• Amazon - S390
• Firmware

• Amazon - S5100
• Firmware

I have two Sony Blu-ray players. The BDP-S390 and the BDP-S5100. The first one I use because it has RCA output for my older TV. They both have wifi on them, so they can stream media. The video player also uses DLNA. It also has playback for MP4s and MKVs, but there are slight differences between the two models what they can support. It's only after a lot of nitpicking that I narrowed down the best setting between them both.

They both support H.264 playback for baseline, main, and high profiles, and they can also both do them in MP4 or MKV containers. However, they do differ in subtitle support. The S390 doesn't have support for either VOBSUB or closed captioning with MP4s. With Matroska, it works just fine.

Chapter support doesn't work on either of these players, in either container. Skipping to the next chapter will go to the next file on the disc / USB.

I haven't been able to find out how to get a thumbnail image to work with the videos (either container), but if you're worried about presentation, the player will drop the extension name from the filename display. There is a tiny icon though that says if it's MKV or MP4 (or MPEG2, or 3GP … etc.)

UX

Because I'm finicky about my UX (to the point that I'll go through a lot of trouble to do things like this), I'm documenting this, so I have it down.

If you have on a Data DVD a structure of Folder, Folder, Videos (no folder), hitting play will start the first video in the main folder if you select play Data DVD from “Home”. Once browsing the data DVD, any time you hit Play on a folder, it will play that first video.

Also, the player will remember the last play point of a file or disc while it's still running. Once powered off, it will forget (sadness).

Video:

• DVD (MPEG2 + AC3) in VOB (MPEG icon)
• DVD (MPEG2 + AC3) in MPG (MPEG icon)
• DVD (MPEG2 + AC3) in MPEG2TS (M2TS icon)
• DVD (MPEG2 + AC3) in MP4 (MP4 icon)
• H.264 high profile + AAC in MP4 (MP4 icon)
• H.264 high profile + AAC in MKV (MKV icon)
• H.264 high profile + AAC + SRT in MKV (MKV icon)
• H.264 high profile + AAC + VOBSUB in MKV (MKV icon)
• H.264 high profile + Dolby TrueHD (Blu-ray) in MPEG2TS (MPEG icon)

An anomaly is H264 + AAC + VOBSUB in MP4 - the display button “sees” them, but subtitle button does not enable them.

Music:

• MP3
• WAV

There are two ways that a video will not work – if it is the only file in the directory, browsing that directory will say “There is no playable file.”

If there is a file where it supports the container, but not the codecs, it may show the file, but refuse playback by saying “The file is corrupt or unsupported”.

For resume playback, it will remember the last playback point of the most recent file it was streaming, and only in that power-on session.

Amazingly, the PS3 will let you copy a file straight from a DLNA server to its hard drive!!!!!