Sony BDP-S500 Blu-ray player reviewed by Lisa Lautenberg

June 30, 2008

Design:

Like most set-top boxes these days this player manages to look high tech without looking tacky. The center of the unit features both the Blu-ray and the HD DVD logo. This player also features the same illuminated touch-sensitive buttons. Ee have no complaints with this player's menu--its high-definition menus are among the nicer ones we've seen.

Remote Control:

The included clicker is fairly standard. There's a centrally located directional pad with playback controls located nearby. Our biggest complaint concerns the lack of button differentiation--especially with the playback controls--which makes it a bit hard to use by feel. Better universal remote is recommended.

Features:

This player can play standard- definition DVDs and CDs as well as Blu-ray. This player was released before the deadline and it only conforms to the older Profile 1.0. This player won't be able to play some picture-in-picture commentary tracks on newer discs. This won't be a deal breaker for everyone since many people barely have enough time to watch a full movie. It has onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus. It lacks bit-stream audio support for high resolution formats which means you can't send encoded Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks to new receivers with decoding capabilities. This player's connectivity package is solid. The main connection is the HDMI output which is capable of outputting 1080p video at 24 frames per second. High-definition video can also be output over the component video outputs (limited to 1080i).

Performance:

We put this player up against several other players we had on hand. We spent several hours watching footage on these players and the verdict was clear: all the players we looked at offered extremely similar image quality. Despite there being tons of very detailed scenes we found the players to be nearly equally sharp. Every time we thought we noticed a difference we'd watch it on the other player and noticed that it was there too. We decided to move on to the Mission: Impossible III disc and found more of the same. This player and indeed none of the Blu-ray players we've tested so far cannot output 1080p at 24 frames per second (1080p/24).

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