Sony Shows Off New Blu-ray Players

Fresh off vanquishing HD DVD, Sony is showing off its BDP-S350 and S550 Blu-ray players, featuring picture-in-picture and BD-Live support.

Although Sony surely had these players ready to roll before Toshiba threw in the towel on its HD DVD high-definition disc format last week, the Japanese electronics maker is showing off its BDP-S350 and S550 Blu-ray players at its Open House today at Las Vegas’ Paris Hotel and Casino. The new players feature 1080/60p and 24p output, support picture-in-picture (what Sony’s calling "Bonus View") and (with a firmware upgrade, in the S350’s case) support for Internet-based interactive features via BD Live.

"These new devices bring home movie experience beyond the cinema and into a whole new realm of entertainment," said Sony VP of marketing Chris Fawcett, in a statement.

Both players feature an Ethernet port for accessing BD Live content, three HDMI outputs an external port for accessing USB storage (the S550 will ship with a 1 GB storage device), and support HDMI output. On the audio front, both units support 7.1 Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus audio, along with dts-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio bit-stream output. The S550 adds support for dts-HD High Resolution Audio and dts-HD Master Audio decoding as well as 7.1 channel analog audio output. Both players support x.v.Color, and BD-R/RE DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW, and JPEG on DVD//CD recordable media.

The S350 should launch this summer for about $400, although a firmware upgrade will be needed to support BD-Live content. The S550 should land at retailers in the fall for about $500. (We assume all seasonal references apply to the northern hemisphere.)