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Well, Santa was really good to me and brought me a new Sony DVP-S560D player with the built in DD decoder to feed my 5.1 ready receiver. Unpacking and hook-up went well enough, after moving things around in my cabinet and routing all the new interconnects. My first concern was that the manual is not very well done. Each time I read through it, something else would seep through that made me realize.. "Oh, so that's how that is supposed to be set". Finally, on about Wednesday I was starting to be satisfied that I had everything the way I wanted and was enjoying the disc's I had also been given. The one nagging problem was the LFE channel. In the menu portion of the player is an area for adjusting the output of Center, Surround and Sub to balance the main speakers, complete with a system test tone for each. To my suprise I had to boost the LFE by 7.5 db to make it sound right. Mind you, I am doing this by ear until I have use of a meter. I don't really like over cooked bass so I adjusted the level and then used the James Taylor DVD to check. After getting it where I wanted to try it for a while, I watched a movie and called it a night. Thursday I decided to watch another movie. But, to my suprise the LFE was gone. When I checked the setup menu, the level was back at 0 db. ??? I reset it to +7.5 returned to the main screen and shut the player down. Turned it back on and guess what, it was back at 0 db. Now I'm thinking it's me and I haven't done something right. So, I go back and change the levels for Center, Surround and LFE. Shut down and start up. The Center and Surround stayed at the new changed levels, the SUB went back to 0 db. So, now I think the player is possibly defective or this is a terrible design choice by Sony. I certainly don't want to have to go into the menu every time I want to watch a movie.
My lovely wife ordered this from Crutchfield because I had shown her the model I wanted in their catalog. So, I called the customer service on New Years Day, to my suprise they are sending me another player to try side by side with the original one to confirm the problem. If it is the way Sony designed it, I will send both back and look for another brand.
UPDATE::: After thinking this over I have decided that even if the new Sony works correctly I will be returning them. I get a sick feeling knowing that 1 out of 2 fail right out of the box. I am by no means a Sony hater. My cheap Sony receiver has never given me a reason to complain. I have just ordered a Panasonic DVD-RV80. In addition to the needed 5.1 decoder built in it also has DTS built in.
Do any of you own Panasonic players???
My lovely wife ordered this from Crutchfield because I had shown her the model I wanted in their catalog. So, I called the customer service on New Years Day, to my suprise they are sending me another player to try side by side with the original one to confirm the problem. If it is the way Sony designed it, I will send both back and look for another brand.
UPDATE::: After thinking this over I have decided that even if the new Sony works correctly I will be returning them. I get a sick feeling knowing that 1 out of 2 fail right out of the box. I am by no means a Sony hater. My cheap Sony receiver has never given me a reason to complain. I have just ordered a Panasonic DVD-RV80. In addition to the needed 5.1 decoder built in it also has DTS built in.
Do any of you own Panasonic players???
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