Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

SONY BDPS6500 purchased June 11. I need to get the cosmetic issues out of the way first. This player has the aesthetic appeal of a scotch-tape dispenser. Small, light-weight, bland plastic, no display at all, and a generally cheap feel. It’s hard to imagine sophisticated technology having less visual appeal. Ugh. I also previously owned a SONY S6200 with occasional issues including its odd design. Worse, my Pioneer AVR wouldn’t properly recognize the 6200 video input without fussing with both units. Getting a good DVD display was difficult and streaming was ordinary on a good day. Now, on to more important issues for this new S6500: performance is very high for Blu-Ray (regular and 3D), for older DVDs as well as for streaming (Amazon Prime). [I popped in my older Video Essentials DVD test disk which has great images of a wind blown flag, bridge cables and stadium seats, all of which create havoc for poorly designed players. It also has great night scenes. All were wonderfully displayed.] The images from all modern Blu-Rays, projected onto a 120” screen using a JVC X500r projector, are spectacular. [For Blu-ray I use Disney's WOW calibration disk, sold here on Amazon, to help identify the effect of various settings.] All images are colorful, finely detailed, without any artifacts, and accompanied by great sound. Details jump out of shadows making darkly lit sci-fi really fun to watch. This is an exceptional quality player by any image and sound quality measure. Initial setup has its issues. DO NOT try to use this player without first connecting it to the internet and installing the firmware updates. My unit hung on its 1st Blu-ray and I needed to convince it to restart and eject. After the upgrade, most glitches were corrected. Setting are also a potential source of frustration. My first DVDs had no menus at all and a variety of glitches. A few changes in the settings (screen format NORMAL) corrected lost menus and (forced 1080/24p resolution) fixed my HDMI recognition issues. Not at all intuitive, but I had been ready to return my player until I stumbled onto these fixes. Video streaming from Amazon was interesting. I’ve had problems getting high quality video. Low resolution, soft blurry images all made my experience very poor. With this player, I thought it was as bad or even worse. BUT WAIT . . . WAIT . . . WAIT . . . and before your eyes, like magic, the image visibly improves over the next 40-60 seconds until it is extremely close to the highest resolution I’ve seen from a streaming service. Go figure. I’ve not tested any other service, but something odd . . . but great . . . is going on here. And it happened with absolute repeatability. I wish the experience was perfect from the get-go, but I’m now a fan of streaming. The remote is cute, small, but easy to use despite not being back-lit. I like the very useful submenu under OPTIONS on the remote. Here you can select to adjust your 3D effects and depth. I also use this feature to modify my VIDEO settings for special situations. Here I can brighten my image (especially useful when displaying 3D images which are darkened by 3D shutter glasses) or modify brightness and contrast on older, low quality DVDs. Changes can be stored under Custom1&2 settings (as long as you DO NOT have 4K resolution output set when you initially set-up your player). Bottom line: If you can get passed the least attractive AV design to come out of SONY, a very problematic startup/setup process, the S6500 is a very high performing Blu-Ray player. [Update: July 16. I sent it back. Purchased an Oppo 103D to replace it. Why? I had a persistent problem with the Sony S6500. My system has a fairly new Pioneer SC-71 that sits between the Sony and my JVC x500r projector. Probably 25% of the time I could not get ANYthing to appear on the screen when I started up my system . . . either a green screen or pink/green stripes appear. I then had to cycle the receiver on/off and/or cycle the projector inputs and/or cycle the Sony on/off until an image would appear. When this occurs, I enter into a 10 minute ritual. I couldn't prove which device was at fault. My guess? HDMI connection issues between the Pioneer and SONY. Can't exchange the Pioneer, so I traded into the OPPO, I have had no similar issues. Reach your own conclusions. And, no, the OPPO, for 4X the price doesn't provide 4X the image quality. But it's prettier, rugged like a Jeep, loaded with nice features . . . and my blood pressure has dropped.