The Sony BDP-S 350 is a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD player, which hit the market in summer 2008. The manufacturer's current asking price is 230 GBP.

• Excellent 24p movie picture.
• Bitstream-output of HD audio.
• Update promised for BD-Live.

• Flicker in progressive DVD pictures.
• No decoder for DTS-HD.

For a bargain-bucket price of 230 GBP, Sony’s BDP-S 350 delivers first-rate movie pictures and hard-hitting HD audio as a bitstream. It does not, however, match the quality of its all-singing, all-dancing relative the PS3, which has better DVD and HDTV de-interlacing, as well as more comprehensive multimedia capabilities. On the other hand, the S 350 does offer simpler operation and lower power consumption.

Connections:

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Introduction

We tested this model before its market release, so some features were not yet fully functional. BD-Live support for example, will come in a free update in September 2008. The compact, low-cost player offers 24p movies and bitstream HD sound.

The Xross Media Bar (XMB) interface will be familiar to users of the PlayStation 3. Sony is now using the same design for many of its latest devices.

Menu:
The BDP-S 350’s menu sports the same classy design as Sony’s PlayStation 3. Sony calls this nifty interface the “Xross Media Bar” (XMB for short), and it allows fast access to deeply branched submenus containing complex device settings.

In the player’s HDMI setup, the user can select all the possible resolutions — from 576i up to 1080p — as well as 24p playback, and even all color spaces, so that you do not have to rely on automatic picture settings.

Remote Control:

Handy: The remote control has direct-access buttons for important menus.

The remote control’s “Options” button provides access to the player’s basic functions, as well to the “A/V Settings” menu, which includes noise filters and three gamma curves for various ambient light levels.

A practical feature: The “AV Sync” function in the audio menu allows you to delay the sound by up to 120 milliseconds relative to the picture, in order to synchronize audio and video precisely.

Leaves something to be desired: Sony chose not to provide a 5.1-channel audio output. The USB connection will only accept firmware updates, and not — sadly — MP3 files.

The player outputs new high-definition audio formats as a bitstream via HDMI. It can only convert Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD to 7.1-channel PCM audio — for other formats, you’ll have to rely on your AV receiver’s decoding abilities. The “Display” button provides information about the current video and audio formats, as well as the PCM sampling rate or AV codec.

Multimedia Capabilities:
If you’re eagerly wondering when we’ll mention multimedia, now’s the time to disappoint: The S 350 will not play back MP3s from CDs or DVDs. Sadly, the rear-mounted USB socket works only for storage of BD-Live content. All is not lost: The player’s photo-playback works excellently, providing clearly laid out folders with preview images.

Satisfactory: We use this “Moving Picture Resolution” test-sequence, from Chapter 11 of Pioneer’s Blu-ray “Demo Contents 2008 Summer”, to test how players handle fast-moving picture details. The Sony produced some flicker during motion, but images were still sharp and flicker-free.

Blu-ray:
1080p-format test patterns are flicker-free and appear with correct digital levels, and even the menu on the test disc was up-scaled sharply to the screen’s resolution. Test patterns in 1080/60i format containing moving images, however, did show some flicker — clearly, the Sony’s video processing is simply not designed for TV-camera recordings.

In a finicky sequence from another test disc, cars moving quickly through the picture look good on the Sony, with no comb-effects at all on the cars’ license plates. Progressive output from movies is exemplary in both 1080/60p and 1080/24p.

Excellent: The Sony’s video frequency response via HDMI shows almost no dampening. Both DVD and Blu-ray color decoding were also spot-on.

Satisfactory: We use this tricky beach sequence from Chapter 5 of the DVD “Six Days Seven Nights” to test DVD video quality. The Sony produced the image in wonderful detail, but flickering edges disturbed the movie-feel every time the camera moved.

When given a DVD to work with, the Sony will only provide the desired de-interlacing results if the disc has a correctly-set “progressive flag” — which is not always the case. So, the fact remains that, out of Sony’s players, only the PlayStation 3 can currently do the job of a top DVD player. TV material at 50 hertz appears with excellent anti-aliasing, but scrolling texts show slight fringing in 100-hertz test patterns.

Perfect: The extremely flat audio frequency response of the Sony BDP-S 350.

The “Theatre” function is another particularly practical function that Sony integrates into its AV receivers and LCD TVs. Pressing this button switches the whole home-theater setup between PCM stereo sound from the TV and full multichannel sound from the AV receiver.

If you want to listen to DTS-HD sound without compromising on quality, you’ll need an AV receiver with HDMI version 1.3, since the Sony lacks the necessary decoder for converting DTS-HD into PCM.