Five of the best Blu-ray players

By Ty Pendlebury on 26 May 2009

It's now two years after the first standalone Blu-ray player went on sale in the Australian market, and we've seen prices drop from an incredibly lofty three grand to under AU$400.

It's also taken this long for Blu-ray to get its act together on the interactivity front. While the ill-fated HD DVD had its features sorted at launch, we've seen Blu-ray go through three separate profiles to land at Profile 2.0 (or BD-Live). If you're looking for the most future-proofed Blu-ray player, get one based on this.

Features to look for in a player nowadays are Ethernet and USB ports (for BD-Live and YouTube/Picasa), onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, and firmware upgradeability.

Our favourite for a long time, the Sony PlayStation 3, has all these features and is still one of the best players available. However, now that players have fallen to the sub-$400 sweet-spot it's not necessarily the best value. Here's our picks for the best players on the market today.

Panasonic DMP-BD35 (Full Review, Specs, Images, Video, Where to Buy)

Quite simply, the Panasonic BDP-BD35 is one of the most sensibly priced and best-performing stand-alone Blu-ray players on the market.

Topics: blu-ray, ps3, profile 1.1, sony, bd-live, profile 2.0, best, top, panasonic, samsung, lg

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Comments (27)

  • *MAD DOG* commented on 17/10/2009 00:52 Report abuse

    Bought the LG BD370 Blu-ray player at JB Hi Fi for $299! It was a steal at that price. Clive Peeters had it online for that price so JB Hi Fi matched it. Just watched Disney's Cars and man it was sweet. LG FTW!

  • Treacy commented on 03/10/2009 03:48 Report abuse

    Excuse me - Pioneer Elite BDP 23FD!- WOW.....

  • Treacy commented on 03/10/2009 03:47 Report abuse

    Pioneer BDP 23FD - Awesome!

  • Juggler commented on 08/09/2009 00:58 Report abuse

    Pana fan boys trolling around,,,,very slow load times compared to the lg and ps3,,,,cannot play mkv hd files either like the lg.But maybe PQ is ok but nearly 2 min load time as apposed to 25 sec ? No Hd media playback on usb .I like the
    LG for these reasons,but they should be running off ntfs not fat32 as most hd content is over 4gig and most external hardrives are ntfs out of the box now and dont even give you the option for fat32.

  • looking to buy 1 commented on 07/07/2009 16:12 Report abuse

    just got a sony bravia lcd. what player would go best with it

  • Chuck commented on 03/07/2009 12:30 Report abuse

    Beware, as of 7/2/09 with latest firmware, the US version does not support video playback from USB device, nor could I get it to play divx files from a DVD-R.

  • carol commented on 20/06/2009 10:59 Report abuse

    can you record on the blu-ray players? Like watching a program and wanting to see it later.
    Thanks

  • drongo commented on 02/06/2009 13:48 Report abuse

    if your on a budget the only solid choice is the PS3 otherwise nothing comes close to the performance of a pioneer LX 91 Bluray, it's simply king.

  • Jimbo commented on 21/05/2009 21:01 Report abuse

    Have the Panasonic DMP-BD35 for 4 months now, it just rulez :)

  • dave commented on 18/05/2009 08:20 Report abuse

    ref adizorz 1/5/09.PS3 HAS DTS HD Master Audio,u just need the patch upgrade,i have 60&80gig both have dtshdma.But only streems at 80%.

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