Sony's BDP-S1, their first Blu-ray player

It's probably not going to be much better (or worse) than any of the other spanking new Blu-ray players being announced at this year's CES, but it's of no small significance that Sony's gone gold with their first Blu-ray disc player, the DBP-S1. It's got a dual-layer lens for up to 50GB of storage capacity, read support for BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewriteable -- it'll be an annoying adjustment to stop calling discs "-RW") and 1080 progressive-scan output. We're through the looking glass here, people.

[havanahjoe @ Jan 5th 2006 12:45PM]

How big are these things? Looks about the size of a Laserdisc player

[js @ Jan 5th 2006 12:46PM]

It may be big, but it's damn sexy.

[TC @ Jan 5th 2006 12:54PM]

Wasn't the BDZ-S77 Sony's first Blu-ray device?

[Jesse @ Jan 5th 2006 12:56PM]

Why do all of the new players look so blocky and ancient? is retro tech the new look now?

[Monmin @ Jan 5th 2006 1:03PM]

Thats funny, no price mentioned. I bet Sony deciced not to release a price after they found out Toshibas hd-dvd player is $499.



This sony player was most likely targeted at the least $1000

[Peter F @ Jan 5th 2006 1:13PM]

This is not going to sell:

Do most people in this country want an ugly old clunky machine for 100x more than a standard DVD player of the same kind,

I mean this new generation is sorta' a joke (for now)



Peter--help me buy a blu-ray player; go to my google ads.FREE MUSIC.

[Mandarin @ Jan 5th 2006 1:15PM]

eww you can kill someone with that thing...

[Scott @ Jan 5th 2006 1:26PM]

Its like if you stacked two Xboxes on top of each other and spraypainted part of it blue.

[Jesse @ Jan 5th 2006 1:28PM]

Most people dont have HDTV, most people have just now adopted DVD as a technology. People see dvd on their new HDTV's and think it looks spectacular and most even think that it is an HD picture. There is going to be a very slow adoption of this technology.

[jose @ Jan 5th 2006 1:30PM]

The next betamax jajaja....

[Glancing Aft @ Jan 5th 2006 1:32PM]

Does anyone know how much a blu-ray movie will cost when they start being produced? Are we looking at like 50 bucks a pop here?

[Dot Flowers @ Jan 5th 2006 1:58PM]

I hope it's backwards compatible. If it's under $500, backward compatible with DVD, and has at least some good titles, I'll pick one up right away from Sony.

[DG @ Jan 5th 2006 2:01PM]

Was changing from -RW to -RE really that necessary? What, exactly, was gained from doing that? All of this unnecessary Sony branding and arrogrance is really going to cost them. This is technology I have no interest in, and I'm sure most people were expecting more than seven years (at best!) out of their DVDs. How stupid.

[Ben @ Jan 5th 2006 2:07PM]

First-generation electronics are always big and expensive.



When someone builds 90% of this thing into a single $15 chip, it'll be small and cheap. It takes time and millions of dollars of engineering, but it'll happen.

[Steve Savage @ Jan 5th 2006 2:09PM]

I suspect that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs won't cost much more than regular DVD media, but I can guarantee you that the movie industry will make you pay a premium, say double the cost of a "regular" movie on DVD. Media costs haven't been a concern since 1980, the stuff is dirt cheap. Remember that with every spool of CD's and DVD's you purchase, you are paying a hidden fee in the form of a royalty towards the music and movie industries based on their assumption that a certain level of piracy will be involved.

Kind of like a sin tax on cigarettes.



I just can't wait to get one of these things for my computer. Backing up a hard drive will be a snap.

[doubtful @ Jan 5th 2006 2:26PM]

So, if this is their first player and (according to an

earlier Engadget post) it is coming out in the Summer, I guess that means no PS3 release in Spring.

[Kiteless @ Jan 5th 2006 2:28PM]

Retro?! Yeah these things are heeooooge! THey remind me of the first VHS and BETA players with the top loading cassette thingy.



