Sony BDP-S490 and BDP-S790

[manzb]

Nowadays it seems that the online prices of many/ most of the electronic items are lower. Though you need to search all the sites for the best rate. The prices in a physical store is somewhat higher. But the best part is that many times you get to negotiate with a physical store and get almost similar to the online prices and sometimes even beat the online price. But considering that most of the standalone electronic shops are either vanishing or are not normally stocking the best products of all the best brands, the chances are high that you'll end up reaching a chains like Croma, Reliance-Digital, E-zone, Next, Vijay-Sales etc. Most of these stores don't encourage a heavy bargain off hand. Mostly they don't bargain, and in some cases, the store manager has the right to offer additional discount. But you have to be very strong to manage some respectable amount of additional discount over the sticker price.

 

[prosenjit]

i never found any shop beating online prices...after coupon apply...discount season
well it depends upon the particuler city or shop...

 

[manzb]

Prosenjit, last year when 51E8000 price got crashed officially to 95k with a Tab offer, the best online price was 88k at infibeam (with Tab). But people have reported buying the same at as low as 82-83K from physical stores with the Tab. So that was really a cool price offline. But I agree, the online prices on anyday will be able to beat the offline ones.

But there is a catch with an online store. Hardly any 0% finance option available, which is available with a physical store. Considering the current rate of around 10% p.a., if you opt for a 12 month EMI, then you tend to gain approx 5% of the original product cost, which is substantial and might negate the online benefit.

 

[prosenjit]

yes that i agree completly..12 months or 14 months emi are not avilable online....thats true..yes..
and offline less price example i am giving you one
IFB washing machine elena vx which was like 20k in homeshop18 after adding 10 percent coupon...it was offered without any bargain by a shop in kolkata 19k.....
and the same model was 21k after hardest bargain in jamshedpur....
i was surprised...by the variations
so cases are there..........generally online is very cheap

 

[manzb]

Electronic market is marketed differently in India. The big players buys in a lot of say 10-20 pieces per model. So if a manufacturer has 10 models, he will buy approx 100-200 pieces based on the negotiation. For that he gets substantial discount, let's say 25% on MRP. Sometime they can wrestle for special promo if they lifts double that, like get a DVD/ BD player with a TV (exclusive to that group's store). These big players also normally being provided additional demo units at a higher discount, say 40%-50% or so, sometimes even free (as part of the original lot).

For small players, like all stand alone stores, who can't lift 100, they will have other scheme, like buy 3 pieces of one model/ variant and get additional 5-10% or a may be DVD/ BD player or a microwave free. So for them it is better to sell the product in hand at discount, may be even almost cost plus, as he can make additional money by selling the extra free item. The best is that they are allowed to sell the other products by catalog, which can be called a catalog selling. Like he will have 40" of a TV model, but you want a 46". He will book it and send it from the stockist once you place the order. That way, he saves his capital and gets money for brokerage, sometime even as low as 1%-2% of the product cost. But he has nothing to loose in this case.

So in your case with the IFB machine, the Kolkata guy might be having a machine under some dealer scheme, specific for Kolkata, whereas the Jamshedpur guy either doing a catalog sale or got the machine under no scheme.

 

[e-katz]

Thanks a lot guys..I finally purchased the 490 thru eBay ..got the delivery yesterday.
I had a few queries for those who hv earlier purchased the player:
1. The bundled HDMI cable is not from Sony but some "JAE" Chinese one..is this normal?
2.i did not get a 3d glass along with the bundle though I hv seen the same advertised in Sony World & Reliance Digital
3.I got the 2 blu rays (mib3 & tintin) but they were also not sealed in the transparent plastic which we usually get when we purchase them off the shelf.is this all normal?
Please share your experiences.

euclid1, please share your player experience. Have you tried playing different formats and how has the player performed so far?

