Sharp Aquos BDHP20U 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player

First of all, I was very skeptical about buying a bluray player knowing about all the time wasted doing firmware updates and the slow functions. This machine confirmed my fears 100%. This thing is slow, taking nearky a minute for the empty tray to open, and another minute before the disc menu to show. Dreading to do my first firmware update, I had no choice, so I downloaded the latest firmware from Sharps website, and my player would not accept it. I call Sharp and they walked me through the process and it still would not accept the update. So they emailed me a shipping label and 4 days later I get my machine back. Did they fix it? No. It still won't play the same 3 bluray discs "Ironman", "Transformers" and "Resident Evil 3" which are all new releases. I am not looking forward to contacting customer service again, but If they don't refund me, I may send it back in pieces using their free shipping label of course.

This is a very slow operating player. When first turned on it takes a full 45 seconds to initialize. When a disc is inserted it takes another 30 seconds to figure out what type of media it is playing. While it is "changing gears", you see static, good old black and white no signal type of static...

Won't play several movies. Firmware updates have been non-existent, customer service is useless. I will NEVER buy another product from Sharp ever again. Absolute garbage. Stay as far away from this company as possible.

I have had this for about a year with minimal problems. I picked up a Blu Ray copy of Young Frankenstein but it will not play anything but the title screen. Sharp has not released a new firmware update to make this and a few other titles playable. They have not bothered to update the firmware since June 9th, 2008. I contacted them about this and they told me that it may be 2 months or more until they get new firmware released. That means, a movie I bought in October may not be viewable until December or later (there is no particular date for a firmware update). This is unacceptable to me. I would not advise anyone to buy this player without warning you that you may not be able to play new releases. Also, their customer service was useless.

This review is for the BD-HP20X which is essentially the same as the HP20U (takes the same firmware) but is the localised Australian variant. I took a plunge on this player after seeing it advertised for an irresistibly low price through an internet mail-order vendor. Here are a few words about my experiences with this player so far (applies to the latest firmware revision which I downloaded and installed via USB memory stick) - * I'm using the Sharp's analog 5.1 audio outputs (onboard decoder) as my Yamaha AV receiver is an older one that lacks HDMI and support for newer sound formats. The analog sound quality is quite adequate for movies although I wouldn't really recommend it for serious music listening - the DACs are ordinary sounding and markedly inferior to those you would find in any decent standalone AV receiver. But for movie viewing the analog output certainly suffices. * Blu-ray playback is excellent - the picture quality is stunning and of course a major improvement over DVD. The only thing I noticed is there will sometimes be a tiny pause in playback when the blu-ray disc is first started, but after this initial hesitation playback will be perfectly smooth. * I like how the front panel display can be completely shut off during playback of a disc, to avoid any distractions in a darkened room. Just press the "LIGHT" button on the remote control toggles the display off... * I hooked up this player to a Samsung 32" Series 4 LCD TV which automatically detected the Sharp player as an "Anynet+" device over HDMI. And when you switch the source to the Sharp player through the Samsung TV, the Sharp player springs to life automatically! This came as a rather pleasant surprise. * Sometimes I noticed a strange behaviour, where the Sharp player resumes from standby and fails to recognize a previously loaded blu-ray disc, displaying the message "incompatible disc" (this happened to a disc that had been loaded and recognized okay before). Ejecting and reinserting the disc resolved this problem. * I haven't thoroughly tested playback of regular DVDs, but the unit definitely does upscaling via HDMI to your TV * CD playback is terrible! There are constant audible glitches (clicks) during CD playback, and this happens even with commercially-pressed CDs. This totally ruins the listening experience, needless to say. I imagine the problem would be even worse with CD-Rs you burned yourself. It's as if the CD functionality was tacked on as an afterthought with zero attention paid to quality control and testing. In conclusion - I can recommend the Sharp for anybody seeking an affordable blu-ray player. The inclusion of analog 5.1 outputs is a boon for those like myself with older AV receivers. Just realize that the onboard DACs are far from audiophile quality. Obviously, this won't be an issue if you stick to the digital audio outputs. And you can completely forget about playing audio CDs with this unit.