Sony BDP

Sony made a hippo-sized splash at CES 2010 with a herd of ‘Monolith’-styled 3D TVs and Blu-ray players, set to dampen your home cinema this spring. It turns out the UK is rather a different set of swimming baths, and Sony has tweaked its Blu-ray line-up for Britain with the announcement of the BDP-S470 and BDP-S570 players.

They’re very similar units, with both offering 3D playback and a host of online features, including full BBC iPlayer access, YouTube and streaming movies from LoveFilm. They replace the S770 and S370 models we checked out in Vegas.

The S570 is the more upmarket of the pair, lording it over the S470 with built-in Wi-Fi and a special noise-reduction feature for Internet video, so it looks better on a big-screen TV. The S470 makes do with grainy YouTube clips and a wireless dongle (sold separately) or just plain old Ethernet.

Both players can access Bravia Internet Video, Sony’s catch-all term for the online stuff that’s available on its TVs and Blu-ray players. Intriguingly, Sony says it “lets you watch the programmes you missed on popular ‘catch-up’ TV services” which implies more than just the announced iPlayer compatibility. It’s possible ITV, Channel 4 and Five could be getting on this bandwagon too.

There are several other smart little touches too, such as a Gracenote actor database so you can quickly look up who that guy is in the movie you’re watching. There’s DLNA support for streaming content from your computer, plus an inelegant USB slot on the front to plug in movies, photos and music. DivX HD and MKV formats are supported. There’s even a compatible app that lets you use your iPhone or iPod touch as a remote control, via Bluetooth.

Sony hasn’t announced prices but promises these puppies will be in shop windows in May. Hopefully we’ll have hands-on photo stories and full reviews by then.

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Sony BDP

For better or worse, Blu-ray is the only show in town. For HD — and at some point, 3D — there’s no other home entertainment format that comes close to competing with it. But cost is still standing in the way of widespread appeal, and with players coming in at £200 or more, it’s not hard to see why. The answer to these problems, according to Sony, is its low-cost BDP-S360.

While you shouldn’t expect support for Internet video like MKVs or YouTube streaming, the BDP-S360 still has plenty of grunt. It’s a Profile 2.0 player, so you’ll have access to both online video and other content via BD Live, and video commentaries on some discs. You’ll also get 24p playback, x.v. colour support and Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD MA sound.

The ease of use hasn’t been compromised either. You get the Sony Xross Media Bar, which we love to point out is the most horrifically named technology in consumer electronics, but works very well as a way to navigate through the player menus. Sony also claims this machine has faster load times and more responsive menus. From what we’ve seen so far, it isn’t wrong.

If you time it right, and get a special offer, this player can be had for around £80 or so. More commonly though it will set you back £120 at most online retailers. It’s also possible that you might be offered this machine for free if you buy a TV — we think that’s a tempting incentive. We’ll be posting a full review soon, so keep an eye on our reviews section to see how we rate its picture and sound quality.

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Sony BDP

Sony has lifted the lid on its new top-of-the-range Blu-ray player, the BDP-S760. Jammed full of exciting new features — some of which may actually make a difference to your viewing experience — it’s also packing a walloping great price tag: £340.

The S760 and its more reasonably priced sibling, the S560 (£240), do share an interesting common feature: Wi-Fi. Instead of trailing an ugly old Ethernet cable round to your home-cinema setup, the S760 connects to your wireless network, meaning you can look at photos stored on your PC or make use of Blu-ray’s thus-far disappointing BD-Live Internet features.

Home-cinema manufacturers add value to pretty bog-standard componentry by including software to make your picture look prettier. These features always have ludicrous names and Sony doesn’t disappoint with the S760 — ‘HD Reality Enhancer’ and ‘Super Bit Mapping’ aren’t, in fact, power-ups from 16-bit video games, but they supposedly make your 1080p picture more smooth, realistic and closer to the original colours. Expect us to test these claims — and make fun of the names again — in our full review.

