09-07-2007, 03:46 PM
There are a whole bunch of Blu-ray players being announced at CEDIA, but for the most part, there's not too much to differentiate them. Sharp's new Blu-ray player, the BD-HP20U, is its first-ever, but is still mostly the same as other players. Yet the company's press release claims that the BD-HP20U will load Blu-ray discs in 10 seconds. For those of you not used to the sluggish speeds of high-definition media, that's very fast--we're used to most high-definition players taking from 40 seconds to well over a minute to load discs.
Sharp BD-HP20U's key features:
1080p output at 24 frames per second;
Onboard decoding for Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD;
Quick Start mode, which can load discs in less than 10 seconds;
HDMI output (version not specified);
Possibly analog, 5.1 multichannel outputs (according to photos from AV Magazine.it);
$550 retail, available in September.
The Sharp BD-HP20U back.
(Credit: Sharp)We definitely love the Quick Start mode, but we're disappointed that the BD-HP20U doesn't offer bit-stream output for DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks. On the other hand, the $550 price tag is pretty attractive, considering the only other $500 standalone Blu-ray player we've reviewed--the Sony BDP-S300--was extremely sluggish.
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