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For most people, the Panasonic DMP-BD35 will offer the best combination of features, performance and value.

According to the early reports, Blu-ray is faring well this holiday season and it's not hard to see why. With standalone player prices finally slipping below $250, more popular movies available, and reliable standalone players hitting the market, Blu-ray is now a solid option for those that want the best image quality from their home theater. If you're looking to go Blu over the next few weeks, here's a roundup of our recent Blu-ray coverage to help you make your choice.

Five Blu-ray players for less than $250
If all you care about is price, check out our roundup of some of the cheapest players on the market. Not all of these players are Profile 2.0 compliant, but if you're not interested in Internet-enabled BD-Live features, you can go with a cheaper Profile 1.1 player. And if you're still trying to figure out what the different Blu-ray profiles actually mean, check our guide on Blu-ray Profile 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0.

Blu-ray players with BD-Live for less than $300
If you're a little more flexible on price, you'll be able to buy a Profile 2.0 player, which will let you play BD-Live features that are becoming more and more popular on Blu-ray releases. Also at this price level, you'll see players with bonus features such as Netflix streaming.

Blu-ray players with 7.1 audio outputs
If you're using an older non-HDMI receiver, you can still take advantage of the new high-resolution audio soundtracks--Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio--available on Blu-ray. If your receiver has multichannel analog inputs, pair it up with a Blu-ray player with analog outputs to hear the new soundtracks at their full resolution.

Best Blu-ray players list
If money is no object and you just want the best home theater experience, check out our best Blu-ray players list. It rounds up the top players we've reviewed over the year and you'll notice that the PS3 still holds the top spot, as it offers much more functionality (high-def gaming, media streaming) over its competitors. You'll also find the Samsung BD-P2550 on this list, which offers Netflix and Pandora streaming, in addition to great Blu-ray playback thanks to HQV video processing.

More recent Blu-ray coverage
Is Blu-ray becoming a commodity?
Sony claims BD-Live is catching on
PS3 firmware update enables full-screen flash video
Roundup: IR-to-Bluetooth converters that let you control your PS3 with a universal remote

We've certainly been critics of BD-Live in the past, but Sony reports that Blu-ray's interactive platform is catching on. Sony's servers for BD-Live content are coming up on the one million hit mark, according to a report by Video Business, and Sony VP Rich Marty is quoted saying that "consumers are engaging with this game-changing interactivity and are defining BD Live as that killer application." That's in pretty stark contrast to previous reports that industry insiders considered Blu-ray's interactive features to be mostly a let down.

If BD-Live truly is catching on, then we've underestimated the public's desire for slowly loading movie trailers.

While the one million mark is surprising to us, we'd bet that the majority of those visits were made by PS3 owners--rather than more mainstream standalone players--for a few reasons. First, only a fraction of standalone Blu-ray are Profile 2.0 compatible, which is necessary to access BD-Live features. Of those Profile 2.0 players, so far all of them require a wired Ethernet connection to connect to BD-Live features, while the PS3 can connect via Wi-Fi. Lastly, in our experience, even the best standalone Blu-ray players have handled online content clumsily compared to the PS3, which boasts superior processing power. For BD-Live to go mainstream it needs to work on all players, which means Blu-ray hardware makers have to improve the user experience.

While we've often found interactive Blu-ray content to be lacking, we've seen some signs of improvement. The upcoming The Dark Knight Blu-ray disc will feature a BD-Live feature that allows you to create your own picture-in-picture video commentary track and share it. We're also looking forward to seeing Office Space on Blu-ray, which according to The Digital Bits features bonus content such as, "Jump to Conclusions 2.0, Grab the Stapler, Printer Beat-Down, Last Piece of Cake, Whack-a-Drone, Post-It Pandemonium and The Apathy of Man: History Track."

What's your take? Is BD-Live set to take off in 2009? Or will it continue to be more of a gimmick than a useful feature?

(Credit: Amazon)

So far, BD-Live has been a pretty questionable feature overall, and last week's Iron Man mishap only makes matters worse. According to High-Def Digest, BD-Live servers were overwhelmed last week, making it impossible for many customers to access the extra content.

