Sony BDP-s580: A Review

For Jeremy.

So the PS3 died. I figured I would get another sony blu-ray player since they use the XMB menu which the PS3 has so I wouldn't have to learn anything new. The player is cool and it has newer hdmi functionality than the PS3 so my tv remote can control the player via hdmi commands even going through my receiver! Like wise, when I turn the player on it changes my tv input to hdmi. Nice. Also, my PS3 had been very loud for more than a year or so and this thing is dead quiet which is nice. The media player functionality is great. I t plays everything I have thrown at it. mkvs are no problem so no more converting to mpg for the PS3 which is a time saver. Also, sometimes the conversion wouldn't work and the audio would get out of sync and DTS audio would have to be reencoded. I am playing mkvs directly now and I swear the picture quality looks better. Maybe this is due to the lack of the reencode (supposed to be lossless)? Maybe because of a better video engine in the new player? Better hdmi connectivity? Who knows? Anyway the thing works great and I highly recommend it. It has all the hulu and netflix apps built in likes everything else does these days. Wifi and ethernet built in. 2x usb ports. Everything is great about it.