Sharp BD-HP20U

Reviewed by: am_offline

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Great Video and Upconversion

Weaknesses: Does not play all BluRay disc, firmware upgrades needed, slow start up...

Overall Evaluation: This is a great BluRay player when and if it works. Often discs will not play and you get "Incompatible Disc", even though they are. You may get lucky by reloading the disc until it plays. Sometimes midway through your movie, it starts to pause the play back or stop playing altogether. The solution is to upgrade the firmware, however if you are on a MAC you are hosed. Why? Well you need to put the update from the Sharp Website on a USB drive, and the drive cannot have anything on it except the update. If you are on a MAC, the MAC will put extra hidden folder data on the USB, so it won't work, it needs to be done with a PC. They should have put the USB port in the front and not the back because it is a pain to get to. I don't know how non-tech savy people survive with this thing.Another issue is that often standard DVD functions, menus, skip, top menu will not work on this player (work fine on other players) and the loading of BluRay and SD DVD can be really slow. Buy this is you own a PC, have a spare empty USB drive, have lots of patience, and are tech savvy enough to know how to find the software update on the Sharp Website, download it to your PC, unzip the firmware update, put that on your USB USB drive, unzip the update, then plug it in to the player and make the update.