5. Philips BDP9000

The Philips BDP9000 is a solid, likeable Blu-ray player that features an attractive design, a very usable remote control, and even ships with an HDMI cable (unlike many of its counterparts). The picture it produces is on a par with the other players, which means excellent video quality for Blu-ray discs, and good upconversion when playing conventional DVDs (which it can render at 720p, 1080i and 1080p as your HDTV allows). The front panel display uses very readable high resolution characters and graphics, and its blue-and-white color scheme is easy on the eyes, even in a darkened media room. The BDP9000 also includes media card readers for various memory cards behind its flip down front panel cover. With deals on this unit now available in the $800 range, this represents the best pricing currently available among the crop of Blu-ray players covered here (except for the Sony Playstation 3, which includes a Blu-ray player among its other features, and costs $200-300 less).

The Philips BDP9000 comes in an attractive package, and offers decent features, too.

Given these various plusses, the BDP9000 is also not without a couple of demerits. For one thing, its audio decoders aren't up to par with other similar units. When playing back Blu-ray discs, it supports Dolby Digital and DTS, which it can deliver either as a bitstream for decoding in your AV receiver, or in Linear PCM (LPCM format). But when it handles Dolby Digital Plus, it cannot decode into Linear PCM, only offering a bitstream version (which may be a problem if your HDTV set can't decode this format either). For conventional DVDs, however, audio support is limited to Dolby Digital and DTS, and then only across digital connections. Among other issues, users get no DTS output from either of the unit's analog stereo outputs, or should they wish to decode that format into LPCM. The BDP9000 also supports neither DVD-Audio nor SACD discs.

Otherwise, the Philips BDP9000 is on solid footing when compared to most other Blu-ray players. It offers both component video and AV S-Video outputs. On the audio side, in addition to HDMI and digital optical and coaxial outputs, the unit also offers 5.1 analog multi-channel sound, as well as standard stereo sound. Its media card slots handle Compact Flash (CF), Microdrive, SmartMedia, and Memory Stick Pro, plus Multimedia and Secure Digital media. With the right adapters, it can also accommodate Reduced Size Multimedia, Mini Secure Digital, and Memory Stick Duo cards as well. In contrast to other Blu-ray players, the Philips unit is also more responsive, with quicker disc load times and better speed when skipping around chapters on a DVD (but here again, the Playstation 3 player comes out ahead, and is even faster).

The Philips BDP9000 is a solid Blu-ray player with some minor annoyances. Were it priced the same as the Playstation 3, it might be considered a viable alternative.