Sony BDP-S5000ES Blu-ray Disc Player Review

**The News Bot** · 23-03-2009, 7:45 PM

Reviewed by David Mackenzie
Although there are some great technologies under the hood, most of me can’t help but think that the BDP-S5000ES is a little unnecessary. For this amount of money, I’d expect better reproduction of Standard-def contents and a machine which doesn’t introduce combing into 1080p film (even if it is rare).
Read the full review...

Phill1978 · 23-03-2009, 8:29 PM

excellent and iintelligent review,

**Bald Monkey** · 24-03-2009, 8:14 AM

Great review.

kingfats · 25-03-2009, 8:53 AM

Good review thank you.

Very suprised about 24p cadence detection process though David

personally i can't see the benefit/point of why Sony implemented this into the machine.

Pecker · 30-03-2009, 10:56 AM

Excellent review, David. Regarding:

"I'd still love to see a high end machine solve the 2.35:1 anamorphic lens subtitles dilemma. Some disc authors place captions and subtitles in the black letterbox area of 2.35:1 movies, meaning they get cropped off in anamorphic setups. Have you considered a feature whereby the PG Raster is shifted upwards into the image area to compensate? I imagine a lot of high end users - particularly across Europe - would kill for this feature."

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple, on several levels.

Firstly, this doesn't solve the problem of burned in subs.

Secondly, it leaves the problem of matching subs to the background. On many subtitles films the subs move around, as they would otherwise clash with the background. I was watching the HD DVD of Host the other week, and this is exactly what happened. White subs can't be read on a white background, so a feature which moves the subs out of the black bars and on to the picture may be completely useless with many films. Unless you're prepared to sit with the remote, pausing the film every 5 minutes and moving the subs when the background makes them unreadable.

Thirdly, some studios may well be authoring discs to make subtitle movement impossible. Fox in particular are very keen to ensure that they are complete control of a disc once it leaves the pressing plant to stop piracy, and they may see any way to alter a disc's output as a weak link.

Steve W

David Mackenzie · 21-04-2009, 6:47 PM

Hey Pecker, late reply, but better late than never.

Good point about burned in subs, but if they're burned in then I imagine they'll have been done so for theatrical exhibition and will be in the active picture area anyway?

I imagine that us not being able to move Presentation Graphics-based subtitles around is because of some anti-piracy reason (I think people asked Oppo about it and this was the response). I think it's possible with Text-based subtitles (which are rendered on playback, rather than provided as pre-rendered graphics), but no discs are using these because including the font on the disc would need royalty payments

cip8er · 01-06-2009, 5:52 AM

The blackbar subtitle problem is not limited to CIH projection displays. Millions of blackbar haters in Europe and around the globe suffer as they cannot zoom and crop the picture to their taste (on flat panel displays) when subs are fixed in blu-ray blackbars.

Although DVD has solutions, blu-ray specs has deliberately excluded the possibility of manufacturers to provide a solution by protecting the video path. I am not sure Sony and Warner understand the extent of the problem especially in non-English-speaking countries.

The easiest, crude and most effective method is for the blackbar-loving studios such as Sony and Warner to include a second subtitle track within the picture (for the user to select). This will most definitely make the movie watching experience much better for millions of zoomers around the world.

Krobar · 01-06-2009, 6:38 AM

Got a copy of the RS232 spec ofr this player a few days ago. It is very simple 1 way stuff, no where near as nice the 2 way offered by Denon.

Marcus Wood · 03-08-2009, 8:02 PM

Belated thanks for the excellent review.

Just to clarify one point, was the player set to upscale DVDs (to 1080p) for that part of the review?

David Mackenzie · 03-08-2009, 11:37 PM

Yes, that's always the case - if the player was set to output them as-is, then we'd be evaluating the performance of the Display Device it was connected to, not the player itself.

gbaby · 25-06-2010, 5:37 PM

I found this review to be grossly flawed. The analog output coverage was substandard to say the least. I found that in both 5.1 and 7.1 with legacy Dolby Digital and DTS, the S5000ES sounded better than EX and ES from my Arcam AV9. However, there was no mention of the sonic traits of the analog outs which is the best feature on the unit.