Review on 📺 Enhance Your Home Theater Experience with the Sony UBP-X700 4K Ultra HD Streaming Blu-Ray Player by Russ Montgomery

This works great. It has a few quirks that I don't like but they don't break the deal, I'm just deducting 1 star. Aside from those quirks/annoyances, it works flawlessly and produces a great image. ----- Update: Ignore Quirk #1. Turns out he remembered where you left off. But it's only after you've selected a language for the video and actually pressed "play" to start the movie that the screen will ask you if you want to continue playing where you left off. Not intuitive and it only seems to remember one drive. ---- Back to original review: Quirk/Annoyance 1) It doesn't remember where you left off when you turn off the device. If it's on and the disc hasn't been ejected, it remembers where you left off in the movie. possibly quirk/nuisance 2) It has a start menu that shows all apps and player inputs. This looks good, but it takes longer to boot up and recognize that a disc is inserted. And it doesn't start the disc right away; You have to choose it from all these apps and inputs. Most players start the disc immediately, but this one only seems to do so if you insert the disc before turning on the TV. like that . It either starts playing discs before the TV has had time to boot, or it makes you wait and then choose a disc. Well it's the other way around and a waste of time. Quirk/Annoyance 3: Leaving a disc in the player causes the aspect ratio to be wrong when switched on again. It stretches the picture sideways, 4:3 and 16:9 are distorted. There is no setting on the DVD player to temporarily adjust the aspect ratio. To display the picture correctly, either press the stop button while the disc is playing and then immediately press the play button, or eject and reinsert the disc. Of course, neither should be necessary. Especially if the disc played correctly before it was turned off earlier. Oddity/nuisance 4) The remote control is very small, the buttons are close together. Worse, the Netflix button on the remote is annoying with its size and awkward placement halfway between Home, Favorites, Play, and Forward. So, unless you hold a somewhat long thumbnail and aren't careful when pressing the buttons, you'll end up switching your player to the Netflix app unexpectedly and at the most inconvenient moment. Especially annoying if you don't use Netflix at all. Apparently Netflix paid for this product placement because there are no other dedicated buttons on the remote for apps or streaming services. Of course, if you're using a third-party multipurpose remote, that's not a problem (Logitech Harmony: I could break it and buy it again). By the way, I did not try the applications, since they are very limited and immediately when the firmware was updated, one was removed (I do not remember which one). I didn't bother either because. it does not save applications in "Favorites". It seems so, but then the software updates automatically and they're gone again. (Update: They seem to have fixed this bug; Favorites are now saved). The few I would use are on my Roku device, plus MANY more services, so using a DVD player for that doesn't make sense to me. He also says he wants to update software or firmware regularly and then says there is nothing to update. . I don't know what data Sony collects in the process, but it doesn't get past this prompt screen until you allow it to connect to the network. I can turn it off completely, but the instructions say it requires an internet connection to work properly. I have to see what happens, right? :-) Those who value privacy should perhaps consider this aspect. In general. Image quality is okay. Upscaling on regular DVDs is great, better than our old player. And Blu-ray discs play beautifully on our 1080p screen. Make sure to upgrade your HDMI cable to 4K if you want to play them. But normal HDMI plays normal Blu-ray etc. fine at 1080p. It's also easy to use. There are only two large panel buttons on the unit for power and eject/insert a disc. I'm not a fan of hiding the front of the drive bay behind a bezel; usually they are too much trouble when they get stuck. It's cheap, it works, I would recommend it. But I probably should have chosen something else because quirks annoy me every day. Update: I've gotten used to the quirks for the most part, but the aspect ratio is still annoying. Someone asked what apps/channels are included, so here's the full list as of 25th June 2019 and I've included a photo of the app screen. You can access the free content, but you have to purchase a subscription to get the paid aspects. * Revain Prime Video * Hulu * Fox News Channel * YouTube * YouTube Kids * Spotify * Slacker Radio * Netflix * Crackle * YuppTV * MUBI * Tubi * Pandora * SiriusXM * VUDU * Curiosity Stream * I Heart Radio * Berliner Philharmoniker Here's another one Update : this baby just played Region 2 DVD in PAL format! I had no idea what it would do. And I switched between playing and playing region 1 NTSC discs. It didn't change in any region forever. And he did it all automatically! All I had to do was insert the disc and press the play button! (Well, first I had to figure out what the German word for 'play' is. I bought a PAL German language region 2 DVD from Amz UK.) So far I'm really enjoying this DVD player. Forget my petty complaints about its "quirks", it's a really great player. And it still works fine.