Sony’s Top of the Line BDP-S790 Blu-ray 3D player (Home Theater Magazine review)

[HDTV1080P]

Sony’s Top of the Line BDP-S790 Blu-ray 3D player (September 2012 Home Theater magazine review)

The Sony BDP-S790 has many positive features. I will first mention the negatives. The Sony BDP-S790 lacks 1GB of built in memory for BD-LIVE and requires the consumer to plug in an external USB drive to use the BD-LIVE feature (Hopefully future Sony Blu-ray players will include 1GB of built in memory for BD-LIVE). The Sony Playstation 3 offers 1Gbps networking but the Sony BDP-S790 is limited to 100Mbps networking speed. There is no legacy 480i component video output, but the Sony offers 480i composite video output for those that do not own a HD display yet. The Sony BDP-S790 offers no legacy 7.1 analog audio outputs and requires consumers to own a modern A/V receiver with HDMI input if they want to listen to the advanced audio formats. Lossy audio formats can be heard over the Blu-ray players coaxial digital or optical output with almost any legacy A/V receiver (left and right stereo analog audio output is also offered for legacy stereo systems). No DVD-Audio support on the Sony BDP-S790. Also the power cord is not detachable. If the power cord is damaged the Blu-ray player will need to be serviced by a Sony repair shop.

The many positives of the Sony BDP-S790

The Sony BDP-S790 plays Blu-rays, DVD’s, Super Audio CD’s, and standard CD’s. According to the Home Theater magazine review over 50 streaming services are offered with USB keyboard support. The USB keyboard support is a nice feature.

There are two HDMI 1.4 outputs on the Sony BDP-S790. The Sony BDP-S790 offers 4K upscaling feature for those consumers that own the $25,000 Sony VPL-VW1000ES 4K 3-D SXRD Front Projector. Also in the future 4K upscaling will become an important feature when lower cost under $10,000 4K quality displays are introduced to the consumer market.

According to the Home Theater magazine review the Sony BDP-S790 offers an outstanding video processor for both DVD and Blu-ray playback that matches the quality of the reference OPPO BDP-93 (It might even surpass it when connected to a 4K display but the 4K scaling feature was not tested in this review).

The following are select word for word quotes from the September 2012 Home Theater magazine review (review located on pages 54-56)

“If you’ve into BD-Live content, the player doesn’t include the 1 gigabyte of memory that’s needed, but you can add your own using one of the two USB ports.”

“Picture wise, the default output rivaled my reference Oppo player, which is quite an accomplishment since the BDP-S790’s MSRP is half the cost.”

“The best Blu-ray players I’ve used are the Oppo BDP-93 and BDP-95, and while the Sony BDP-S790 build quality is inferior to the Oppo’s its performance equals theirs in nearly every way. At only $250, it receives my highest recommendations.”

“As you can see in the Video Test Bench section, the BDP-S790 sailed through all of our tests and ranks up there with the very best solutions for DVD upscaling. Furthermore, the start-up time and disc-loading performance are extremely fast, and I never found myself growing impatient while the latest Blu-ray releases loaded.”

“As with virtually all Blu-ray players on the market, the Sony can internally decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks and send them via HDMI as PCM.”

“The BDP-S790 has the biggest variety of streaming services – 50 in total – I’ve seen in a Blu-ray player.”

“If you aren’t a fan of using a screen-based keyboard, the BDP-S790 supports a wired or wireless USB keyboard plugged into the front USB jack.”

http://www.hometheater.com/content/s...-ray-3d-player

[kemetblk]

looks like a great choice for me. I wanted the Oppo but the price was too steep for me right now. I'll have to look into this one for sure. Thanks for the article.

[taygan315]

looks like a great choice for me. I wanted the Oppo but the price was too steep for me right now. I'll have to look into this one for sure. Thanks for the article.

I may get this player with my projector come this November. I like the wireless keyboard support.

[chris gerhard]

This certainly does appear to be a great player but I would wait to see if the upcoming Sony NSZ-GP9 is a similar player but with Google TV included. That player will include a full featured web browser, a backlit remote/qwerty keyboard with voice command, Marvell Armada 1500 ARM processor, Marvell Qdeo processing, and access to the Google Play market Google TV apps. I know there is only a small market interested in Google TV right now and it gets many negative reviews from users and reviewers who never really bother to figure out how to use it but I know how, have used it for over a year and compared it to Roku and Apple TV and the other nice, simple, very limited streaming boxes and those are a joke in comparison, unless of course you want simple and very limited.

I do own the previous Sony Blu-ray/Google TV, the NSZ-GT1, love it and this new model should be an improvement. Yes, the BDP-S790 has a lot of internet TV ability as well but I have all of those things with other boxes and they sit idly, except for Vudu which I do use, while I use Google TV for most everything else internet TV related except for the sites blocking Google TV, which includes Hulu and some of the networks. I use a PC with DLNA server to access the blocked sites, blocked out of fear or contract requirements.

[HDTV1080P]

The Home Theater magazine weblink to the Sony BDP-S790 Blu-ray player review was just released online:

http://www.hometheater.com/content/sony-bdp-s790-blu-ray-3d-player

[joerod]

I'm still loving my 790 and use it quite a bit. Great player. Especially for the money.

[HDTV1080P]

This Sony BDP-S790 is capable of converting 480i film based DVD’s to 1080p/24 and 4K/24 by doing a reverse 3:2 pulldown. Also deep color upscaling is supported. 1080P/24 Blu-rays can be upscaled to 4K/24. Quick start and Gracenote is even offered.

This Sony 4K upscaling player will even pass SACD DSD signals from both HDMI 1 and HDMI 2 like most other Blu-ray players with two HDMI outputs (except for the new OPPO BDP-103/105 that does not offer DSD from HDMI port 1 and only HDMI port 2).

With the dual core processor this Sony BDP-S790 is comparable to the OPPO BDP-103. Of course, the Sony does not play DVD-Audio discs like the OPPO does and it will not play 50Hz international Blu-ray HD content like the OPPO BDP-103 (some international Blu-ray titles are encoded as region all).


http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langI d=-1&productId=8198552921666436490#specifications