wylefon ranierie ercole
Jenni Israelsen
I have a Blu-Ray player ... I have been using this for over a year ... I will often completely lose connection ... I thought this might be a wireless issue so last week I hard-wired the blu-ray player to the Actiontec ... This has not helped ... Should I be requesting an updated set top box?
Your Blu-Ray player is not affected by your STB, although when you connect wirelessly the Actiontec is obviously a possible culprit. The same is true when you connect wired to the Actiontec, and that's certainly a possible offender. Both the Blu-Ray and the STB are network clients on your home network and act independently (within certain limits such as IP assignments, etc.).
You need to investigate where the bandwidth issue arises, and one of the first issues to address (after the router) is your Internet connection speed. What is your subscription? It's possible (if somewhat unlikely) that your speed is too low and results in the buffering issue.
Not to be a pest, but your Blu-Ray is NOT connected to the STB. It's connected to the display device and usually by HDMI. OTOH, if you are using the Blu-Ray to stream content, it is connected to the Internet via the Actiontec router, either by Ethernet or via wireless. In any case, keep us posted and we'll keep trying on this end.
If you haven't already, try streaming Amazon onto your notebook. Wireless. If that works, the problem will be the Blu-Ray. I'm ignoring the cable to the TV because that would not cause the connectivity problem you are having.
I am having tha same problem, but the problem occurred when we switched to Fios from Comcast. Ever since then we have been unable to stream Netflix without it crashing, or failing to connect. It is either one of two problems. It could be a compatibility problem with the wireless range extender, or Verizon is chopping the signal when the bandwidth reaches a certain level, whether it is mine, or based on a majority signal. We went with Fios because we wanted a stronger signal, but we ended up getting a weaker signal. One problem, is not just internet it is also when there are a combination of TV and internet signals going on at once. You might have two TV's on and one of them is streaming Netflix on a player, and another person is surfing the web. Fios should be able to handle this because Comcast with a lower mbps can. Maybe Netflix runs less efficient on Fios and uses up more bandwidth? Who knows? But the problem for me started the day we switched over to Fios.
Same problem here, just switched over from Comcast 50/10 package to Verizon 75/35. Speeds are better than whats rated on speedtest.net. But I get cut outs on the connection using Spotify, Netflix and Vudu. Now heres the big problem, its not wifi since my house is wired for ethernet. All PCs and TVs are wired and drop outs happen regardless of wired or wireless. Also this seems to happen more during the hours of 4-10pm. I'm debating just going back to Comcast and getting rid of this headache.
Why oh why isn't someone from Verizon (tech support AND management) monitoring this thread and posting their thoughts/advise so all can read? I have stuck with Verizon thru all my problems because I have a work-around but I csn understand why there are a lot of upset people out there, some of whom are switching back to other suppliers. Verizon seems to have gotten too big to bother dealing with individual subscribers and their phillosophy seems to be to ignore a problem (or re-direct a user to their useless web-support) and it will go away.
I'm very interested in this thread as I'm having the exact same issues. I've got an internet ready LG TV with a direct ethernet connection to the Actiontec router. In the past few weeks I've suddenly been getting awful buffering and dropping out many times during Amazon streaming shows. And it is happening during 'prime time' (6-9pm)
Amazon told me the same thing--that my records show excellent bandwidth streaming with sudden complete drops. The tech said it looked like the provider was using some sort of Speed Burst that was dumping a ton of data and then 'resting' before sending the next packet--obviously not what one wants for Streaming unless a huge amount is pre-buffered.
I assume it is Verizon but they are impossible to get hold of and when you do, it is rare to get a tech who understands and can diagnose the issue, so any input you all have would be great. I don't know of any way to adjust the HD streaming of Amazon to either increase the buffering or lower the transfer rate (which Hulu does let you do), and I hate to have to switch to SD after bothering to pay for all the HD stuff.
At about 7pm I log into Amazon streaming via Sony S790 bluray player. I have 35mps Fios and the system is hardwired. Connection speed at log in is 15mps. I choose the program I want to stream. Initial speed is still 15mps. After about 1 minute you can watch the speed drop from 15mps to 0.5mps in about 30 seconds. I then get a message to contact my ISP because of the low speed. After about 2 minutes the streaming resumes for about 30 seconds and the whole cycle repeats.