The fact that the BD-Live servers were overwhelmed only emphasizes the fact that most BD-Live features could easily be fit on the Blu-ray Disc, instead of having to download them from the Internet. For example, we loaded up Iron Man this morning on the LG BD300, which uses a standard USB memory stick to save the BD-Live content. Afterward, we checked out how much space the BD300 used on the USB stick--only 13.5 MB. According to Blu-ray Statistics, there is over 2.5 GB of free space left on the Iron Man Blu-ray Disc, which means the feature easily could have fit on the disc. Perhaps future BD-Live features will make sense, but as of now, BD-Live seems like it's a gimmick to sell more discs, while actually making it harder for people to access features.

And if you're one of the unfortunate Iron Man buyers that got shut out of the BD-Live features last week, don't feel too bad. What Paramount is calling a "truly state-of-the art Blu-ray presentation" is merely trivia questions about the movie, with a short clip of the movie played behind them. Our experience on the BD300 was that it was frustratingly slow, but even if it was fast, it didn't seem like much fun. While Internet connectivity is needed for some functions, like comparing scores of downloading future question packs, the initial round of questions could be stored on the disc. We're still waiting for a BD-Live feature that's worthwhile.

(Source: High-Def Digest via Gizmodo)

We've never been completely sold on BD-Live as a major selling point for Blu-ray. While special features on DVDs are certainly nice, the vast majority of people don't have the interest or time to watch more than the main movie. Blu-ray movies also have special feature sections, plus some movies have even more features available via BD-Live, which you can access with an Internet-connected Profile 2.0 player. While there are certainly plenty of cinephiles that want to watch every deleted scene and featurette available, we doubt it will be forcing many people to upgrade from DVD.

(Credit: Amazon)

While it's easy to consider BD-Live a relatively unexciting extra feature of Blu-ray, we have started to see some potential downsides. For example, early this week High-Def Digest reported that the Transformers Blu-ray now has new BD-Live content available. Transformers on Blu-ray came out in September, so we doubt that the new short "Robot Ninjas" was created over the last month--more likely it was held onto to continue to generate interest in the movie.

On one hand, it's good that content makers continue to add content, but on the other hand you could say, why wasn't this available on the disc in the first place? We headed over to Blu-ray Statistics to see if Transformers possibly took up an entire 50GB Blu-ray Disc, but it only takes up 45.75GB--surely there's enough room to fit an extra short. That's not the only example. Walk Hard also has a couple extra shorts available via BD-Live, and that disc takes up 46.87GB. From what we've seen, we're pretty sure the extra content could fit on the Blu-ray Disc if they wanted to. The movie already includes an extra Blu-ray Disc for special features, and we doubt the extra content fills up that much space.

In a lot of ways, BD-Live reminds us of Senior Editor David Katzmaier's discussion about online HDTV firmware updates. While it's great that companies can add functionality after a product is released, it also makes it easier to ship unfinished products. In a perfect world, we'd like to see standard special features on the actual disc--so that people without Internet-enabled Blu-ray players can watch them--and keep BD-Live to content that truly need to be served over the Web. In fact, BD-Live could actually be pretty cool if it's used to serve up timely content, such as clips of the film winning an award or perhaps recent news about the actors. But as it stands now, it seems like more of a gimmick than a feature.

What do you think? Will BD-Live eventually become a killer feature for Blu-ray? Or will disc makers just use it as a gimmick and make it more difficult to view special features?

(Credit: Sony)

Sony has added BD-Live capability to the BDP-S350, making good on a promise it made when the Blu-ray player was released earlier this year. The upgrade is available as a free firmware update for existing users; it downloads and installs to the unit straight over the Internet at the click of a button. Even better, the price of the player has dropped to $300. That means--for the time being, at least--the player is 25 percent more affordable than the PlayStation 3.

The now dead HD DVD format had its faults, but we always loved the fact that there was a single hardware requirement for every player since day one. With Blu-ray, there are three different profiles, and each profile has a different set of required features, which affects what kind of special features you can play back on certain discs. And even though manufacturers aren't allowed to make the older Profile 1.0 players anymore, there's still a chance there are a couple of legacy units sitting on the shelf at your local retailer. So, is a Profile 1.0 player worth buying? Should you pay extra for Profile 2.0? Let's check out the differences.

Profile 1.0

Profile 1.0 is the original hardware requirement for Blu-ray players and essentially meets the bare minimum for playing back Blu-ray Discs. You'll have no problem playing back a movie, listening to standard audio commentary, tracks or using interactive "pop-up" menus, but you won't be able to access advanced features like picture-in-picture video commentary or download any extra content online.

