A Review of the Standalone Blu-Ray Player Sony BDP-S350; A Player that Also Upscales DVDs

Thanks to lower prices and signal availability in the past few years we have seen the popularity of high definition televisions soar. Now that is seems like everyone has a big screen HDTV in their living room the market for high definition digital media has really taken off. The competition started out as two distinct platforms arrived on the scene; Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Blu-ray eventually won the format war and since then there has been a rush on the stand alone players. On Black Friday, America's largest shopping day, there will undoubtedly be several deeply discounted Blu-Ray players making their way onto sales circulars. The standalone Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray disk player is just one example and as it slated to appear in K-Mart's Black Friday sales paper for less than $200. I my self have had the opportunity to use one of these players and I'm going to let you know just how well it performs.

Picture Quality: 5/5

Features / Ports: 4/5

Value: 5/5

Overview: 5/5

Product Overview:

The Sony BDP-S350 is a small relatively low profile Blu-ray player that will look great in anyone's AV cabinet. The disk inserts into the center and all of the controls are on the right hand side, with Sony's logo on the left. All of the ports are located on the rear of the player.

This Blu-ray player is capable of up scaling DVD media, and does an excellent job. The high definition video delivered from the Sony BDP-S350 is 1080p and looks excellent on my 1080p plasma. It is delivered via HDMI which is currently the gold standard as far as digital High Definition media transfer goes. There is only 1 HDMI output but there is a component output which also supports high definition video and an s-video output. To update the firmware, which is the software that runs the player can be done via the included Ethernet port. This is an excellent feature especially if you have any technical issues with the player. There is also a recessed USB port in the back which can be used for BD-Live. This is the only design flaw as the recessed port fails to allow adequate room for most flash drives and is difficult to access.

If you're picky about your picture then you'll be happy to know that the vast video and audio settings are easily accessible through the player's menus. You don't even have to stop the disk to adjust the picture allowing for on the fly adjustability. The menu is easy to navigate and is quite similar to the Playstation 3 menu.

Product Value:

For a long time the best value when it came to Blu-ray players was the Playstation 3. Now that we're starting to see some price reductions in the stand alone units their sales are starting to pick up drastically. With the K-Mart Black Friday price coming in less that $200 this is a remarkable deal. It is normally priced at about $300 and is pretty competitive at that level. The Sony BDP-S350 is certainly worth fighting the crowds on the day after Thanksgiving!