Blu-ray Players

Toshiba’s Blu-ray players have never been cutting-edge affairs, but the company has wholeheartedly embraced 3D. The BDX3200 is its latest 3D-ready effort and with its £150 price tag should appeal to those on a budget – although Sony’s BDP-S480 costs the same amount and offers much more in functionality.

Philips has created a thing of beauty with its 7 Series 3D Blu-ray deck. Finished in a greyish-silver and sporting a sculpted lip with illuminated soft-touch buttons, it’s a real step up from the humdrum.

Panasonic’s hard disk/Blu-ray recorders hark back to the day when video recording meant people could lend VHS tapes to friends and family, who’d missed an episode of Twin Peaks or the Christmas day broadcast of Back To The Future on BBC1.

In previous reviews, I have extolled the virtues of the impressive Kaleidescape networked AV system. Although highly expensive and intended for professional installation (bar the one-box Mini, since renamed the Cinema One), there’s nothing to beat its smoothly presented and intuitive method of selecting DVDs and CDs for playback. And now Kaleidescape has added Blu-ray to the mix...

Unsurprisingly, 3D will continue to dominate the home cinema agenda in 2011, with a flood of 3D-capable TVs and Blu-ray products hitting the market as the year unfolds. Indeed, Panasonic’s new range of Blu-ray decks includes no fewer than four 3D-ready models.

They say the best things come to those who wait and in the case of Oppo’s BDP-93EU, that most certainly is true. Having already forged a reputation amongst AV-holics for its high quality, yet affordable, upscaling DVD players, its debut Blu-ray player, the BDP-831, (HCC #175) impressed UK buyers at the end of 2009 before distribution issues spoilt the party.