Sony's First BD-Live players

[chlngr1970]

Sony is FINALLY making a Profile 2.0 player, to be released this summer. The BDP-S350 won't ship with the capability, but will have a firmware update to enable it later on down the road. The BDP-S550 will ship with it live, this fall.

Originally Posted by AP

The BDP-S350 player Sony plans to introduce this summer for "about $400" will be the company’s first to feature an Ethernet port, allowing it to connect to a home broadband connection. However, it won’t be able to access Internet content when it ships — a software upgrade will be available later to enable that feature, known as BD-Live.

A second player, the BDP-S550, will be available this fall for "about $500" and will be BD-Live-capable when it ships.

j

[Ruined]

Now all we need is a 2.0 player with Reon and all decoders under $1k

[chlngr1970]

With no competition, do you think that will ever happen? It's taken them this long just to come out with a 2.0 player.

I think I'm just going to get the scaler, and wait...

j

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by chlngr1970

With no competition, do you think that will ever happen? It's taken them this long just to come out with a 2.0 player.

I think I'm just going to get the scaler, and wait...

j

If a major Japanese CE company doesn't do it, Oppo or Toshiba will. Might not be this year, but it will come.

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by chlngr1970

With no competition, do you think that will ever happen?

I don't buy this argument. DVD had no real competition (I don't think you can say that VHS or LD were competitors for DVD), and companies were able to innovate and lower prices for that format at the same time.

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Taxi

I don't buy this argument. DVD had no real competition (I don't think you can say that VHS or LD were competitors for DVD), and companies were able to innovate and lower prices for that format at the same time.

I think prices will fall and quality will improve as CE's compete to deliver the best bd player for the buck.

[dugpa]

I might go for the BDP-S550. I've been pretty happy with my BDP-S1. The weakest issue is the upconversion of SD DVD is crap. Hopefully the s550 will improve on that. Still, the 2.0 Panasonic is tempting. Guess I'll wait and see which one gets the better reviews.

[chlngr1970]

I've heard that the S1 was good at up converting As I understood it, the only real down side to the S1 was the lack of CD support, and speed.

I guess we shall see what the market bears out, and how quickly quality goes up as price goes down...

j

[dugpa]

Originally Posted by chlngr1970

I've heard that the S1 was good at up converting

Don't know where you've heard that. Certainly not from me, as I've griped about the S1's upconversion many times here. The S1 has horrible upconversion, especially compared to my Toshiba A1. It's like night and day.

[Ruined]

The Panasonic BD30's upconversion is crap, too, compared to the Toshiba HD DVD players. I heard the BD10 actually had a decent upconversion chip, and they scrapped it for a cheaper and crappier in-house Panasonic chip. Lets hope they tweaked the chip's capabilities on the BD50.