The Sony BDP-S 360 is a Blu-ray player released in spring 2009. In the United States, the device lists at 200 USD, and internet pricing only dips as low as 180 USD. In the United Kingdom, the list price of 230 GBP is also only barely beaten by online retailers, where we found the BDP-S 360 on offer from around 200 GBP.

Florian Friedrich, tested on November 27, 2009

Excellent 24p movie picture.
Superb photo playback.
Bitstream HD audio.
BD-Live.

Slight weaknesses in DVD playback.
No USB stick supplied for BD-Live.

In the core discipline — Blu-ray playback — the BDP-S 360 shows no weaknesses, providing a fantastic home-theater experience. What’s more, the player turns out to be quiet and economical, as well as providing easy operation and powerful audio output. The imperfect DVD playback stands at the top of the snag list, followed by the limited multimedia capabilities.

Multimedia

Good news, bad news:
Great news: the BDP-S 360 supports BD-Live. Not-so-great news: the Sony’s USB interface only serves as a memory extension for BD-Live downloads. And since the player has neither an internal memory nor a supplied memory stick, you’ll have to supply the latter yourself.

On-Screen Menu:

Déjà-vu: The menu structure is reminiscent of the PlayStation 3.

We’re already familiar with the on-screen menu, which is basically lifted from the PlayStation 3. On first glance, it looks quite complicated, but it’s actually perfectly suited — once you get used to it — to navigating through the numerous submenus.

The so-called “XMB” interfaces appears in an increasing number of Sony’s consumer-electronics devices — AV receivers, TVs, camcorders, digital cameras. The advantage is that you can quickly get to grips with a new device if you’ve already got a Sony device sitting at home.

Video and Photo Playback:
Unfortunately, Sony’s player no longer plays DivX videos, but can at least handle AVCHD-format recordings from HD camcorders. MP3 music and JPEG photos burnt onto CDs or DVDs also pose no problems for the Sony BDP-S 360.

Photo playback is especially impressive, exhibiting outstanding sharpness. And it’s mighty fast too, since the S 360 pre-loads the forthcoming pictures into its memory. Each image therefore appears lightning-quick on the screen.

But this is where our test candidate ends its multimedia parade — there is, for example, no wireless internet access, no YouTube, and no PC streaming.

Operation and Other Features

Remote Control and Functionality:

Puristic and matter-of-fact: the remote control.

Sony’s player provides the user with plenty of information: Pressing the “Display” button on the handy remote control brings up details on the currently playing track — including, for example, the video codec and bit rate. If, on the other hand, you press the “Options” button, you’re offered a noise filter and a choice of three gamma characteristics to suit different levels of ambient illumination.

Loading Times and Power Consumption:
The player’s loading times impressed: 22 seconds for a Blu-ray and 18 seconds for a DVD won’t be wowing the audience, but they’re still pretty good values compared to those of competing models.

The optional “Quick Start” mode makes it even faster, reducing the start-up time to just six seconds, albeit with two catches: Firstly, the standby power consumption shoots up, and, secondly, the ultra-fast loading only works for discs that were already in the player — that is, not with discs you’ve just inserted.

Our tip is therefore: deactivate “Quick Start”. Then, the Sony consumes pleasingly little power: requiring 0.15 watts in standby mode and just over 12 watts in operation, it’s one of the market’s most economical Blu-ray players.

Picture Quality

HDTV:
Our laboratory measurements showed the BDP-S 360’s output to be flawless. The color-decoding and digital levels are correct, and — unlike some competing models — the player doesn’t cap blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white regions. So it’s no huge surprise that the Sony produces flicker-free movie pictures in Full HD resolution — regardless of whether they’re outputting in 1080/60p or 1080/24p format.

The Sony also cuts fine figure when de-interlacing 1080i material (HDTV documentaries and concerts), and handles almost all test sequences flawlessly. But there was one test in particular that had it struggling: the slow-moving picture of a woman’s face. Here, a slight flicker was visible on the screen, but very, very few players can display this extremely challenging test sequence perfectly.

DVD:
In the past, Sony’s Blu-ray players could always only up-scale DVDs perfectly if the discs had a progressive flag to facilitate the de-interlacing process. As an acid test, we use the DVD “Six Days Seven Nights”, which lacks a progressive flag and whose tricky beach scene leads many players to show flicker.

The Sony player tested here recognizes interlaced images with the same motion phase and combines these into crisp, progressive pictures. But with the beach scene, the player still takes a few seconds to get it right, and drops out of film mode for a short time.

In brief: Sony has improved in this respect, but there’s definitely still room for improvement. There are no problems whatsoever if a progressive flag is present — everything runs like clockwork.

Sound Quality

Only the essentials: the Sony’s rear panel.

Good to know: The BDP-S 360 has no internal audio decoder for DTS HD. Therefore, those that want to hear more than just the 5.1-channel core from DTS HD audio will have to switch the “BD Audio Setting” from “Mix” to “Direct”. For Blu-rays with Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD, on the other hand, the player always outputs fully decoded, 7.1-channel PCM sound.

Nevertheless, it’s still best to avoid the above problem by switching to “Direct” audio output — this way, all high-bit-rate formats are relayed to the receiver as a bitstream and decoded there instead.

If the sound and video are out of sync, Sony’s “AV Sync” function is on hand, allowing you to delay the audio signal by up to 120 milliseconds.