SONY UBP-X800 universal player

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by High Fidelity, Mar 23, 2017.

  1. 360-12

    360-12 Forum Resident

    Knock on wood - my Sony has been working fine since I purchased it last April. No restarts at all. I, too, played the Westworld discs but had absolutely no problems. Maybe it's the weather? Haven't yet had to clean a disc. Just sayin'...
     
  2. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    What issues did you have with the 105? In what way was Oppo service lacking? I ask as the times I dealt with Sony service there was never an actual person to discuss the issues I was having. Not sure if that is still true. But when I've called Oppo during business hours there was always someone to talk to that was very knowledgeable with their players. Emails to Oppo have been answered on weekends and at night which I highly doubt you'll see from Sony.

    I definitely do not expect the type of service that Oppo offers from Sony. Oppo is a small company offering a limited amount of products where Sony is a huge company offering many different products. Some feel Oppo products are overpriced which I can see when you compare that one could buy the x800 on sale for $150. The Oppo 203 is $549 and never on sale. But when one buys a product such as the x800 for $150 and it has issues and Sony service is not readily available to assist is that savings worthwhile? In the end the old adage "you get what you pay for" rings true here.

    The fact that your x800 is under warranty is good. But if service from Sony is lacking and the only alternative is to get another x800 that might have the same issues is not a productive outcome IMO.
     
    Sevoflurane, JimW and jamesc like this.
  3. Steve1616

    Steve1616 New Member

    Location:
    Kansas
    My x800 screws up on every type of disc. It has messed up mostly on just standard blu Ray and dvd. I’m not saying some blu Ray aren’t dirty, but my PS3 plays the same discs and has never messed up once. I think my PS3 shows that it’s not that hard to make a good blu Ray player. Maybe the 4K player just has some issues at this point. As to Sony’s customer service and service I’m realizing I must have been a fanboy and overlooked problems. I bought a release date PS4 and sent it back to Sony for repair the first year and had so many problems. I sent it into Sony 5 or 6 times In the first year and it would play for a week and then wouldn’t boot anymore. The first time I sent it in was because the audio port went bad so they sent me a refurb that wouldn’t even boot up. From there they kept sending me the exact same refurb that Sony could never fix. They never fixed it totally and I was so frustrated. After the first year, I sent it to Walmart’s cheap warranty service and they had to keep it longer because they kept finding multiple issues. Ever since Walmart’s service repaired it correctly I haven’t had any problems since.
     
  4. Steve1616

    Steve1616 New Member

    Location:
    Kansas
    I bought my unit from Best Buy and didn’t write a negative review. I’m not sure if most are like me or not, and maybe I should write a negative review but I haven’t. When I took my first unit back, the customer Service guy said yours must be an x800 when he saw the Sony box. He said everyone keeps bringing theirs back although he said for a different reason. Something about discs skipping every 10 seconds or something like that. Maybe he was just confused on the reason because I haven’t seen that complained about in the forums. The manager was also by him and said something seems to be wrong with these Sony units because we are returning a bunch of them. At this point I am sure that a third blu Ray player would probably do the same thing as the other 2. Maybe the hardware I have just isn’t perfect to make things work.
     
  5. jamesc

    jamesc Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    It's not very reassuring seeing that people are having these kinds of issues because who knows if it was just a bad batch of players or if they'll all develop the problems eventually. I swore off of Sony years ago because of a terrible XBR TV service experience and have seldom bought their products since. I did pick up one of these and haven't run into any issues so far. I've probably played 20-30 discs (BD, BD-A, SACD, DVD-A, DVD) and haven't seen any freezing. I haven't used any of the apps and probably never will. I bought mine from B&H.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
  6. andybeau

    andybeau Forum Resident

    Location:
    Coventry, UK
    Well I've had mine since last August with no issues. Loving the versatility.
    Thought I'd post on a positive :)

    PS
    More people complain in general than praise
     
    bradman likes this.
  7. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA


    5 star 60%
    4 star 13%
    3 star 7%
    2 star 7%
    1 star 13%

    These are the numbers at Amazon, out of 426 total reviews. Amazon had it for $149 and that's where I was looking at it. The many rteports there scared me, so I started watching this thread, assuming folks here were more tech savvy than the general publlic.

    But there's a lot of reports of multiple crashes.

    I hope yours continues to give you good service. But I believe there's reason to be wary. Right now, I'm not sorry I didn't pull the trigger. But then, I was only considering it as a back-up player for my surround collection. It was such a great price, I thought it'd be a good investment.
     
  8. 360-12

    360-12 Forum Resident

    Interesting. I, too, purchased my player from B&H and have had no problems. Seems like a lot of the failures are purchased at Best Buy. Maybe just a bad run in manufacturing. I imagine Sony pumps these babies out at a pretty incredible rate.
     
  9. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA
    You know they are when they were at $150 for a while- a couple of times on amazon. I almost got one and I don't even need it.
     
  10. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I took a chance on this since it's a universal player (SACD and DVD-Audio) and at $150 it represented very little risk (it also looks alright, unlike a lot of contemporary players, and it's the right size to fit with the rest of my equipment).

    I have had it hard lockup once already, while trying to stream something from Amazon (if memory serves - might have been Hulu or Netflix). It was a PITA trying to track its power cord back to the power strip to unplug it, but it's been working fine ever since. I've only played one Blu-ray disc in it though, so if that's problematic with this unit I wouldn't know. If it locks up frequently I'll connect it to a wireless Z-Wave outlet so that I can tell Alexa to turn it off and on, instead of having to hunt down the cord.

    :pleased:
     
  11. BIGGER Dave

    BIGGER Dave Forum Resident

    And there was the $129 MassDrop with no tax and free shipping deal. At that price, it represented little risk, so I went for it. So far, my unit has had no issues.
     
