... another 80 quid gets you a PS3

If you're an ultra cheapo, get the Bush £90 one. If you're into Blu Ray tho, you've probably spent a lot on a telly, and stretching to £230 for a PS3 Slim (from shopto) is do-able. For the extra cash you're getting wireless connection, network playback of all manner of formats, iplayer friendly, 120gb hard drive etc, etc. Oh, and it plays games.

I'm not a fan of the PS3 as a gaming system, but just as a blu ray/network/media player it's definitely worth the price.

on the remote is the small button below the mute button

Have one myself .. the simplest & best disc player I've had the last 10 years

It all seems nice, but I have refused to buy a BD player until they have decent multi-region ones available. Since I am a British Citizen who has moved to the US I have a large collection of region 2 DVDs as well as a lot of region 1 DVDs I've bought whilst I am here. No doubt BD would be the same, so until a decent, cheap, multi-region BD player is available I'll be sticking with DVD.

"....plug the player into their HD-Ready TV."

"Full HD" surely? I thought that "HD ready" was wot woz stuck on yer 800p / 1080i jobs?

You have to suspect that the lads behind this branding had a hand in M$s Vista debacle.....

of a device that marries BD playback, upscaling alongside media streaming (.vob files from a NAS drive over ethernet) ?

Or am I gonna have to stump up the dosh for a popcorn A110 and leave blu-ray for another day?

Philips being Philips, I would expect that you would have to have a certain folder structure on the USB drive/key before it would recognise the files on it.

Can't say for certain, but I'm sure it will be like my Philips player from way back.

Did you try it?

"but locating a black button on a black box in a darkened room is every bit as difficult as you might imagine."

Can I be the first to say "It's so black, light just falls into it" ?

"... another 80 quid gets you a PS3"

and yet still isn't bloody BD multi region, and I presume the Philips is the same.

Whilst there are some cheap no-brands from China etc doing the rounds which are BD multi-region (with a suitable handset code).

And from what I gather on most reviews, for Blu-Ray, just about any player that does 1080p and is full 'profile' specced up is good enough as they are almost all equal.

Craig 12 said: 'I'm not a fan of the PS3 as a gaming system, but just as a blu ray/network/media player it's definitely worth the price.'

It makes an excellent Blu-Ray player, but for some unfathomable reason, the PS3 sucks as an upscaling DVD player - the fan runs continuously and there are some weird artifacts on screen when images are moving rapidly or the camera is panning or zooming. I tried watching 'The Illusionist' on the PS3 and had to stop as it was making me nauseous. Put it in a bottom-of-the-market upscaling DVD player and it ran fine.

Now where are the region free Blu-Ray players?

"The case is about a foot deep and a 435mm wide."

Do you know what that is in antelopes per parsec?

"We think that is quite big"

It sounds like it's the same width as many hi-fi separates, which should keep your audio/visual shelves looking neat and tidy.

"the width is only 6.5cm short of half a metre".

I'm disappointed you didn't find a way to use decimetres and yards in this paragraph :(

HD Ready is used, because there isn't a TV on the market at the moment (in the UK, and that i know of) that can actually receive a HD broadcast, they all need some type of external HD source.

Once the HD freeview spec is properly finalised, and integrated into tv's recieving 1080p i'm sure we'll be seeing 'full HD' stickers.

Some of you mention a desire for one of these, so here's one for you:

http://www.crtprojectors.co.uk/region_free_bpd-83.htm

It's expensive - not the sort of thing you will find at Tesco's.....

People who have any interest in videophilia will know the Oppo name.

So this is a pure BluRay Disk only player which plays nothing else than those disks (and maybe DVDs). Yet it has the hardware to be a fully functional media centre. Who in their right mind would design such a monstrosity?

I predict that, just like with the DVD, BluRay will only get popular once the media can be copied and the players play normal files.

You might want to look up what 'HD Ready' and 'Full HD' really mean before you shove your foot any further down your mouth.

Just saying....

Nice theory, but the plethora of "Full HD" labelled 1080p kit down the shops says you're wrong here.

However, you piqued my interest so I had a trawl - OMFG!

It appears that the original plan was to have "HD ready" refer to 720p or 1080i kit (dunno where I got 800 from in my orginal post - silly me), while "Full HD" referred to 1080p capable panels.

So I was right, but things have moved on as the marketing types have stuck their oars in and depending on which manufacturer you look at, we now have:

"HD ready" and "Full HD" as originally stated.

"HD ready" and either "HD ready 1080p" or "Full HD" (kudos to Sony for running two logo stickers that mean exactly the same thing).

"HDTV" (HD tuner).

"HDTV 1080p" (HD tuner wot does 1080p and a screen to match.

"Full HD ready" (now we are in lala land - and special thanks to Toshiba for that little gem).

etc. ad infinitum.

No wonder there's so much "what does it all mean" and "what should I buy" traffic out there. They've taken a relatively simple labelling scheme and turned it into a minefield of confusing bullshit.

"there isn't a TV on the market at the moment (in the UK, and that i know of) that can actually receive a HD broadcast"

Except for all those Freesat HD capable tellys. The Panasonic Viera I installed for my folks this weekend was certainly capable of receiving HD.

Unless somehow you think there's a difference between "aerial - cable - tv" and "dish - cable - tv".

Needs a decent Remote!

Then I'll buy it!

I dont want to game my way around a movie!...

Agreed on both points. I can't believe anyone would try to sell a region locked DVD, let alone a region locked BR. And why can't it play content from the USB port, FAIL

And Philips says it uses 25W operating and 0.5W on standby, so it costs just 50p per year to have it plugged in, and no more than £25 even if you use it 24*7.