bdp-s500

New Sony Blu-ray players: Better than PS3?

Sony has announced two new Blu-ray players scheduled to be released in the second half of the year: the entry-level BDP-S350 and the step-up BDP-S550. We haven't been the biggest fans of Sony's recent standalone Blu-ray players (the BDP-S300 was really slow and the same price as the PlayStation 3). Fresh off its victory over HD DVD, however, the company has announced two new Blu-ray players for 2008, both of which sport considerably more attractive feature sets and prices. Here are the details:

Key features of the Sony BDP-S350:

Supports BonusView, which means it is Profile 1.1 … Read more

New Sony Blu-ray players, but still expensive

Editors' note: Neither the BDP-S2000ES nor the BDP-S500 offer DTS-HD Master Audio compatibility, either via bitstream or onboard decoding. We originally speculated that it should be able to output DTS-HD Master Audio using its bitstream output, but have received confirmation from Sony that neither player can.

Over the summer, Sony introduced the cheapest standalone Blu-ray player yet, the BDP-S300; now it's filling out its product line with two higher-end models: the BDP-S500 ($700) and the BDP-S2000ES ($1,300), both coming this fall. According to the company press release, the two models are largely the same, sharing the following features:… Read more