BDP-S360

Blu-ray had a troubled gestation, with the format war against HD DVD slowing its development, PC-like problems with partially-finished profiles on early models, and buyers understandably reluctant to fork out on a player while the format’s interactive standards were still evolving. Those days should now be past, with HD DVD consigned to history, BD Profile 1 and Profile 1.1 receding memories, and the bliss of Profile 2.0 users disturbed only by the gnashing of teeth and regretful wailing of early adopters.

Yet while it’s now very difficult to find a Blu-ray player which is actively ‘bad’ – the requirements of BD and HD are such that anything that meets spec is pretty much guaranteed to give you acceptable picture and sound performance – there are still plenty of areas where players can differ, including file format support, disc loading times, styling and build, general usability and AVR compatibility. let’s see how they compare...

First published in Home Cinema Choice 175

You can also download the pdf here