I had been looking for a Blu-Ray player for a few weeks to replace my Samsung upconverting DVD player which had developed some issues with the audio. The Sony BDP-S570 appeared to have all the features I wanted, but I everyone was listing them for $250 (MSRP) and I was waiting for someone would put them on sale before buying. While browsing through Costco last weekend we found the Sony BDP-BX57. It appears to be exactly the same thing as the BDP-S570 for only $229. I decided to pull the trigger and bought one.
The specs for the BDP-BX57 can be found here...
Sony BDP-BX57 marketing specs
There is no product page for the BDP-BX57 on the Sony website, but comparing the marketing specs from the service site the player appears to be exactly the same thing as the BDP-S570. The thing I was most interested is the ability to stream movies via the internet from Netflix, but running an ethernet cable across the room to hook a device up would be, shall we say, frowned upon. I also didn't want to throw a wireless access point on top of the entertainment center. The BDP-BX57's built-in Wi-Fi allows this player to connect to "the internets" without the clutter of exposed cables or extraneous hardware.
Upon opening the box at home, I found the player, remote, batteries manuals and an HDMI cable. Video outputs are HDMI, component and composite. Our TV does not have and HDMI input so I dug up some component cables for the video. There are the standard RCA analog audio outputs along with optical and coax digital outputs. I used the RCA outputs to the TV and the digital optical output to our home theater receiver for Dolby Digital and DTS audio. Our TV is also a Sony, albeit and older one, but the remote worked for both it and the player right out of the box. Once the connections were made and the unit powered on for the first time, a setup screen appeared which allowed me to set certain features such as language, output format (720p) and other options. Connecting to our Wi-Fi was fairly painless, it scanned for available networks and asked for the encryption key once one was selected. I then ran the "Network Update" from the menu to get the latest software installed from the Sony server. The next thing was to activate the player to stream content from a Netflix account I had just set up. This was a little more involved, probably would have gone quicker if I had bothered to read the instructions but that just isn't how I roll. The process involved getting a code generated by the player, entering it at a website which generated another code which had to be entered in to the player via the remote. We finally got everything set up after about 15 minutes and selected the first movie from Netflix, it showed up in the player's queue within a few minutes and we were watching! The Netflix account I set up allows for one disc out at a time, so I picked a blu-ray disc (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) which was delivered and watched yesterday. The picture looks good, but I think it will be better with a digital video signal. Our TV only has a DVI connector, so I've ordered a HDMI to DVI connector to see how it works out. I'll post an update when it is done.
So far I'm really enjoying this player! When we switched from cable to satellite last year we decided the premium movie channels weren't worth the money, now for $11 a month we can watch all the movies we want streaming plus have one DVD or Blu-Ray at a time. If you're looking for a good Blu-Ray player with built in Wi-Fi, the BDP-BX57 is a good one to consider!
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