  12. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA
    :righton: Hope your good fortune holds. At that price, had I known about it, I doubt if I could have resisted. As it was, I was really close a few times. But the reviews kept getting worse.

    But yeah, even at $150 it's not that big a risk.
     
  13. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    Hmm, I wonder if perhaps many people run this player in quick-start mode, which I assume means that it doesn't really power off when you stop using it? I don't - mine is completely powered off when I'm not using it - and I've only had mine appear to lock up once or twice. I say "appear" because I wasn't using the display at the time, I just wasn't getting sound so I powered off and back on and it worked.
     
    360-12 likes this.
  14. BSC

    BSC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    Woah. Did I step on your Oppo badge? :) I only ever dealt with Oppo via email a few times maybe three with different operating issues in all cases they couldn't solve the issue-of course they were system dependent in all cases I found a solution either over at AV forum with the guy Bob(?) who is a star or elsewhere with work on my own part. The last issue I had was with using both HDMI outputs with the 105-you simply couldn't have the video HDMI connected at the same time as listening to music via HDMI with my Bryston DAC-quite clearly something in the handshake with my TV and the Oppo caused a regulat drop out. Oppo simply suggested the problem wasn't theirs-Bryston and most of the reviews I've read seem to have used the 103. The reality is with the Sony as my transport now the handshake issue is gone. Now Oppo got back to me-they often pointed me in the direction of trying things that made little sense but they tried, weren't rude but really weren't overly helpful either. Bryston on the other hand offered superb support.

    I think Oppo products do offer value for money the 105 was a superb 1K investment-a great machine with a build to go with it but beyond that stereo replay that would honour a pretty high end system -I would buy Oppo again tomorrow-as it turns out the Sony works better for me as I really only need a transport aspect rather than a stereo machine now due to my DAC. It is a much better fit for me and is more versatile and actually sounds better as a transport.

    However the Sony won't do the job if it is going to constantly crash and it seems Sony have nothing to brag about on the CS front. I was merely making the point Oppo from my perspective weren't all rainbows and unicorns I found their CS to be a bit lacking and a bit disinterested when the issue was more subtle than the machine has went faulty or was broken. I hope that clears it up for you. :)
     
  15. jeffrey walsh

    jeffrey walsh Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, Pa. USA
    What’s to praise if your having issues with this unit, lucky you?!
     
  16. I've been using my X-800 since last May to play everything I have except vinyl records. I use it to play SACDs either hybrid or single layer from time to time, most of the times I played them using an external SSD which has my SACDs ripped and it's files extracted from the ISO with ISO2DSD and it works great. I play my FLAC/PCM Hi Res files at various resolutions ranging from 44.1-48/24 to 176.4-192/24 without any single issues. Never had a skip or a freeze from a CD, DVD or BD, and the very few freezing I had from UHD BDs were from 3 layer 100 Gig that were not clean from the factory, after cleaning them I haven't had a single freezing. I ocasionally watch some videos or CNN or BBC News from YouTube and the app is 100% stable and the same for the Netflix app.
    My X-800 has proven to me to be very reliable with very little manteinance, I just keep my discs spotless clean and I clean the laser pick up lens with a Hama (made in Germany) wet CD cleaner which seems to work fine.
     
    JimW likes this.
  17. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Man I just spent all morning polishing my Oppo #1 fan badge :D. Thanks for your detailed response. If the x800 is working with the Bryston better than the 105 that's excellent!
     
    BSC likes this.
  18. jeffmackwood

    jeffmackwood Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ottawa
    I learned a long time ago to keep the plugs on all Sony BD players within easy reach in order to reboot after freeze-ups.

    However, so far neither of my X800s has done so.

    Jeff
     
  19. Steve1616

    Steve1616 New Member

    Location:
    Kansas
    I just took my second x800 back today. I questioned the manager because the second one had tape that said Best Buy inspected. It seems like that would be put on a returned product but the manager assured me it was new. I do hate that it didn’t work out because the player was great when it worked.

    I also wonder after seeing the inspected label since Sony service stinks I wouldn’t doubt if they do a 10 minute test and then put them back into service as new. That would cause a lot of defective products to keep recycling.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
  20. 360-12

    360-12 Forum Resident

    I don't believe they can do that. I always heard that once a product has been sold it has to be labeled "open box" or "refurbished" when put back on the shelf. Of course I could be mistaken.

    It's possible the "Best Buy Inspected" label covers their rear if they are putting returned items directly back for sale. I do see that my store offers "open box" for $15 under a new one.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2018
  21. Doc Diego

    Doc Diego Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nevada
    Still enjoying mine though it’s sad to hear the trouble others are having with this unit. Bought an inexpensive HDMI to 7.1 analog converter to pair with my Rotel pre/pro. Still putting it through its paces comparing coax and analog inputs, but initial listening is encouraging. For the price nothing compares to this Sony’s picture and sound!
     
  22. hoover537

    hoover537 Senior Member

    Location:
    Florida
    They just check to see that the unit isn't physically broken, and that it has the power cord, remote, etc. At least that's what they told me when I bought a tv from there. They actually inspected it in front of me and then slapped the sticker on.
     
  23. For video settings, do you have Deep Color set to Auto or Off? I have it set to Auto.
     
  24. Doc Diego

    Doc Diego Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nevada
    Auto on mine like most of the other settings.
     
  25. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Had it lockup again last night, doing literally nothing. I'd played the SACD of Gaucho and then left it sitting. Came back this morning to eject the disc and it was frozen solid. Had to unplug it and wait awhile to get it to respond.

    The good news is, I switched it to output DSD to my new Pioneer receiver last night, and that seems to be working well. So yea for having a receiver that can natively decode DSD.
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine