Sony announces the release of their new S350 and S550 Blu-ray players

It’s been a long time since their originaly announcement back in February of this year, but Sony has finally launched their new Blu-ray players, the BDP-S350 and BDP-S550.

The S350 manages to pack in BonusView, Precision Drive HD and is BD-Live Ready as of October, via a firmware upgrade. The Precision Cinema HD upscaling technology is also included, which upscales standard-def footage to 1080p.

Great picture and sound quality with Sony’s new Blu-ray Players

The new BDP-S350 and S550 offer amazing home cinema experience for Blu-ray movies, DVDs and music

Sony BDP-S350

The latest next-generation BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 Blu-ray Disc™ players from Sony provide movie fans with the ultimate full HD home cinema experience and incorporate an amazing range of innovative new features.

“We called upon our expertise in Hollywood movie production and digital technology to build a machine that movie fans would truly love,” said David Walstra, Director, Home Video Marketing of Sony Europe. “An advanced Blu-ray Disc™ player like the BDP-S350 or BDP-S550 is a must for every HDTV owner because it delivers the best possible 1080p high-definition video and incredible sound quality, while unlocking next-generation features that you just won’t get from DVD, downloads or video-on-demand.”

BDP-S350: the complete Blu-ray High Definition Experience – with effortless upgrade to full BD Live

The BDP-S350 includes several exciting new Blu-ray features in a slim product design, such as 24p True Cinema, BonusView, Sony’s Precision Cinema HD Upscale, Precision Drive HD and BD-Live Ready. Just connect the player to the internet and download the latest firmware, which will be available by October 2008, to access all the qualities of BD live.

The BD-Live and BD-Java firmware enables you to access a range of exciting online services, which allows rich interactive home entertainment experience. Simply connect the player via an Ethernet cable to the internet to join on-line blogs whilst watching the movie, enter online competitions, draws and online games. You can also access special added value content which is not loaded onto the disc but can be downloaded onto an optional USB flash storage device from a special website dedicated to the movie, such as exclusive movie trailers, latest artist or producer interviews.

The BonusView functionality allows you to view a secondary video stream simultaneously from the same BD disc . This amazing technology means that you can view Picture-in-Picture Blu-ray content at the same time as the the main movie, providing an out of this world home-cinema experience.

Since many consumers own extensive DVD movie libraries, the BDP-S350 incorporates Sony’s new Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology that converts standard-definition signals (480i) to 1080p and outputs a full HD equivalent resolution signal to 1080p TVs via HDMI.

Additionally, the model also adds Sony’s new Precision Drive HD, which helps to detect and correct wobbling discs from three directions, stabilizing playback of Blu-ray Discs™ and DVDs.

It has a quick start up mode, allowing you to switch the player on and begin enjoying your favourite movies in approximately six seconds, performance which is unrivalled amongst other products available today.

Sony BDP-S550

BDP-S550: The ultimate Blu-ray experience

The BDP-S550 offers all the same great capabilities as the BDP-S350, but has BD-Live and BD-Java firmware already built in and includes a 1GB of exchangeable USB storage to save downloaded BD-Live content from the internet.

Also unique to the BDP-S550 is support for DTS-HD Master Audio Decoder and 7.1Ch analogue audio output which means that it can be connected directly to a legacy home-theatre receiver without HDMI for the ultimate movie and surround-sound experience.

Both models use Sony’s award winning XrossMediaBar, an easy to understand control menu that makes it simple for everybody to use all of the players’ functions. BRAVIA Sync technology makes connecting the players to BRAVIA televisions and Home Theatre systems a piece of cake.

The players provide an unforgettable home-cinema experience with Dolby® TrueHD and Dolby® Digital Plus decoding and bit-stream output, as well as DTS®-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio bit-stream output.

The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 support AVCHD discs with x.v.Color™ (xvYCC) technology, an international standard for wide color space reproduction. The standard expands the current data range of video by approximately 180 per cent, allowing the players to output more natural and vivid colors similar to what the human eye actually sees in the natural world. The players also feature compatibility with an array of video formats, including BD-R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on DVD/CD recordable media.

BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 key features

BDP-S350

BDP-S550

1080p High Definition Picture

Yes

Yes

24p True Cinema

Yes

Yes

DVD Upscale

Yes (Precision Cinema HD Upscale)

Yes (Precision Cinema HD Upscale)

x.v.Colour

Yes

Yes

PhotoTV HD

Yes

Yes

Video D/A Converter

12bit /148.5MHz

12bit /148.5MHz

Analogue Video Output

Component/ S-Video/ Composite

Component/ S-Video/ Composite

Dolby TrueHD Bitstream Output

Yes

Yes

DTS-HD Master Audio Bitstream Output

Yes

Yes

Dolby TrueHD Decoding

Yes

Yes

DTS-HD Master Audio Decoding

No

Yes

Audio D/A Converter

192kHz/24bit

192kHz/24bit

Analogue Audio Output

2-channel

7.1-channel

BD-Live (Profile 2.0)

Yes (ready)

Yes

Local Storage port for BD-Live

Yes, USB2.0

(USB Flash Memory, not included)

Yes, USB 2.0

(USB Flash Memory, 1GB Memory included)

BonusView (Profile 1.1)

Yes

Yes

HDMI CEC (HDMI v 1.3)

Yes (BRAVIA Sync)

Yes (BRAVIA Sync)

Ethernet port

Yes

Yes

Network Firmware Update

Yes

Yes

AVCHD

Yes

Yes

JPEG

Yes

Yes

Disc Drive

Precision Drive HD

Precision Drive HD

GUI

Yes (XrossMediaBar)

Yes (XrossMediaBar)

GUI Language

GB/ FR/ DE/ NL/ IT/ ES/ PT/ DK/ SE/ NO/ FI

GB/ FR/ DE/ NL/ IT/ ES/ PT/ DK/ SE/ NO/ FI

Back-lit Remote Commander

No

Yes (Blue LED)

Start-up Time

approx. 6 sec.*

approx. 6 sec.*

Dimension (W x H x D mm)

430 × 60 × 220

430 × 70 × 220

Weight

2.9 kg

3.3 kg