Sony BDP-BX1 reviews – a fully featured Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player

Monday, February 2, 2009, 5:01
Gadgets
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sony_bdpbx1 Blu-ray players have improved a lot since their introduction in 2006. They are getting smaller, cheaper, and more advanced. The best example of amalgamation of these features is the new BDP-BX1 from Sony. The BX1 is a special model of their BDP-S350 series. The player includes an HDMI cable in the box and is a very capable, fully featured Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player. All this is available at a decent price of $240. The player is only 17″ wide by 8.5″ deep by 2.5″ tall. It houses two buttons on its top that control power and disc eject. Three small buttons for play, pause, and stop are housed on it’s the right hand side. A dedicated LED is provided to indicate the enabling of 24p playback.

The BX1 features the “Xross Media Bar” or XMB menu system. This menu is easy to use and offers the user to access the configuration options of the player, audio files, and video files. The best part about the XMB menu system is that it is easy to understand and navigate. The player takes a mere 37 seconds to load a Blu-ray disc. This is the fastest load time from any standalone Blu-ray player till date. This means that the user will not have to go through the agony of wait for the Blu-ray disc to load into the device.

The BX1, in addition to commercially printed Blu-ray movies, can also play correctly authored BD-R and BD-RE writable discs. The user can also play DVDs, as well as recordable DVDs on the player. As far as image clarity is concerned, the BX1 is in the highest league. It is capable of bringing out all the detail inherent in Blu-ray movies and then transmitting them to the television or the projector. It also improves the quality of the images from the standard definition DVDs. As far as connections are concerned, it houses the requisite HDMI and component video outputs as well as an Ethernet port. A dedicated remote with a blue glow backlight sums up the package.

The Sony BDP-BX1 is a winner on the fronts of design, load time speed, performance, and output. It is convenient to operate and offers an excellent Blu-ray movies experience.