Photos: Hands on with Sony's new gear

Blu-ray was much in evidence at the Rhodes event, and we were treated to an impressive demo of the BDP-S1E model for the UK that used the highest quality projector, screen and audio system that Sony could get its hands on. The big chase sequence at the start of Casino Royale looked better than when we went to see the film at the Odeon in Leicester Square, London, but we do have a couple of reservations about the player.

Firstly, there's no BD Live support, which means you can't connect to the Internet and access new content such as up-to-date film trailers, biographies and so on. This isn't Sony's fault, as the standard hasn't been agreed yet, so none of the current Blu-ray players support this. But what is bad is that even once the standard is agreed, you won't be able to upgrade this player to support BD Live, as there's no network port. Not good for something that's going to cost about £900.

Our other issue is that Sony won't confirm which version of HDMI the player uses -- other than to say that it's 'not 1.3'. When Sony's own cheaper, Blu-ray playing PlayStation 3 does support HDMI 1.3, that's not a positive thing.

One of the reasons the S1E is so expensive is its bomb-proof construction. The case is unusually sturdy for a disc-based machine, as you can see from this picture. It's all designed to eliminate vibration, keeping the picture as good as possible. Oh, and ours can playback CDs, unlike the US version.