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The Sony Blu-ray Conundrum

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I’ve always been a HUGE Blu-ray fan! bluray-stopwatch-0310I even touted the benefits of Blu-ray during the heat of the HD-DVD v.Blu-ray format wars, something that drew great criticism from many readers who clearly though HD-DVD was a better format.

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So, I think I am justified and, to be totally frank, maybe in the best possible position to now say: Sony’s Blu-ray sucks!

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No, not the video quality.  I am still totally and completely in the fan camp of Blu-ray.  When it works, it’s incredible.  I love to watch my copy of The Phantom of the Opera on Blu-ray — it’s staggering.

But, what the heck is Sony’s problem with Blu-ray player?

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Way back in the early days of Blu-ray, I expected glitches.  Sometimes they’d freeze up, or every once in a while I’d notice a left and right audio switch, and I labored through the two-minute loading sequences  of the early days of Blu-ray.  Hey, what can you say; it’s new technology – one that was well worth the wait!

But, here we are some three years later and what the heck?  I own three Sony branded Blu-ray disc players and one Sharp. ALL THREE of the Sony Blu-ray players consistently can’t play about 10-15 percent of what I rent on Netflix. At first, I thought it was a Netflix issue.  I even wrote a letter to Netflix begging them to re-send me a disc that worked.  They were nice enough to not only write back and apologize, but personally tested the saiddisc before sending it back.

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But, all along, it was my Sony-brand player.

In the past three months, I have ordered 17 Blu-ray movies from Netflix and purchased 3 others. Four out of the 20 FLAT OUT will NOT PLAY on any (again, I own 3 different Sony Blu-ray disc players) of my Sony brand players, but all 20 played on my cheap $200 Sharp payer.

What’s the deal?

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Hey, Sony! Want some more bad news?  Check this out:  Three of the four that didn’t work were Sony studio movies!

So, what happens when I load said defective movies into my Sony Blu-ray players?

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