Other features on both the S760 and S560 include a six-second Quick Start mode, to cut down the annoying Blu-ray wait we’ve chronicled extensively here, plus Dolby TrueHD, HDMI 1.3 and the PS3‘s lovely Xross Media Bar interface. The S760 has a headphone jack for late-night noisiness, with a multi-channel headphone mode. It claims to give you a multi-channel sound effect through your cans, but we rather doubt it’ll even approximate a full 7.1 system. Again, we’ll wait till we get one in before we pour too much approbrium on it. At least it doesn’t have a silly name.

Both the Sony BDP-S760 and Sony BDP-S560 are available to buy now.

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Sony BDP

Stop what you’re doing. Hold everything. Sony has announced a new Blu-ray player: the S360 is a consumer-friendly model that supports BD Live for extra content and picture-in-picture for things like onscreen commentary, which should reveal why most directors stay behind the camera.

As an example, forthcoming platter The Spirit is the first to link up with Lionsgate‘s BD Live effort Lionsgate Live for updated, downloadable bits and bobs from games to commentaries and trailers, as well as ephemera such as ringtones, wallpapers and widgets. A USB port means you can download content from the Web and save it to USB. Probably won’t make The Spirit any cop though.

Precision Cinema HD upscaling feature punts standard-definition signals up to 1080p (as far as you can), so that’s DVDs taken care of. The Xross Media Bar interface makes things easy to use, if difficult to pronounce.

The sticky’s still sticky on the Editor’s Choice sticker we slapped on its predecessor, the Sony S350.
Sony reckons the new S360 is 12 per cent smaller than the previous model, and consumes 15 per cent less juice while playing.

Sony claims the S630 will start up in just six seconds, so we wonder how it will fare in our Blu-ray speed test. We’ll snag one soon as for in-depth and exhaustive reviewing, probably involving watching The Dark Knight again.

HT-SS360HT-SS360

The S630 comes with a pair of surround-sound systems to round out your home cinema, all of which can be controlled via Bravia Sync from one remote control. The HT-SS360, pictured above, includes satellite speakers with 1,000W total power output.

HT-FS3HT-FS3

The 2.1-channel HT-FS3, pictured above, also tunes into FM and AM Radio if you like to kick it old school, crackles and all. We’ll have a crack at testing these systems, too. Probably involving watching The Dark Knight REALLY LOUD.

That is all on the Sony S360, because Sony doesn’t give out pricing until a product hits shelves. You may now return to your work, surfing YouTube, or whatever you were doing to block out your colleagues talking about that ghastly Britain’s Got Talent woman. Don’t worry, it’s nearly home time anyway.

Update: Sony has got in touch with us to let us know that the S630 will arrive at the beginning of July, and although pricing is yet to be finalised it’ll “most likely be around £230”.

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Sony BDP

Blu-ray went new kinds of wireless at CES earlier this year, with LG and Samsung both adding Wi-Fi to their Blu-ray players. Who better to play catch up than the creator of the format, Sony? It just announced its first standalone Blu-ray player with Wi-Fi in Las Vegas — the BDP-S560.

True, the PlayStation 3 had Wi-Fi from the day it was squeezed from Sony’s monstrous pelvis, but if it ain’t standalone, it ain’t countin’. The S560 is the successor to 2008’s S550, includes on-board decoding of the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats, and of course 802.11n Wi-Fi.

The Wi-Fi will be used for accessing BD Live Blu-ray features without the need to drag an unsightly Ethernet cable into your pristine lounge. You’ll also be able to view photos from DLNA-certified hardware, but there’s no mention whether audio and video will be accessible as well. We rather think not.

No UK price or release date has been announced, but we expect availability in the summer.

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Sony BDP

We’ve never been slow to criticise stand-alone Blu-ray players, and particularly Sony hardware. We’ve always had good reason, mind — the previous generation of players were massively overpriced and very poorly specified. But by George, we think they’ve got it: the Sony BDP-S350 costs just £160 and is fully profile 2.0 compliant.

The S350 is appreciably smaller than previous players from Sony. In fact, it’s really no larger than a DVD player. It’s also very well styled, and comes with a lovely remote that makes using it a pleasure. There’s the now ubiquitous (on Sony AV equipment) XrossMediaBar, which, despite the ugliest name in the history of technology, is brilliant to use.

