and that’s where the rear USB port comes in handy. It supports a variety of thumb drives for additional storage.

The USB port is recessed so it may not accommodate wider thumb drives, so keep this in mind when shopping for additional storage.

The S350 also supports the next generation lossless audio formats including Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD. The S350 will decode Dolby TrueHD internally via HDMI as well as send it bitstream to a compatible HDMI 1.3 receiver or processor for decoding. DTS-HD does not get the same star treatment, it is only handled via bitstream, no internal DTS-HD decoding is currently supported. The BDP-S350 supports the 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 colorspace and also supports 1080 24p output which can be chosen automatically or set manually in the menu system.

The menu system resembles that of Sony’s Playstation 3. The PS3 was the first Sony component to implement their new Xross Media Bar (XMB) user interface, which has now made it’s way to some of Sony’s other AV components. For the most part the menus were logically laid out and easy to navigate. As a result, setup was a breeze.

The remote control was also laid out pretty well, while I would’ve like to have seen support for more than two components and perhaps a backlight, the remote fits comfortably in-hand and has virtually no learning curve

Menu and button responsiveness was relatively quick for a standalone player. Sony’s PS3 remains the king of speed but the S350 was pretty zippy and measured a few steps faster than my reference Panasonic player. From “off” to “on” the player was ready for operation in just under 30 seconds, discs loaded with Java were ready for view in a little over a minute. Sony also offers a “quick start” mode, which leaves the player in standby and boots up in approximately 6 seconds, a great feature for those who want instant gratification. I’m sure your electric company would like this feature as well, the quick start option burns power even in its standby state.

On the video side the S350 has a component video and HDMI output as well as your standard composite and s-video connections. The component output is limited to 1080i for Blu-rays and 480i for standard DVD’s. The HDMI output supports 1080p upscaling of DVD’s and both 1080p60 and 1080p24 frame rates for Blu-ray movies. Sony omitted the “source direct” option from its current generation of Blu-ray players. This feature allowed the player to output the native resolution of the disc that’s being played; this was a great feature for those using external video processors. The player would output 480i from standard DVD’s and allow the upscaling and other video enhancements to be done by an outboard video processor or the processor in your video display.