 

[euclid1]

euclid1, please share your player experience. Have you tried playing different formats and how has the player performed so far?

here's a short review:
At first i tried out Blu Rays(MIB3/TINTIN/INCEPTION)icture quality was quite good comparable to my PS3
DVDs:It is region free out of the box for DVDS :clapping:.I have quite a few Region 1 DVDs & all played fine but did not find the upscaled picture any different from my old Pana DVD player..colours were a bit oversaturated..though i did not get the time to go for the picture adjustments of the player.
I have an Asus o play mini media player for playing HDD contents but out of curiosity & comparison i tried out the media playback facilities of the blu ray player:
It did not recognize my 1TB WD Elements HDD even after repeated tries..
It recognized my 300 GB WD passport though..played .vob files perfectly.It did not read iso image files of dvd ...also displaying the menus/chapter selection of the dvds on the hdd was not possible.i did not try out other file formats though i have heard that it can play quite a few of them.
But on the whole a media player is a much better option if u want to play HDD content mainly as I have personally used it & found it to be much more versatile & easy to use for movie viewing.there is not much of a difference in the PQ of the media player & the blu ray player with regard to media files.

 

[manzb]

I have a Seagate 1TB, external hard drive. S490, reads it without any issue. I have few AVI movies, some of them it can play while others it refuses to go beyond the listing. Anyway, I am converting many of them to MKVs as I want subtitles also, which is not possible to play if you have a separate SRT file.

Another issue with my S490 is that if the system has a audio CD inserted, it can't recognise, the video files in USB drives, whether it is flash drive or external hard drive. It can only detect the audio files only. But if you place a VCD or DVD or a BD disk, it can now detect all video file, but refuses to detect audio files (MP3 etc). Do let me know whether you are also facing similar issue.

BTW, happy to learn that your DVD is factory unlocked. I had to buy an URC just to unlock the DVD

 

[manzb]

Sony S-490 can't play subtitles from M2TS files.

Only format where it can play subtitle is MKV file (if only a subtitle is part of the container). But issue with MKV is that in most cases it doesnot allow to fast forward the movie. Now, without FF facility it is difficult to watch a movie in 2/3 sittings as you have to start from the beginning. All other format like AVI (sometimes it has issue with this format as well), MP4, M2TS etc can be fast forwarded. Trying different options for last few days. Let me see if there is suitable options where I can play a movie with subtitle and also that can be fast forwarded.

Anyone has any suggestion?

 

[lake1988]

Sony S-490 can't play subtitles from M2TS files.

Only format where it can play subtitle is MKV file (if only a subtitle is part of the container). But issue with MKV is that in most cases it doesnot allow to fast forward the movie. Now, without FF facility it is difficult to watch a movie in 2/3 sittings as you have to start from the beginning. All other format like AVI (sometimes it has issue with this format as well), MP4, M2TS etc can be fast forwarded. Trying different options for last few days. Let me see if there is suitable options where I can play a movie with subtitle and also that can be fast forwarded.

Anyone has any suggestion?

No media player can play subtitle file from m2ts unless it is full BD ISO.

Try muxing the mkv file with mkvmergev5.7.0..then play it..you can find link to dl that version from my thread on how to play mkv file.

If this doesn't resolve the issue I will give you the procedure to create chapter file.

 

[manzb]

Thanks lake, I already have created the Chapter file and included chapters in the MKV file (chapter after every 10minutes). Now let me see whether it can be recognised by S490 or not? If it can, my life will be easier. Else back to square one, will try for other methods suggested by you.

So far I have seen the PQ is somewhat goes down, if you convert to M2TS, even though the size of file goes up by about 20-25% for M2TS. So in every aspect, MKV is a better option, specially as you can get a great PQ with Subtitle.

 

[lake1988]

Quality won't be changed if you change the container from mkv to m2ts..cause the underlying video and audio stream will be unchanged with similar bitrate..if you can use mediainfo before and after converting and check the audio/video stream you will find out that actually both are same.
Now I found that version released after mkvmerge v5.7.0 are not compatible with fast forwarding in bd player or even vlc player. For this reason I recommend version 5.7.0.

 

[euclid1]

Picked up some blu ray copies recently...got the dreaded Cinavia Message 3 in my s490 on one of them..any ideas for bypassing it .i don't have a blu ray drive so ripping the disc is also not an option for viewing thru a media player