Sharp BDHP210U Blu-ray Disc Player

• Sharp BDHP210U Blu-ray Disc Player
• Full HD 1080p/24 fps video output
• HDMI Up-scaling - BD Live 2.0 Profile
• 7.1 Ch digital audio output
• Quick Start Mode: enjoy content quickly without delay

Other reviewers warn to stay away from this player, so I thought I'd balance things out with somewhat more positive comments. The trouble I had in the past with the BD-HP21U consisted of:

1) Inability to play certain discs

2) Slow to very slow loading times

3) Poor performance by the remote controlhad to be very close to the unit to operate

Each time that I encountered a disc that wouldn't play I upgraded the firmware (have done so 3 times over 15 monthsright after purchase and 2 other times), which took care of the playback glitch. However problems 2 and 3 remained. About 2 weeks ago the movie "Ponyo" wouldn't play, so I upgraded the firmware for a third time and voila! All 3 problems solved! Movie played, loading is now MUCH faster, and the remote works at the same distance as other remotes. I went from being at best lukewarm on the unit to quite pleased.

The most recent firmware is available at . Hopefully that link will displayif not just go to sharpusa and navigate to the customer support/product downloads section. You'll have to manually enter the model number in the appropriate box since this model isn't listed in the drop down, but after you do this the correct firmware download is displayed (which is Version PN9110600).

Are there better/less bulky players out there for the money? Perhaps. But if you can find this at an attractive price, I think that you'll be more than satisfied after you upgrade your firmware.

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Thought i was getting a good deal on a bluray player. This product is very bulky and obviously a model several years old.

Right out of the box the player has issues about 50% of the time, displaying a flickering image. Also loads times are exteremly slow, and some discs will not play. I would recommend spending the extra $30 to get a current model player.

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I received this as a gift...personally I would not have purchase a sharp product. I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Initially compared to my PS3 is was very slow to load...I could let that slide if everything else worked...but it didn't. Right out of the box about 1 out of 5 Blu-Rays did not play "Cannot Read Disc". All of these discs played just fine on my laptop and PS3. I don't know about DVDs. I tried to update the firmware but Sharp had the wrong firmware posted for my equipment. I finally found the correct one under a different model number. That did not help and was definitely not a user friendly process. I am currently in the process of getting help directly from Sharp since the store I purchased from will not let me exchange or return. We will see how it goes, but I am very skeptical.

Bottom line...Stay away

Sharp BDHP210U Blu-ray Disc Player

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My first experience w/ a Blu Ray Player was not a good one. The first few times I used it, it worked fine. My only issue was an incredibly slow loading time. I understand Blu Ray takes longer to download than MPEG-2 DVD, but I'm talking 1-2 full minutes to read the disc and produce the menu screen. Then one day, it would not play a brand new Blu Ray movie. It would load, but then do nothing. It would not respond to anything, other than turning the device off.

I was learning to live w/ my diappointment, until I started to buy and rent more blu-rays, and this was happening to nearly half the discs. With some discs, the device would completely freeze. The only action it would respond to was actually unplugging the machine. The coup-de-gras come one day when the machine froze as it was acustomed to, so I unplugged the device, and when powered back up, I got the error message "rear panel fan not working", or something along those lines. It completely stopped working at that point. Cleaned the fan and everything. Fortunately, Sharp had great customer service and sent me the next model up from this one free of charge. I believe they discountinued this model. Amen.

Stay away from this pice o' junk!

I bought this in Jan 10 and to date it has performed well. I read the manual and found one of the settings that speed up the start up and gets the dvd to play the movie within 10 sec. I am not sure what is the problem others are experiencing, but you have to consider the technical demands on a technology that requires a lot more of bandwidth and processing power. I will try upgrading the firmware later on. Just today connected it to a HDTV (Sharp LC-46SE94U) and the Aquos link used on sharp products automatically recognized the BD input and labelled it with the unit's model number. Later when I placed a dvd on the unit the TV turned on automatically and switched to the dvd input, saving me a few seconds on the process.