If you're the kind of person that never watches special features, you might be fine with a Profile 1.0 player, but be aware... Read more

The Panasonic DMP-BD50 is packed with features, but is it too expensive?

When Panasonic announced the DMP-BD50 at CES 2008, home theater enthusiasts who didn't want a game console as their Blu-ray player finally had a fully-featured standalone player to look forward to. The Panasonic DMP-BD50 promises the two big elusive features: Blu-ray Profile 2.0 and onboard decoding for both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Tuesday, we attended a demonstration of the DMP-BD50 and learned some new details. Here's a quick glance at the spec sheet as far as we know right now.

Key features of the Panasonic DMP-BD50:

• Blu-ray Profile 2.0 (BD-Live)
• Onboard Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding
• Can output Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio in bit stream format
• Can output DVDs and Blu-ray discs in 1080p at 24 frames per second
• 5.1 analog outputs
• SD card slot capable of playing back AVCHD video
• $700 list price, available this spring

The big news that we didn't know from CES was the $700 list price, which is more than we were expecting. Whether it's fair or not, all standalone players are going to be compared with the , which costs $400, has all the major Blu-ray features, and loads discs must faster than any standalone player we've tested. (Panasonic told us that the DMP-BD50's load times aren't significantly faster than its predecessors.)

Compared with the recently announced Pioneer BDP-51FD, the DMP-BD50 is well-positioned, as the BDP-51FD is only a Profile 1.1 player and will only have onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding when it's released--with DTS-HD Master Audio coming later via a firmware update. On the other hand, the BDP-51FD is $100 cheaper and has 7.1 analog outputs, for those still using older non-HDMI receivers.

We're starting to sound like a broken record, but our instinct is that the majority of buyers are going to stick with the cheaper PlayStation 3 until quality standalones become more affordable. What do you you think? Will any of these standalone players compete with the relatively cheap PS3? Or is the PS3 positioned to be the best Blu-ray value for (at least) the rest of 2008?

BD-Live allows for much more than just watching the movie. Like remixing your movies getting more interactive online information relating to them.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

A couple of days ago I blogged about two new optical drives from Plextor that, besides many other things, can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray media. That's obviously cool, but this level of coolness always depends a lot on the software player. In my opinion, CyberLink's PowerDVD has always been one of the coolest, and most versatile playback applications. Today, it got even more versatile.

CyberLink's PowerDVD has been one of the best media playback applications on the market.

(Credit: CyberLink)

CyberLink announced Tuesday that their all new PowerDVD 8.0 Ultra will support the latest Blu-ray BD Profile 2.0 (aka BD-Live). For those of you who don't know what it means, BD-Live is a Blu-ray format that enables interactive online activities, such as multiplayer gaming, e-commerce, downloading movie trailers and subtitles, and social networking. In short, the new profile will let you have a lot more fun than just watching the movie.

At the moment, though, there's no Blu-ray movie on the market that support BD-Live. (They only support profile 1.1 or BD-J). Rumor has it, however, the first one coming out with this feature is Men in Black and it will be available in June.

Aside from the all new cool BD-Live, CyberLink's PowerDVD 8.0 Ultra also supports next-generation disc features, such as picture-in-picture, networking, interactive BD-J, bookmarks, and advanced disc navigation. Audiowise, the player has support for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD. The player is also optimized to work well with nVidia, ATI, and Intel graphic cards.

You can purchase PowerDVD 8.0 Ultra now for about $100 at CyberLink's Web site, but the BD-Live feature will need another 2 weeks or so to be ready. It will be available then as a free update.

The world's first 2.0-compatible Blu-ray player.

(Credit: CNET)

The PlayStation 3 is the first Blu-ray player to support BD-Live functionality, thanks to a firmware update available today. Officially announced just last week, the update (version 2.20) was released right on schedule, and is now available as a free download to PS3 owners directly through the console's onscreen interface. Once installed, it allows the PS3's to access Internet-connected BD-Live content available on some discs. The list of compatible discs is currently minimal--just War and Saw IV available now, plus The Sixth Day and Walk Hard following on April 8--and the first round of BD-Live content doesn't seem to be very diverting. But as the list of supporting titles grows--and, ideally, the BD-Live content becomes more compelling--look for players that don't support Profile 2.0 compatibility to be confined to the clearance shelves. The PS3 remains the best bet for Blu-ray shoppers, even if they have no interest in using its gaming capabilities.