Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Stop the Whining! June 30, 2010
J. L. Alberti (West Coast)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
It makes a little noise when loading a disc, So Be It! It takes a little time to load, Oh My! It's tempermental and doesn't want to play discs all the time, Really?!
Let's address the complaints first and then I'll tell you why you need to get this player as soon as possible. First ALL players make noise loading discs and Blu-Ray discs take a while because you are loading up software. If yours doesn't do either of these thing well, Burah! You have a unique player. As for not playing discs all the time, Huh. The only problem I had with playback of my entire library were a couple of imports and I think that was in the mastering.
So now that that's been settled let's get on to all the reasons you should buy this player-----This is a region free Blu-Ray player, PERIOD. I shouldn't have to say anymore than that. Unless you've just had your decapated, cryogenically frozen head thawed out after 20 years, you know all about the region debate. Distibuters have markets and in order to keep those rights DVDs got regionalized. Funny thing though, European players have had the capablility to play NTSC all along and multi-region, while the US has been stuck with our region only. Hmm. You even have a major company like Disney buying up the rights to the domestic distribution of Asian properties and puting a great company like Tai Sung out of business by theatening to sue them into the ground and then not releasing these movies in favor of crummy remakes instead. But I digress.
Foreign special editions have been around forever and I've been region free since players first became available (I even have a VCR that will play PAL tapes) because I just wouldn't settle for what the US companies had to offer. So when an out of the box, region free, PAL - NTSC converter Blu-Ray player hit the market, I got it. Yes I did wait to see if the price dropped and it did, still dropping as far as I can tell.
There are only two features missing from this player that would want them to fix: Zoom and playback from last point in movie when you turn it off. That's it! These aren't a major concern and I don't miss them that much. Everything else is outstanding. Upconverting DVDs so they are sharper, an easy to use set up menu and Region Free.
And about the region free feature, here is the skinny. It will play DVDs from all regions and also convert PAL to NTSC. My Malata would too but had some problem with progressive scan so that moire and edge jumping was common. Not so here, seemless conversion most of the time. Just two DVD had problems, Eureka's M SE and MGM's Moonstruck. The latter will not play in the correct ratio, it squeezes it to full screen no matter what setting. Like I said, it's got to be in the discs, not the player. I haven't any "B" or "C" region Blu-Rays yet but look forward to it. If you appreciate World Cinema you have just been handed it.
Now how to make this region free. You will have to program it and it reverts back to "A" region on Blu-Rays when you turn it off, but the programing stays for the DVD.
Codes are:
8751+0+1 is all DVD and "A" Blu-Ray regions
8751+0+2 is all DVD and "B" Blu-Ray regions
8751+0+3 is all DVD and "C" Blu-Ray regions
8751 is the program, the first number after is the DVD region and the second is the Blu-Ray. You can set to play all region DVDs by putting in a 0 after 8751 but need to specify the Blu-Ray region. And like I said, the Blu-Ray will default back to "A" (that's us) but DVDs will stay. There are, however, DVD that demand you have it set up for that region. Had a Disney refuse to play until I set it to "1" (once again, that's us) and a Japanese disc to "2". You have to have the tray empty and closed to input the code.
An alternate code is 9735 before the regions. They both work.
Maybe I come off as a little harsh but when you're handed the world and complain about it I don't think you deserve it. A little too hot, a little too cold. Hey, Goldilocks, stop your sobbing! Kick back, relax and save the complaining for your cel phone provider.
Cheap and good Region Free Blu Ray Player! May 14, 2010
J. Stern (St. Louis, MO)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I don't wanna pay 400$ or more to get something I can have with this Blu Ray Player for 150$. It works just fine and I don't think it's loud. But don't update the firmware yet couse you'll lose the region free option.
Picture and Sound is excellent.
A great Blue Ray DVD Player April 26, 2010
Jimmy S. Christodoulou (San Diego, California United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this DVD Player about a month ago. I really like it. I did not have any problem
hooking it up. The only problem that I have with this machine is that sometimes it will
not load a Blue Ray DVD correctly and I have to shut the machine off. But when I turn it on
again, I have no problem. The only other problem that I encountered was that there is a small
crack in the fron of the DVD player. This is very minor. It could have been from the shipping
or it could have been poor quality control, but it is such a minor thing that I did not send the
unit back because of this, otherwise it is the best DVD player I have ever owned.
 I am incredibly unhappy with this Blu-Ray player. April 2, 2010
Neil (Chicago, Il)
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
I had read much about this player on multiple cinema forums for its noted region free capability. All of the claims in the reviews here I tend to agree with as it is a good Blu-Ray player but I have some issues that have been difficult for me to get around.
First, when this Blu-Ray player is playing a disc it emits a high pitched hum that is moderately loud. This hum is incredibly distracting while I am trying to watch films that have quiet moments. If you think that such a hum would disturb your viewing enjoyment, I would strongly discourage you from purchasing this player.
Also, this Blu-Ray player can be rather "moody" as it will sometimes not be able to read a disc on one day, showing an error message, but play it without issue on another. The player will also have some problems reading a disc during playback where a flawless Blu-Ray disc will start skipping or have breaks in playback.
For those of you who are purchasing this player for it's multi-region ability, an interesting note. This player is not able to play a PAL disc via a HDMI cable where a format error will appear no your HDTV. However, PAL discs will play via component cables without any problems.
I am incredibly unhappy with this Blu-Ray player and would strongly discourage people from purchasing it.
 Noisy Blu-ray player March 22, 2010
toddly6666
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
PROS:
+ blu-rays look awesome and sound great
+ upconverted DVDs look great
+ so far, it's played all my import different Region DVDs that I have tested.
+ nice slick controller
NEGATIVES:
- as I read previous reviews of a slight buzzing, high pitched sound, my Sherwood does have this sometimes (it comes and goes), but it's not that annoying.
- when playing dvds, there is a totally annoying chirping sound that pops up within the first hour of play and then eventually goes away. Now that's pretty annoying. I'm really considering only playing my dvds in my old dvd player.
- Some blu-rays won't play but will eventually play if you keep trying (For example, GLADIATOR and PONYO didn't play at first, but the next day, they both played fine. What the hell is wrong with this Blu-ray technology? Why is it so inconsistent?
- the scratching noise when the dvd/blu-ray loads is sort of irritating. As long as that noise is normal, then I'm okay with it.
- it would be nicer if this Blu-ray player came with two HDMI holes, instead of one.
I've been spoiled using my totally consistent multi-region Malata player for 8 years, which has never given me one problem. So, I give my Malata player an A, but this Sherwood BDP-5004 gets a B-. I can understand that some blu-rays may or may not work or may or may not work right away, but the sounds that come out of this player is inexcusable. And concerning imports, I don't trust this technology yet to spend money on Blu-ray imports, especially when some Blu-rays don't work for technical reasons and also if firmwares are going to prevent import blu-rays from working. So basically, i'm just going to stick with import DVDs and local Blu-rays for now.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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