April 24, 2009
SONY’S NEW BLU-RAY DISC PLAYER AND HOME THEATER SYSTEMS GO WIRELESS



By Gary Reber


At a Sony event on Tuesday, April 22 at the Sony Pictures studio lot in one of the spectacular historical sound stages, Sony showcased its new stand-alone player with Wi-Fi® capability for easy BD-Live™ access. The BDP-S560 delivers full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema™ output, decode the latest advanced audio codecs, and are BD-Live capable with your broadband internet connection and purchase of external memory.
      “The demands of today’s home theater go beyond pristine picture quality and our new Blu-ray Disc product line offers a breadth of technologies that deliver an amazing entertainment experience,” said Chris Fawcett, Vice President of Marketing for Sony Electronics’ Home Product Division.  “Consumers don’t want a living room cluttered with wires and the new Blu-ray Disc product lineup breaks down the wired barriers of the past.”
      Offering built-in Wi-Fi wireless network capabilities (802.11N/G/B/A), the BDP-S560 can easily connect to the Internet through your existing wireless home network to download and stream BD-Live content including additional scenes, short subjects, trailers, interactive
games, and more.  It also enables easy firmware updates to assist in keeping your player up-to-date with the latest Blu-ray Disc media and features.
      While compatible with most wireless routers, the BDP-S560 also supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup™, for a quick and easy connection to enabled wireless routers.  Additionally, the player is Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA®) ready, allowing it to connect to other DLNA compliant devices to share digital photos.
      Since many consumers own extensive DVD movie libraries, the BDP-S560 incorporates Sony’s Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology that converts standard-definition signals (480i) to near HD quality.
      Additionally, the model adds Sony’s Precision Drive™ technology, which helps to detect and correct wobbling discs from three directions, supporting stabilization of the playback of bent or scratched Blu-ray Discs and DVDs.    
      The BDP-S560 model supports 7.1 channel Dolby® TrueHD and Dolby® Digital Plus, DTS®-HD High Resolution Audio, and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding as well as bit-stream
output via HDMI. It also supports Deep Color video output and AVCHD discs encoded with x.v.Color™ (xvYCC) technology. It also feature compatibility with an array of video formats, including BD-R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on BD/DVD/CD recordable media.

The BDP-S560 offers an external port for local storage so users can add their USB flash storage device, and features a front USB port for viewing photos from your USB flash memory device or directly from a digital camera.

Shipping this summer, the BDP-S560 will retail for about $350.





Tags: - equipment - - Sony - - Sony Pictures - - BD-Live - - BDP-S560 - - Blu-ray Disc player - - Wi-Fi -