The LG BD 370 is a Blu-ray player that's been on the market for just half a year. Despite that, its online price has already dropped significantly below the 350 USD list price - offers begin at 225 USD. The same device is available in the United Kingdom from around 150 GBP.

• Excellent 24p movie picture.
• YouTube access.
• Fast, quiet disc drive.
• Bitstream output of HD audio.
• Easy operation.

• No decoder for DTS-HD.

The LG is an excellent, cheap, entry-level model, scoring highly with its fast, quiet disc drive and easy YouTube access, without neglecting the essentials - great DVD and Blu-ray playback quality.

The straightforward menu structure and the changing colors of the control panel keep operation fun and simple, but you cannot, unfortunately, switch off the display while watching movies in the dark home-theater.

The clear main menu offers intuitive operation; access to YouTube videos is also fast and easy.

When it comes to multimedia, LG BD 370 is at the top of its game: Besides the obligatory BD-Live function, the Korean player's LAN interface can also turn its hand to displaying YouTube videos - and it does this fairly quickly, with no unnecessary complication.

A front-mounted USB input gives additional playback of photos, MP3s, and DivX videos. Alternatively, you can feed in photo or video files to the BD 370 from data-CDs or -DVDs.

Photo scaling is accurate, and the player allows you to run background music during slideshows. High-definition camcorder videos in AVCHD format only play back from discs, and not from USB storage media. The only videos that play back via USB are those in H.264 format.

Loading Time and Operating Noise:
Pop a disc into the drive, press close, and the content appears on the screen in less than 20 seconds - some Blu-ray players can easily take twice as long. In our tests, the disc drive showed itself to be fast and quiet, and even the player's power consumption keeps to modest limits: 0.4 watts in standby mode, 13.9 watts during playback. Naturally, the BD 370 outputs all common video and audio formats via its HDMI 1.3 output; the same goes for 24p playback and bitstream audio.

Remote Control:

Unclear and a little too crowded: the remote control.

Although it sits comfortably in the user's hand, the remote control has too many mini-buttons, making it feel overcrowded. We liked the "Display" button, which brings up information about the current chapter, subtitles, or audio formats. Similarly useful is the "Resolution" button, allowing the user quick resolution-switching without the need to trek through submenus.

Picture Controls:
Things look less rosy, on the other hand, when it comes to picture controls - the BD 370 offers none, apart from a choice between the RGB and YCbCr color spaces.

The LG's HDMI video frequency response is perfect.

HDTV:
Blu-ray playback excels on the LG, with the exception of a few small hiccups. For example, the player cannot output blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white regions via HDMI - at least not if you select RGB encoding. If, on the other hand, the BD 370 is outputting in YUV/YCbCr (and the player will normally agree this with a connected display automatically), everything works fine - all digital levels are correct.

HDTV documentaries in 1080/60i format also impress: Interlaced material converts flawlessly into progressive pictures in almost every situation. Only in a tricky test sequence with slow vertical motion (the camera passes over a girl's face) does the player trip up, showing obvious flicker - to be fair, though, very few players pass this particular ‘trial by fire'. Movies with 24 or 60 frames per second, on the other hand, produce perfect results, as is now the case with almost all modern players.

DVD:
Many modern Blu-ray players continue to struggle with DVD playback - in particular, if the DVD lacks a progressive flag, many players tend to display flicker. So, we were delighted to see that, even without a progressive flag, the LG produces accurate, flicker-free progressive pictures - this is definitely not to be taken for granted!

But - we must add - the BD 370's de-interlacer isn't one hundred percent stable: The pan across the beach in "Six Days Seven Nights" begins highly accurately, but as the camera slows near the end of the scene, the white sun-loungers begin to flicker and show stair-step effects.

To sum up, the LG is one of the more competent DVD playback devices out there, but there are Blu-ray players that play DVDs better - see Samsung's BD-P1600, BD-P3600 and BD-P4610.

A mixed bag: The rear panel of the BD 370 offers no analog connections for multichannel sound or S-Video, but there is at least a versatile LAN socket.

Those hoping to enjoy HD audio on the BD 370 will need a modern AV receiver - the player only outputs high-definition audio formats as a bitstream via HDMI. While decoding the signal, therefore, the receiver's converters and amplifiers will also influence the sound quality. If, instead, you choose to use the player's internally decoded PCM audio, DTS-HD signals will output only their 5.1-channel core - the BD 370 holds back the superior 7.1-channel version.

The BD 370 contends well as a CD player: The analog stereo sound produced excellent measurements in the lab, which our listening test confirmed. In practice, the player sounds very smooth and noise-free, which is due in part to the extremely quiet disc drive and the absence of cooling fans. Many players in this price class produce bothersome background noise during quiet musical passages - with the LG, on the other hand, you can simply sit back, relax, and enjoy.