New Blu-ray players from Sony, BDP-S350 and BDP-S550
Sony unveils new Blu-ray players at the Sony Electronics 2008 Open House at the Paris Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas today. The first full-spec, Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players from Sony including the BDP-S350 and S550 support picture and picture and BD-Live.
Fresh from defeating rival Toshiba in the battle for high-def discs, Sony unveiled its new Blu-ray players knowing these are the likely future of high definition movies. Both new players will perform 1080P/60 and 24 with ease and support a feature that Sony is calling "Bonus View". Bonus View is just Sony’s new name for the picture-in-picture feature we’ve been expecting from Profile 1.0. Both players have an Ethernet port to support BD Live, the ability to download interactive features for certain upcoming Blu-ray movie discs.
Tired of Blu-ray players with only one or even two HDMI outputs? Both the BDP-S350 and S550 have three HDMI ports. They also have a USB port suitable for connecting portable USB storage device.
The BDP-S550 will include a 1GB storage device.
Both units can bitstream the new lossless audio formats including: 7.1 Dolby TrueHD, Dobly Digital Plus, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and DTS-HD Master Audio.
If your receiver lacks HDMI 1.3 don’t worry the BDP-S550’s got your back!
The BDP-S550 can internally decode all the new high resolution audio formats named above and can output them through its 7.1 analog connections.
Both players will support x.v.Color - yes that’s True Color, impressive! They’ll both be able to read BD-R/RE DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW, and JPEG on DVD//CD recordable media.
The BDP-S350 is expected to launch this summer at $400 and the BDP-S550 will land the following fall at $500.
