Dipping Into The World Of Blu-ray

The other day I was able to do an in-home test of this fancy new Blu-ray video system while at the apartment of a friend who just recently upgraded.  A few months ago, he bought himself a shiny new 46" Sony XBR HDTV and finally decided that his DVD collection and player weren't doing justice to his TV.  To that end he went out and got himself the Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray player.  Of course, when he invited me over to watch a movie on his new player, I had to ask if he would let me mess around with the player and see what it could really do.  As always, I must confess that I am not an engineer of any sort, and I have no official technical qualifications.  What I do have is a love for electronics and enough (if somewhat cursory) understanding to have an idea of what is going on.  As such, my review is not an in-depth technical investigation into this player, but a typical, and hopefully helpful, home-user experience.

The first thing that you notice about this player, as with many other Sony products, is that it is really a beautiful device on the outside.  Overall, the player is fairly small.  Anyone with a Sony DVD player may have also noticed the Sony players of that style also tend to be shallower than some of the other players out there.  The S550 is no exception in that its depth measures approximately 9" and is significantly smaller than any other device in my friend's media cabinet.  While this might not seem to be of much consequence, there are at least two things that this can affect: stacking and air circulation.  Because it would be unable to support anything that extends beyond its own depth, this player must be on the top of a stack of devices.  While many media cabinets now have separate sections for different devices rather than one large recess in which to stack anything, anyone using the stacking cabinet must be aware of the necessity of the player's location - especially if you have any other small components that may also require the top bunk.    The advantage to this small design comes in air circulation.  This again, only really affects component stackers.  If, like me, you do stack, and if, like me, you have an older receiver with tubes inside (which tend to get very hot), it is nice to have something small to put on top.  In that way, you can utilize the space above without blocking the upward facing exhaust ports and risking overheating.  As I already mentioned, the player looks really great head on and the surface shine is just right - it doesn't look like a cheap plastic coating and after a few days of use, it has yet to accumulate any unsightly finger prints.  The LCD is located right of center and is clearly visible even in a dark room.  You might not be able to read from more than a few feet away because it is fairly small, but everything you might want to read can be displayed on screen anyway.  The only external issue I have with the player is the location of some of the buttons.  The only button I commonly use on any player is the open/close button for the disc drawer.  This particular button, as well as the power button, is located on the top angled part of the player.  While this fine if you have nothing immediately above the player, I can see this being inconvenient if your cabinet is a little cramped.

The remote for the S550 is fairly standard.  All of the important buttons are grouped around a central directional pad.  The volume and channel buttons are separate from the pad and are located near the bottom of the remote.  While the buttons aren't drastically differentiated, the important buttons do have some differences in their feel and I was easily able to find the right ones even with the lights off.

One of the nice features that this player has is an ability to connect to the internet.  Ostensibly that feature is to be used with the online features which are included with certain Blu-ray discs.  I can't imagine that anyone would be that interested in the features any more than once but I assume the net connection is also present so that updates can be easily accomplished if need be.  One of the strange parts of this connection is that it requires the insertion of a USB flash drive into the rear of the player.  I'm not sure exactly why the flash drive is necessary, but it does have something to do with the fact that this player has little or no internal memory and perhaps accessing the online content requires the download of at least some small amount of data.  Also, oddly, the drive is placed in the rear of the player and is very recessed.  While I'm not sure why you would ever need to, but if you did want to use another flash drive other than the one included, the insertion-port shape would probably preclude a fair number of the drives out there.  Of course, the included drive fits easily and, again, I'm not sure why you would ever need to use another one.

Setup of the player is very easy.  I won't go into all the included outputs because anyone can read the specs online, but sufficed to say that there is an HDMI output which will allow for 1080p data to your 1080p HDTV.  Audio can be processed within the player or through your external receiver and audio outputs are made available to do both.  Other than plugging in the power and the audio/video cables, there isn't much to do in the way of setup.  All of the factory presets are more than adequate and we didn't feel the need to change anything to improve the picture.

The next, and perhaps most important, feature is the actual playback quality.  While I was only looking at the one TV and had nothing with which to do a side-by-side comparison, I was blown away by the picture quality.  If you have seen Blu-ray before in a Bestbuy/Circuit City setup, you know that the picture quality is unreal.  It is as if you can reach out and touch the objects in the image - it is almost beyond real.  In truth, this is actually what concerns me about Blu-ray; the images are too real.  Every imperfection is obvious and all the actors look like they forgot to go to makeup before filming.  I'm not sure if that is supposed to be an improvement over current DVD or if that will become more accounted for as Blu-ray becomes more pervasive, but it is something to think about when considering the switch to Blu-ray.  Regardless of what you are seeing and what you do or don't want to see, the picture quality is unbelievable.  It is so far beyond typical DVD quality that it is almost upsetting to have to go back to a 480 DVD.

The only other beef that I have with Blu-ray is the startup time for discs.  While with a regular DVD, you are up and going a few seconds after you put a DVD in the drive, it can take almost two minutes to get some Blu-ray disc going with the shortest time in my test of a little under one minute.  I'm not sure what it is that requires so much time to start these discs and I suppose this isn't ultimately a real problem, since this time can be used for popcorn popping or other snack preparation, but I do hope it's something that newer players can reduce or eliminate in the future.

Overall this is a fantastic player with a decent price of about $350.  Considering that it is not the entry model and we are still early on in the game, this player is a chance to get a quality product from the original maker without breaking the bank.  While there are pros and cons to moving forward in the digital media world, with this player at this price, it is hard to make a mistake.