Sony's Blu-ray player demoed in the wild

So here I am in San Francisco for a work conference, and I take some downtime to check out the Metreon mall downtown. I notice a Sony Style store, so I naturally stopped in to see what was there. Across the hall from the PS2s and video cameras, I discovered a Blu-ray demo setup -- complete with Sony's unreleased BDP-S1 player, hooked up via their DA7100ES receiver to the 60" SXRD A2000 model. The demo was sadly short and sweet, but the quality was very good, despite the TV being set on "vivid" mode, which I quickly fixed to standard mode *cough* It was obvious no one had really tuned the setup to its maximum performance, at least it was using HDMI cabling and was hooked up to a 5.1-channel amp.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2006 6:03PM]

Nice

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2006 6:03PM]

Where do I sign?

[LUISAMEZQUITA Posted Sep 22nd 2006 6:06PM]

I was sitting there on Monday for about an hour watching that demo. I was waiting for my friend to get out of class so we could watch All the Kings Men (not very good). I noticed it was too bright, but didn't want to touch anything. The Spiderman clip was very nice, and the Ultraviolet clips that were shown looked amazing, but I'm sure the movie wasn't. Overall I was very impressed with the set up, and it made me think that all the people crying about the quality of Blu Ray compared to HD DVD were being too dramatic. Most of the movies I want in High Definition are tied to Blu Ray, so I'll wait and see how this story turns out.

[Chromium Posted Sep 22nd 2006 6:46PM]

yup, they have had a BlueRay demo at VallyFairMall in SanJose,CA since August.

I wasnt very impressed with the video quality. then again the unit was a pre-production unit from Japan.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2006 6:51PM]

I've aso seen a demo. Like sure it's nice, but it still isn't SPECTACULAR.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2006 12:16PM]

Anyone know where to get that TV stand? It's gorgeous.

Back on subject, I need to catch one of these demos because so far I haven't been blown away by the picture quality of HD programs I've seen at Best Buy, Circuit City and the like.

[David Lawrence Posted Sep 23rd 2006 2:49AM]

I saw that demo just last week. Didn't get to adjust anything as there was a group seated and watching the show. What stood out was how totally crushed the blacks were. Very narrow dynamic range. Super black blacks, hot colors, white whites and not much in-between. Yeah Ultraviolet looked great as a demo, but I couldn't imagine wanting to watch anything with nuance on this set. Was I seeing the bad effects of "vivid" mode? If so I'd want to take a second look.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 23rd 2006 10:25AM]

they have had an identical setup in the basement of the SonyStyle in New York.
here is a pic I took:
http://photos-110.ak.facebook.com/ip002/v46/173/7/1352910115/n1352910115_30053110_6222.jpg
The just had some rotating clips from spiderman and columbia's other recent hit movies. The picture quality was an improvement, but not that impressive. Looked like a DVD upscaled which could be what the images on the TV were from. But in any event they had the blu-ray player, just not sure about the disc inside it

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 23rd 2006 1:52PM]

Actually, Amazon is selling the BDP-S1 for $1000 dollars! Check it out: http://amazon.com/s/ref=br_ss_hs/002-9334705-8856865?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dblended&keywords=blu-ray&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 23rd 2006 2:27PM]

i did an A/C job at Deluxe, where they were making the menus and autherizing both Blu-ray, and HD-DVD, the odd thing was, was that they were using an emulater to run some of the movies.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 23rd 2006 6:47PM]

The SonyStyle store in San Diego has an identical setup (BDP-S1 player+DA7100ES receiver+60" SXRD A2000 TV). The Blu-ray player occasionally locked up, requiring a power-off and power-on. But as mentioned before, it's a pre-production unit straight from Japan.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2006 11:27PM]

There's been a BDP-S1 at the SonyStyle store in Boston for like three months.