24p playback and x.v.Colour should ensure that movies look as good as possible on your hi-def TV. There’s HDMI and component for HD output and even S-Video and composite for standard definition, perhaps if your plasma breaks and you have to lug the CRT down from the loft.

Being profile 2.0 ready, the S350 can make the most of interactive material and even connect to the Internet to deliver content via the BD Live system. So far, we haven’t seen much to persuade us that BD Live is worthwhile, but we are a fan of the interactivity offered by some movies.

There are two small criticisms we could level at the S350. First of which is the lack of built-in DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. We’re reluctant to criticise a budget player for this, though. What’s more, without analogue outputs — our second minor grievance — it scarcely matters anyway. The only people affected will be those with AV receivers that do have HDMI, but can’t decode DTS-HD MA.

We’ll be reviewing the S350, in full, very soon. For those interested in Blu-ray load speeds, the S350 manages to load our benchmark movie, Vantage Point, in 1 minute 9 seconds. This makes it joint second in our ranking.

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Sony BDP

Yesterday we got our hands on the Sony BDP-S500, the company’s step-up Blu-ray player. It boasts a host of cool features, not least a truly magnificent motorised front panel. The question is though, is the £600 S500 as good as the £300 PlayStation 3?

What does the PS3 offer that the BDP-S500 doesn’t? Games aside, there’s the thorny issue of Blu-ray profiles. Basically, the PS3 is a profile 2.0 player. This means it can take full advantage of interactive features as well as connect to the Internet to add additional content to the discs you’ve already bought. The S500, meanwhile, is a profile 1.0 player, which means no picture-in-picture or other interactivity, and defiantly no online access.

Of course, the BDP-S500 does have some advantages. The sound processing on this machine is far more advanced than the PS3. For a start, you get analogue 5.1 out on the S500, but you don’t on the PS3, plus the PS3 has some issues outputting DTS MA and Dolby TrueHD over HDMI, although it can convert TrueHD to PCM audio and send that over HDMI. The thing is, the PS3 is upgradeable, so it’s theoretically possible to add all sorts of functionality in the future.

With all of that said though, the BDP-S500 is a decent player, especially if you have no interest in special features or Net connectivity. It’s well designed, has a nice remote control and has plenty of video outputs, including HDMI 1.3, component video and even composite/S-video for those people desperate to watch Blu-ray on their 17-inch CRT. We also applaud Sony for including coaxial and optical digital audio outputs alongside analogue stereo and analogue 5.1 RCA sockets.

Would we recommend you buy the BDP-S500 or the PS3 for your hi-def movie pleasure? Honestly, you’d probably be better off with one of the Panasonic players, either the £300 DMP-BD30 or the DMP-BD50 (available this summer, no price yet).

It’s probably also worth pointing out that Sony is soon releasing the BDP-S350 and BDP-S550, both of which feature profile 1.1 and BD Live, with the BDP-S550 having enough built-in RAM to qualify for profile 2.0 status. -Ian Morris

Update: Read our full Sony BDP-S500 review. 

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Sony BDP

If Blu-ray is to justify the effort of winning a format war, it has to get better at persuading customers to part with their cash. The best way to do that is to show them how much they’re missing when they watch movies on DVD, and interactivity is a key part of that. Enter the Sony BDP-S350 and BDP-S550, players with profile 2.0 support, and the interactivity of BD Live.

Until this year, if you wanted a profile 2.0 player, with Internet access and BD Live capability, your choice was limited to the PlayStation 3. Now, Panasonic is bringing the DMP-BD50 to the UK and the Sony DBP-S350 and S550 are going to be hitting shops in the US soon, so it’s at least looking like online content and interactivity are on the way.

Both Sony players will support Bonus View, which is the Blu-ray way of saying picture-in-picture, and both have Ethernet sockets, meaning your player can access extras and download content over the Internet.

Of course, both will output 1080p and can handle 24p playback, which is rapidly becoming standard on both hi-def players and new TVs, and you’ll get HDMI 1.3 output, with support for x.v.Colour, which will be of interest to, er, colour lovers everywhere.

