Having joined the high definition HD player crowd initially when the Blu-ray Vs HD war began a couple of years ago I was soon disappointed to find the former died a quiet and drawn out death. I didn't wait too long to purchase a Blu-ray player and decided on the Sony BDP-S350 player which we got on special offer for £130 at the time of purchase. This was a great price at the time and can still be purchased for under £150, excellent value for what you get.


The player came with three free Blu-ray discs, a selling point Sony often use in a large black and blue cardboard box. The item is well packaged in polystyrene and foam paper. Inside the box is the remote control, instructions and the Blu-ray player.


This player is sleek and stylish being black in colour which is matt black on the top and sides and glossy black/navy on the front panel. The Blu-ray players dimensions are 43cm wide, 22cm long and a height of 6cm which site perfectly above our now superseded HD player. The Sony logo is on the left hand side in silver with the Blu-ray logo again in silver in the centre and minimal buttons on the right. The 'open' button is on the top at the front of the player and on the front are the play, pause and stop options. The disk tray is hidden behind a panel that opens outwards when you press the eject button, it is almost hidden when closed being flush and smooth with the rest of the frontage.


This Blu-ray player not only plays Blu-ray discs, it is a multiregional DVD player and manages to upscale DVDs really well and noticeably having up to 1080p, it is also great for playing CDs and CD-Rs. This is very high resolution video using Precision Cinema HD Up scaling technology. In order to get this quality however you need to ensure you use a HDMI cable for this result. The sound from this machine is epic; we have full HD surround sound which takes full advantage of the 7.1 Channel audio bitstream. This again is at its optimum using a HDMI cable.


It has some good added extra features including being BD-Live ready which means you can upgrade the player as well as being able to download Blu-ray disc bonus features and added interactive extras. It has an Ethernet port for this internet connection. The player also has a small external port for local storage which doesn't hold very much on it to be honest when we have used it known as flash based memory.


The colours and picture quality from the Blu-ray discs you play from this player are remarkable, with action packed scenes and special effects being sharp and crisp to watch. As mentioned it also upgrades DVDs but as the saying goes you can't polish a turn and some films you don't watch simply for their picture quality. Most older films have not been converted for you to be able to upscale them but for the more recent releases or re-mastered.


One draw back for this Blu-ray player is that it takes awhile to start up and open up the disk tray. The remote control is also very busy having 50+ buttons to choose from. A lot of these are for the interactive menus and special feature options and a large number of them I haven't got a clue what they do! I suppose it is always better to have options.


I would definitely recommend this player not only for value for money but also its quality and longevity, I am sure it will outlive many cheaper models.