Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony BDPS550 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray Player

I have now had this player for over a month and I have to say that I am delighted with it. The picture quality is excellent. It upscales beautifully and plays blu-ray discs just as well as you could possibly want. I am also impressed with the sound quality. Bass is authoritative and it seems able to produce a much better surround sound stage than my normal dvd players. I have no other experience of blu-ray players so I have nothing to compare it to. I cannot say whether it is as good a player as either the Panasonic DMP BD35 or 55 but at Amazon's price it was cheaper than either of these! Also according to What Hi-Fi December 2008 it is one of the best blu-ray players in it's class. It is a profile 2.0 player so it can download extra content for the applicable Blu-ray discs. To do this you will need to link it by a network cable to a router.

I have no hesitation in recommending the Sony BDPS 550.

First there was CD. You put the disk in and it plays sound. Then there was DVD. You put the disk in and see pictures. Now there's Blu-ray. You put the disk in and nothing happens for an age! What is it doing? After while you then get a helpful egg timer thing to watch, then some menu selection then the studio logos and distributer banners. Why? Who cares which studio etc?

Well having got that off my chest, yes stunning pictures and sound in 1080p but lots of menus to dig through to get the best performance. I am still not sure if the player does a better job of up-converting DVDs or should I let the TV do it?

Then there is a daft external memory stick in the back. Why? In any event it failed after a few months but I could not face taking the unit in anywhere (what happened to the Sony owned Service Centres?) and I found that any old stick seemed to do.

I was promised 2 complimentary Blu-ray disks with the unit but these never materialised (did anyone get them?) Perhaps Sony would do better to spend some time producing an idiot's guide on a disk to explain the technology. I for one do not have time to RFM!

So how many stars? Well once the thing is going 5 but getting to that point probably 1!

Picture quality is amazing, so far i've only tried Dark Knight in Blu Ray and it was astounding. The player is a good weight and very sleek looking and the remote even has a back lit feature for when the room is dark.
The only noticeable flaw i've seen is the loading time once you put a disk in; it won't take more than thirty seconds but it wont be any quicker than ten seconds either.
The player resonates a crystal sound with sharp detailed picture and I can't see myself going wrong with this player at all.

I'm very pleased with this blu-ray player. The quality of the HD picture on our 26" Philips TV is stunning and the upscaling of normal DVD's is also very effective. It's like having a new TV. Good value at around the £220 mark (seems to have gone up a bit since) Connecting the player to our internet access point enabled a firmware upgrade to happen automatically. The next step will need to be 5.1 surround sound! Highly recommended.

Play mostly DVDs & 'upscaling' picture quality is great with stunning 'DTS sound' - but it takes ages to display the initial menu (even without a disc).