The Loewe Blu Tech Vision is a Blu-ray player that's been on the market since late 2007 and currently sells for around 500 GBP. Can Loewe's sleek, eye-catching player still keep up with the competition? Not entirely, since its technology is no longer up-to-date.

• Excellent movie picture with 24p.
• Analog multichannel audio.
• Extravagant design.

• Weaknesses in de-interlacing of DVDs and HDTV.
• No bitstream output of HD audio.
• No DTS-HD decoder.
• No Bonus View.
• No BD-Live.

Multimedia? A foreign word to Loewe's developers! Modern interfaces? Never heard of them! Some Blu-ray players also play back DVDs in excellent quality? Unbelievable! OK, with the grumbling out of the way, there are some positives here too: The Blu Tech Vision does at least produce a crisp Blu-ray picture, and you can't deny that the device's design stands out. Buyers will have to decide for themselves, however, whether it's worth 500 GBP.

To put it briefly: There's no multimedia. The player supports neither BD-Live nor the picture-in-picture technology Bonus View - not even on user-recorded BD-R- or BD-RE-format Blu-ray discs. And it gets worse: it can't even play back photos, MP3s, or DivX videos from a CD or DVD.

Design:

Extravagant: The remote control also stands out from the crowd.

This extravagant-looking player comes in anthracite and chrome finishes, and the sleek, reflective design means the Blu Tech Vision suits similarly styled Loewe flat-panel TVs well. The metallic-finish remote control also looks great and scores well with precise, responsive buttons.

Technology:
Even at the time of the player's release, the technology was out of date: In the course of our tests, the Loewe made clear that it was based on a rather long-in-the-tooth technical platform, and is by now therefore very much yesterday's technology. But at least in terms of the core ability - playing back movies (see below) - it doesn't disappoint.

No sign of a LAN socket, but the Loewe's 5.1-cinch output will be useful for older AV receivers.

Nevertheless, the archaic sound technology also scored some minus points: Despite wearing the Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD logos, the player does not support Full HD sound in 7.1 format. It also lacks a bitstream output for HD audio, and with DTS-HD audio the player only decodes the DTS-5.1 core. At least the Blu Tech Vision can provide the best possible sound quality of the HD audio formats to older AV receivers via its 5.1-cinch output.

Loading Time and Power Consumption:
On first inspection, the Quickstart mode sounds great - it reduces the start-up time to just two seconds. The catch: Activating this function increases the standby power consumption from 0.6 watts to 14 watts. Loading a different disc in Quickstart mode still takes around 35 seconds - around as long as normal loading. The Loewe's on-screen menu also reacts slowly and - as we suspected - offers no picture controls.

In our laboratory tests, the Blu Tech Vision resolved pictures with excellent sharpness and correct levels - the visual test confirmed the almost perfect results with Blu-ray movies. Though the player cannot display blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white, this has virtually no visible effect in practice - or at least not with correctly mastered Blu-rays. The Loewe's 24p playback is low-judder and flicker-free - movie fans will love it.

HDTV documentaries in 1080/60i present an entirely different picture if you try to play them back in 1080/60p. Here, unfortunately, true de-interlacing simply doesn't take place - the picture fails to appear in one hundred percent sharpness, and shows slight flicker during motion and on horizontal edges. If the connected TV or projector produces better de-interlacing, the best bet is to set the player's output to the interlaced HDTV format 1080/60i and have the job done externally.

DVD:

With the flap down: Here's how the Loewe looks in the raw.

DVDs with a progressive flag pose no problems for the Loewe, which in this case displays a highly cinematic picture. If, on the other hand, the progressive flag is missing, a pronounced flicker appears during motion. Proof for this came from the DVD "Six Days Seven Nights", which upsets most Blu-ray players - including the Loewe. Why is it that most manufacturers cannot fit their players with decent de-interlacing?

TV series on DVD also flicker more than normal; here, only external de-interlacing can improve the progressive quality. Stupidly, however, the Loewe cannot output signals in 576i resolution via HDMI - and to get the analog YUV output to work, you first have to switch off the HDMI picture. Very irritating!

The Loewe has a few more quirks up its sleeve here. In the HDMI audio setting "Auto", the player only delivers Dolby HD as Dolby Digital audio at 640 kbps. You should therefore switch over to PCM output, since the player can then at least decode Dolby TrueHD as 7.1-channel PCM audio - you then profit from the higher bitrate and two rear-surround channels. With DTS audio, the player only decodes the 5.1-channel core of DTS-HD signals - also not very impressive.

We noticed that the player's HDMI communication with AV receivers often behaves strangely. The player occasionally, for example, indicates the wrong number of channels for PCM-output of Dolby TrueHD. As a CD player, the Loewe performs better: Stereo audio sounds dynamic on the analog outputs, and the signal-to-noise ratio is excellent. That's something, at least.