Review on Sony Multi Region 3D Blu Ray DVD Player with Dual Voltage – Upgraded Version, Including 6 Feet HDMI Cable by Chad Judex

The player says it switches regions automatically. Not correct; only manual switching. The operating instructions say nothing about national operations; an additional duplication sheet contains instructions on how to do this. The player automatically checks for firmware updates, but the additional mimeography sheet at the very end of the full-page troubleshooting guide tells (oops, again) to ignore them (oops). Which I didn't read until I downloaded the latest firmware update and the thing just stopped working. Now I have to download the patch file to my home computer, cut the CD-R, load it into the player and follow another whole page of recovery steps and procedures from my own firmware update. Grrr. I think I'm glad to have received all of this in less than four hours from their 3rd party technical email support. I used it for months before SONY broke it with a hostile firmware update. The player only remembered for region 2 discs after a 20 minute pause. I had to remember where I was after auto-shutoff for region 1 media. The player has a power saving mode, but it needs to be turned off when I manually switch between regions, which I often do, so I turned it off. The wireless internet connection works well for the established video streaming sites listed. Heavy pressure on media sites and SONY products, to the point of anger of course, until I learned to avoid them. Verdict: Basically does what they promise but not reliably; Simple user supervision (or SONY crap) requires WAY too much technical work to recover. Far from the normal SONY standards. Doesn't even meet minimum retail standards.