Sony BDP-S350: Sony strikes Blu gold

We've never been slow to criticise stand-alone Blu-ray players, and particularly Sony hardware. We've always had good reason, mind -- the previous generation of players were massively overpriced and very poorly specified. But by George, we think they've got it: the Sony BDP-S350 costs just £160 and is fully profile 2.0 compliant.

The S350 is appreciably smaller than previous players from Sony. In fact, it's really no larger than a DVD player. It's also very well styled, and comes with a lovely remote that makes using it a pleasure. There's the now ubiquitous (on Sony AV equipment) XrossMediaBar, which, despite the ugliest name in the history of technology, is brilliant to use.

24p playback and x.v.Colour should ensure that movies look as good as possible on your hi-def TV. There's HDMI and component for HD output and even S-Video and composite for standard definition, perhaps if your plasma breaks and you have to lug the CRT down from the loft.

Being profile 2.0 ready, the S350 can make the most of interactive material and even connect to the Internet to deliver content via the BD Live system. So far, we haven't seen much to persuade us that BD Live is worthwhile, but we are a fan of the interactivity offered by some movies.

There are two small criticisms we could level at the S350. First of which is the lack of built-in DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. We're reluctant to criticise a budget player for this, though. What's more, without analogue outputs -- our second minor grievance -- it scarcely matters anyway. The only people affected will be those with AV receivers that do have HDMI, but can't decode DTS-HD MA.

We'll be reviewing the S350, in full, very soon. For those interested in Blu-ray load speeds, the S350 manages to load our benchmark movie, Vantage Point, in 1 minute 9 seconds. This makes it joint second in our ranking.