Blu-ray Players

After seeing the debut of the new Sony Blu-ray player lineup at CES this year, I was excited to get a chance to try one out. Taking its place at the top of the non-ES single-disc Blu-ray player lineup, the BDP-S570, boasts WiFi, Netflix, Pandora, and can even be controlled with an iPhone app!

Cambridge Audio is a long-time bearer of high standards in British-made audio and now video products. They have been turning out quality components since 1968. While they are best known for fine yet value-conscious audio offerings, they have recently introduced a new receiver, the Azur 650R and the subject of this review, the Azur 650BD Universal Blu-ray Player.

The Sony ES line has always represented the very best of what Sony has to offer.  The ES stands for Sony's Elevated Standard and the BDP-S5000ES is Sony's premier Blu-ray/DVD player, offering a host of features targeted at the audiophile and videophile who is looking for the very best.

The NAD T587 represents NAD's first foray into the Blu-ray arena. NAD started big by building the T587 to the Blu-ray Profile 2.0 spec. The T587 can also handle CD and DVD discs among other formats such as DiVX. It is not a universal player and will not spin DVD Audio or SACD discs. Its circuitry is based on the Broadcom decoder. A nice touch is that the player comes with auxiliary feet that closely resemble Vibrapods.  This player is reviewed as one of the Imagine Affordable System components.

There has been a lot of anticipation for OPPO Digital's brand new BDP-83 Blu-ray player. This is in part because OPPO has had an excellent track record for producing top notch affordable DVD players, such as the DV-983H (one of the only players in Secrets's history to score a perfect 100 on Secret's rigorous DVD Benchmark) and in part because the BDP-83 is the first Blu-ray player to hit the market offering the features to make it a truly all-in-one solution media solution for high definition playback. These include the ability to handle SACDs as a bitstream or PCM, and the ability to play DVD-Audio discs. The BDP-83 also decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio internally, giving you the option of using the 7.1 analog pre-outs on the rear panel if you have an older receiver, or use the HDMI output to deliver these high resolution movie soundtracks to your receiver in digital form.

Many people have been waiting for Blu-ray players to hit the magic price point of $200, where people think mass adoption will start to take place and it will slowly overtake DVD as the dominant home video format. However, there's also another range of players that are starting to come out now, those of reference quality designs with virtually no expense spared. The BDP-09FD from Pioneer is their entry into that arena.

(Check out the video tour of the player's features at the bottom of Page 2.)

The Denon DVD-1800BD is Denon's newest and least expensive Blu-ray player. For the $599 MSRP you get a Bonus View (profile 1.1) compliant player with HDMI 1.3a and component video outputs, bit-streaming (not decoding) of all the latest lossless surround formats, a front panel SD card memory slot for the playback of MP3 and JPG files, and full Divx and Windows Mediaâ„¢ Audio playback support.