The BDP-S350 has fractionally less comprehensive audio codec support than its big brother the S550, but there isn’t much in it. Both support Dolby TrueHD and DTS and the S550 adds DTS-HD HR 96/24 and MA. The S550 also adds analogue audio outputs, which we’re thrilled by, because it means older AV receivers can take advantage of higher quality sound.

As good as these players could be, they’re still going to have a really hard time competing with the PS3, which is same price as the BDP-S350’s rumoured cost. The casual Blu-ray viewer almost certainly won’t be interested in the slightly improved audio support on the stand-alone players, and will instead opt for the PS3, which also offers HD gaming and media streaming.

If Sony wants to sell stand-alone players, it’s going to have to come up with a good reason for people to choose them. Lowering the price and adding DivX support would probably be a good start. There are no dates for the arrival of these players in the UK, but as soon as we can get some pricing and availability info we will be sure to let you know. –Ian Morris

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Sony BDP

The Blu-ray camp has long been claiming victory over HD DVD in the next-generation disc format war. Sony has been particularly noisy about how it has trounced the other format. The problem is, Sony hasn’t launched a Blu-ray player for us Europeans — with the exception of the PS3, and we’ve only just got that. Until now, that is: Sony has finally agreed to let us join the high-definition disc revolution by launching the BDP-S1E — a Blu-ray disc player for us to enjoy.

The BDP-S1E is well matched to the also newly announced Sony Bravia D3000 range. It supports the 24p True Cinema mode that allows films to be watched as they were intended by the director. Basically, until now we’ve all been suffering with movies that play back ‘faster’ than they do in the cinema. When a film is shown on TV or sold on DVD it has to be adjusted to be compatible with the PAL format. This means a speed up of 4 per cent — the difference is that films are shot at a rate of 24 frames per second, where TV uses 25 frames per second.

This should excite purists who have long bemoaned that pesky 4 per cent. We think this is a pretty smart move by Sony, as most of those prepared to pay a premium for hi-def discs are likely to want to see as faithful a representation of the director’s vision as possible.

It goes without saying that the BDP-S1E also supports 1080p video, for the best quality picture. There’s also support for Sony’s ultra-wide colour gamut, which they call ‘x.v.Colour’ and should provide stunningly colourful pictures on compatible HDMI 1.3 televisions.

Sony also claims the BDP-S1E has “stunning looks”. We’ll hold back on agreeing with that — it has certainly got an awful lot of blue on it, if that’s your bag.

Sony says the BDP-S1E will be on the market this summer, and told us it would cost around €1300 — about £900. The question is, will the new cut-price (and less blue) player it announced recently be available in Europe too?

Update: A full review of the BDP-S1E is now available. -IM

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Sony BDP

As we perch on the edge of our seats waiting for the Blu-ray vs HD DVD scuffle to end, we have plenty of time to predict which format will be triumphant. The latest salvo is Sony’s announcement of a seriously cut-price Blu-ray player, the BDP-S300.

It’s a step up from the enormous BDP-S1 — it’s cheaper, smaller and amazingly will now play audio CDs (an amazing technological leap forward). The BDP-S300 also features built-in decoding of Dolby Digital Plus and support for Sony’s wide colour gamut, which should produce better high-definition pictures. The player will also control other Sony kit via the HDMI port.

Amusingly, the S300 will have a retail price of $1 more than the 60GB PlayStation 3, with the former being priced at $600 (£310; the PS3 will be £425 when it is released in the UK on 23 March). So, we are forced to wonder, who will be prepared to buy a stand-alone player when they could have an entire games console for the same price?

Sony is currently only committing to a US launch for the player, but as the gargantuan BDP-S1 is only available in the US, that’s not exactly a huge surprise. Come on Sony, stop ignoring the rest of the world, we need our hi-def fix too.

So is this a sign that the largest single advantage HD DVD has — price — is about come to an end? HD DVD has already seen its disc sales lead eroded this year, so a price cut bringing Blu-ray hardware closer to HD DVD players is surely going to be bad news. Especially when Blu-ray has slightly more studio support — and James Bond on his way. With CeBIT fast approaching, we’ll have plenty of questions to ask both the Blu-ray and HD DVD people. -IM

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