Started watching Amazon at 5:30pm (PST), 15mps. Worked fine until 6:58 when speed went downt to 2mps, streaming paused, message to contact ISP. Streaming resumed after about 1 minute. This happened three times in row. Then speed went to 25mps and I had no further problems.
That doesn't make sense to me. With my prior cable provider my best connection speed was around 1.5mps. At that speed I never had a problem streaming content from Amazon. I didn't encounter problems until it dropped below 1mps. Depending on the content I was ok at under 500kps.
I don't doubt the problems being related in this thread are real. But I suspect the connection speed is not the real culprit. Something else is going on and the speed issue is just a symptom of the real problem.
Latest input from a Verizon tech was that I examine the spitters I have and maybe reduce the number. I did and I only have the one 5-way 7.5db splitter that Verizon installed and a 2-way unmarked splitter that I installed between the Verizon splitter and the Actiontek router. It's possible but I don't think this is the problem.
Holy crap this thing is infuriating. It's rare that I get annoyed with a product I'm reviewing. OK, this annoyed. But after spending hours trying to diagnose the problem, I'm left just as perplexed as when I started.
Let me back up. The BDP-S470 is Sony's least expensive Blu-ray 3D player. Not that you'd know it from the feature list. In addition to supporting Blu-ray 3D playback, the player is wireless ready and has a ton on streaming video options.
The interface is Sony's well known Xross Media Bar (XMB), as seen on the PSP, PS3, and pretty much every other Sony product lately. Personally, I love it. It's easy to navigate, looks good, and did I mention easy to navigate? Everything after that last point is a distant second in my book.
Navigating over to the Internet Video tab, you'll see an nearly endless list of options. The big ones, Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu Plus and YouTube are all here. There's also content from Epicurious (a decent recipe site), Wired, Style.com along with Sony concerts, trailers, and their Qriocity service.
Some of this additional content is merely filler. The kind of thing you may check out once, and never again. Like the surround modes on a receiver or the manual shift function on your automatic transmission. I did check a few out though, like "Yoga for Everyone by Tara Styles" video podcasts. I am now an expert at the "Dead Turtle," "Wounded Sloth," and "Agonizing Joint Pain" poses. Clearly "Everyone" doesn't include the sedentary A/V reviewer demographic.
Unlike every other Netflix streaming device, Sony requires you to sign up with SonyStyle.com first. THEN you register and activate the device with Netflix. Thanks for trying to steal my email address Sony. The joke's on you, it's fake. For every streaming service you sign up for (i.e. Pandora, Slacker, etc) you have to register through SonyStyle first, then access the service itself to activate. This is intrusive, cumbersome, and staggeringly unnecessary. Anyone remember having to convert their MP3s to ATRAC to work on the Sony portables? Of course not, no one bought those either.
I'm sure Sony's argument is that they're providing a web portal for all the various content, and list it all for you. I guess I don't understand why Sony needs to know what services I want to sign up for.
The overall Netflix interface is aesthetically similar to the new PS3 Netflix interface, with cover art 6x3 across the screen. Unlike the PS3 and the Apple TV, there is no way to search to find new content. You need to log into Netflix from a web browser to add titles to your Instant Queue, which then show up on the BDP-S470. This is the case with pretty much every Blu-ray player, unfortunately. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be any trace of the chroma upsampling error (the so-called Chroma Bug) like what we found with the Panasonic Blu-ray 3D player. Overall Netflix video quality is average. Not quite as sharp as some other devices, but not as soft or as noisy as others.
Hulu Plus was added just before this review was posted. Hulu Plus is similar to Netflix in that you stream content at will, but it has the added bonus of having all the latest episodes of TV shows. It also has advertisements, which is a little weird to me for a pay service. Current price of a Hulu Plus subsctiption is $7.99 a month (recently lowered from $9.99/month). HD content looks ok, somewhat soft and very lightly washed out. This is likely the content and not specifically the Sony. Control in the interface is sluggish.
Performance
Moving on to video testing, I started with the Spears and Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray. Using this disc, I found the BDP-S470 is able to pick up the 3:2 sequence with 1080i content and correctly deinterlace. This means that it handles film-based content on Blu-ray Disc properly.