It’s been some time since I’ve posted about Yamaha BD-S681 universal disc player which I returned after all. I like Yamaha as a brand, by the way – mostly for their musical instruments. I’ve got a keyboard, a bass guitar and a couple of recorders by Yamaha and I like them. But instead of this hi-fi style universal player I went for a separate CD player (more about it in the future) and then I had to choose some other disc player for videos.
I don’t like Sony because I don’t agree with some of their “business” practices, but this time I swallowed the bullet and bought the Sony UBP-X700. For a great price you’ll get a 4K Blu-ray player with tons of new standards and just a few quirks. There are bigger Sony brothers like UBP-X800 or UBP-X1000, but these are too much for our needs.
Outside
Compared to Yamaha’s universal player, this device is a typical slim consumer box. Yamaha was a full-width (43 cm) hi-fi component, Sony player is 32 cm wide. It has just a few buttons, barely two of them actually. Design is simple and functional, most of the front panel opens to reveal the thin tray.
Clik here to view.
The nonobvious buttons are rather lazy, but that’s what I kind of expected from a universal disc player anyway. Sometimes they click and do nothing if I ask too much of them, especially when I want to switch it off. There is also a USB connector strategically placed on the front panel. I don’t like when for the design’s sake they hide it somewhere behind or under a lid, this is just fine. Alas, we don’t use it as much as I expected.
At the back of the unit you have two HDMIs (normal and audio-only), coaxial digital output and Ethernet connector. The connectivity is just fine, it can also use wi-fi.
Aspect ratio problems
There is no Inside section as I don’t feel the urge to look under the hood. But let’s talk about how it’s used. And let’s talk about that USB. When I put USB with a film in I expect two things. Normal playback and subtitles support. Subtitles are OK-ish although the font is ugly (why can’t they add normal fonts to universal players?). But the player doesn’t respect the aspect ratio of the file. Now, I didn’t test many various file types, but no other device had any problem with the right aspect ratio.
X700 kept the actors too thin and the screen too tall no matter what. There are some settings you can play with, but they are too few and hardly making any difference. As my TV is also too “smart” it doesn’t offer any reasonable screen aspect change except for some manual fine tuning which is not usable for cases like this. On older TVs you could cycle through like five settings and one would be typically a good match. Now everything is supposedly smarter than us and we’re out of luck sometimes.
Clik here to view.
The player also has annoying problems with 4:3 video on DVDs (not sure about Blu-ray, don’t have any 4:3 Blu-ray really). Typically it shows them as 16:9 the first time you open the disc. After a while we found out that going to the Home screen and loading the disc again is a quick fix – if you can call the action of this player quick which you really can’t, although it could be worse I guess.
There is also a minor problem with dirty or scratched DVDs. The player gets stuck so hard the term “cooperative multitasking” came to my mind (and those are really old memories).
Otherwise no problems with discs as far as our needs go. It actually even played a CD every other player had a problem with at a specific place – without any hiccup.
And files? I play them on my Samsung TV which seems to be smarter than Sony when it comes to this. And it also renders the subtitles much better with much nicer font.
Music
I don’t use this player for music, but I made some tests when it was new. I used various music file types – WAV, FLAC and DFF/DSF with various quality. If I remember correctly, Sony played all of them without any problem – even a sampling rate my Pioneer SX-S30DAB receiver would refuse (but we’re talking about hi-res files that are beyond recognition of mere mortals).
So no problem with music, but I don’t use it for it. I don’t care how quiet or not the disc player is for the same reason. But I never noticed the noise during films either, which is good as I had some noisy machines before.
Remote
Clik here to view.
The remote control is rather unimpressive – really small, crammed with buttons that are not underlit. I know I ask for too much for the price but it’s very handy for night time playback. There are some nice touches though – I could program it somehow (check the manual or online) to control on/off of my TV. Now it’s a minor thing really, but when we’re ending the session I can just press two green buttons in the corner to switch off two devices instead of groping for another remote.
Even though the remote is small and boxy it’s actually easy to use. Volume cradle at the bottom is distinct, the play button has a tiny mark you can touch and the main cross part at the upper part is also easy to handle. Pause and stop is right next to each other which I don’t like, but when I pressed stop accidentally, the play continued where I left so it was no hassle at all.
Usability
Not counting the mess with the aspect ratio, the usability was rather average. I don’t mind unimpressive UI, but I didn’t like things like changing subtitles. It only goes one way and you don’t see what’s next, so if you miss yours you can go around 15 other languages again. Previous Samsung player opened a popup where I could go up and down which was much better. But we got used to this already.
I can’t speak about features like Netflix support as I still don’t use it yet (kinda lame I know).
In conclusion
Those aspect ratio problems were rather shocking for me, really. I wouldn’t expect such a problem, but it only shows I still have lots to learn (and again and again). Things are not perfect, luckily I didn’t plan to rely on this device with film files playback from USB.
On the other hand, I can’t vouch for the online playback as I don’t use it this way. It plays discs just fine, although then there is this problem with 4:3 DVDs – but it can be fixed in a couple of seconds (every time).
Clik here to view.
I don’t have HDR or 4K discs either. But it felt silly to buy a non-4K player when they are so affordable nowadays. So I use a tiny portion of the capabilities, complain about aspect ratio and usability when switching subtitles… but that’s it!
I don’t particularly like it but it does its job for a fair price and has a couple of issues I can live with. It plays discs. It’s future proof to a degree. And that’s good enough for me.
When it comes to joy – that I leave for the CD player and some future post.