Blu-ray Players Reviews

While there are many good places to find reviews of high-definition Blu-ray players, CNet.com is the most up-to-date and comprehensive. The site's reports don't have as much detail as can be found in video enthusiast magazines or websites, but because CNet tests more players than others, the site has good scope. Ultimate AV, Sound & Vision and Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity provide richly detailed and appropriately critical reporting. While recommendations are made, these publications do not do as good a job as CNet.com in comparing Blu-ray players to their competitors. Consumer Reports' most recent coverage is now too dated to be of much value.

Blu-ray players need to be hooked up to a compatible HDTV. If you don’t own or plan to buy an HDTV, see our report on standard-definition DVD players.

Up until mid-February, Blu-ray had been in a fierce competition with a rival format -- HD DVD -- to be the medium of choice for high definition discs. Both formats had advantages and disadvantages, and both were completely incompatible. That format war is now over, leaving Blu-ray as the sole HD disc format.

Ironically, it is studio exclusivity that delivered the death knell to HD DVD, bringing a merciful end to a format war that pundits like The New York Times' David Pogue have called "stupid and unnecessary." In early January, Warner -- a heretofore neutral studio that issued high-definition discs in both formats -- announced it was abandoning support of HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray beginning in June. That decision meant that about 70 percent of the movie market would soon be exclusive to Blu-ray.

The Warner defection led many -- but not all -- experts to conclude that HD DVD was living on borrowed time. Still, few expected the end to come as quickly as it did.

The first domino fell in mid February, when online rental giant Netflix announced that it was phasing out HD DVD. Just days later retailers Best Buy and Wal-Mart piled on. Best Buy formally announced that it would solely recommend Blu-ray as the high definition disc format of choice. Wal-Mart went one better, saying that it would soon not even stock HD DVD players or discs.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Toshiba formally threw in the towel on HD DVD, saying simply "as a result of recent market developments, the company has decided to discontinue sales and marketing of HD DVD players." The last two HD DVD exclusive studios -- Universal and Paramount -- have announced that they will begin releasing movies in the Blu-ray format, and Microsoft has discontinued the HD DVD add-on player for the Xbox 360 system.

Besides the end of the format war, there's other good news for potential buyers. Reviews tell us that many current Blu-ray players are more stable and work better than their predecessors. Picture quality is impeccable with Blu-ray discs, and Blu-ray players can also play standard DVD discs, and do a good-to-great job upscaling those DVDs to close to HD quality. Prices for Blu-ray players are still relatively high, but they have significantly declined over the past year and promise to fall lower still.

So is it time to buy? Some experts continue to take a conservative stance, noting that not all current Blu-ray players are able to access certain features of current and future Blu-ray discs -- though they should be able to play the movies just fine. For more information, see the discussion of Blu-ray profiles in the Full Story. Still, with the fear of getting stuck with an obsolete player largely gone with the end of the format war, it might be time for early adopters to jump off the fence.  ... Continued

Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
All The Reviews Reviewed chart.

Among Blu-ray players, the consensus is clear -- the Sony PlayStation 3 is far and away the best current choice. It is relatively inexpensive, especially if you are interested in its other attributes. It is also one of the few Profile 1.1 (Bonus View) players currently available, and Sony has said that a firmware upgrade to transform it into a Profile 2.0 (BD-Live) player will be coming soon. If the thought of adding a game console to your home video system leaves you cold, the Panasonic DMP-BD30 is a very capable Bonus View standalone player, but it lacks built-in decoders for the latest high-resolution audio formats. The Sharp BD-HP20U is only Profile 1.0, and is not without some issues, but is a solid budget choice.

The HD DVD format is dead for all intents and purposes, and most makers are removing products from store shelves. One exception is LG, which has said that it intends to continue to produce dual-format players. However, the LG Super Blu BH200 is expensive and has plenty of kinks to iron out.