Sony BDP-S5100 Blu-ray player
With its 'quartz' design, Sony's new Blu-ray is too good-looking to be hidden under your TV
Ten years ago Sony launched the world’s first consumer Blu-ray machine – which nobody bought. That’s because it cost £3,000, was available only in Japan, and no movies yet existed in Blu-ray form.
It took a while to convince the public that Blu-ray was a format worth investing in. It wasn’t a huge evolutionary leap from DVD, and with a rival, HD DVD, vying for our attention, we were cautious about chucking our money at another Betamax.
Only towards the end of the last decade was Blu-ray finally embraced by the masses, just as many in the tech industry were pronouncing that the format was on its last legs.
In 2013 the doom-mongers have a point; just as digital downloads have vanquished music CDs, the era of owning films on disc is inevitably heading the same way. Which means the next Blu-ray player you buy could be your last, so it may as well be a good one.
Luckily, Sony’s new HD/3D range comes with several features to ease our transition into a world of cloud-based digital streaming. The BDP-S5100 is Wi-Fi enabled for access to Lovefilm, BBC iPlayer, Netflix and Sony’s impressive entertainment library, while the TV SideView app adds a live, social-media dimension to whatever’s on your big screen.
The 'sense of quartz’ design means it’s too good-looking to be hidden under the telly, and it still spins discs, too.
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