Give it 2 years and these things will be so small you can choke on them.



- Kiteless

[ps3onpreorder @ Jan 5th 2006 2:59PM]

Me thinks that the Sony demonstrated form factor for the PS3 is a wee-bit optimistic. Their first Blu-Ray player looks HUGE and it doesn't even have a 7 core cell processor.

[Jason @ Jan 5th 2006 3:15PM]

About the size, shape, ugliness, etc.. well 80 style almost always mean high quality. It's a given.

[EatingPie @ Jan 5th 2006 3:27PM]

Wow 20 comments of total cluelessness! :p



I simply don't understand why people are ragging on this being big. My Denon DVD player is only a bit smaller, and it's brand spankin' new (and toasts the quality of my older tiny Toshiba). My D-VHS decks are actually larger than this. And then there's my amplifier. Often larger components are higher quality and better built... but all we get here is "OMG TEH B1G!@#!@" Sheesh.



Does nobody understand technological progression. This is new. And either it or HD-DVD will indeed replace DVD... Because eventually we will all have HDTVs, and there is a big difference between SD and HD TV -- indeed the difference is a bigger leap in resolution than that of VHS to DVD.



So can we get an intelligent comment here? How about some pricing info? More importantly, what connectors will it use? HDMI for sure, but component? And can this one record?



-Pie

[Jeff @ Jan 5th 2006 3:38PM]

"Me thinks that the Sony demonstrated form factor for the PS3 is a wee-bit optimistic."



Apparently you don't remember the DVP-S7000, their first DVD player, and how it compared to the PlayStation 2. I don't think there's anything optimistic about the form factor of the PS3.



The BDP-S1 is, no doubt, a high-end BD player, just like the DVP-S7000 was a high-end DVD player. It was made entirely of metal, it had all sorts of vibration dampening stuff, a motorized front panel mechanism, etc. The PS2 had none of that stuff, and was made of plastic. The same's gonna hold for the PS3, which is gonna be about as low-end of a BD player as you're gonna get. (Except that it'll hopefully do 1080p for movies, as all of the announced BD players so far do... but not so for HD-DVD.)



The BDP-S1 looks to be about the same size as the DVP-S7000 was before it. BD and HD-DVD players will get smaller as time goes on, but there's no doubt they *could* be smaller now. The early adopter crowd likes a certain amount of heft... not as an end in and of itself, but because it implies a certain level of build quality internally.

[ax7 @ Jan 5th 2006 4:24PM]

Its like why a "3000 watt" car amplifier that cost $89 and weighs 5 pounds will get the fuck pounded out of it by a "500 watt" amp that cost $700 and weighs 40 pounds.

[Tom @ Jan 5th 2006 4:25PM]

Meh, I'll just wait till they launch Blu Ray Recorders.

[James @ Jan 5th 2006 4:33PM]

If they can only fit the Blu-Ray playback components into a chasis as big as this, what makes people think that PS3 would be as small as it is now?

[jACK @ Jan 5th 2006 4:36PM]

I might guess that the comments about size and appearance are simply because we're not impressed.



Personally, I remember buying music on 8-track, then on LP, then on cassette, then on CD - all the same album. The factor with each of these was not that I needed the newest, biggest, best; it was that the new format offered something specific (typically portability or accessibility).



I don't see Blu-Ray OR HD-DVD offering anything "new", don't have 1080p on my High Definition TV, and as such will be waiting until the format is affordable or the players are as cheap and disposable as current DVD and VHS systems.

[Jeff @ Jan 5th 2006 5:15PM]

"I don't see Blu-Ray OR HD-DVD offering anything "new", don't have 1080p on my High Definition TV"



So because YOU don't have it, that means it offers nothing new?



You imply that you do have an HDTV, just not one with 1080p. But you don't have a disc format that'll do 1080i either. You STILL think these formats offer nothing new?



What the heck does a new format have to do to impress you? 1920x1080 is approaching the full resolution that some film stocks are capable of (modern ones are often capable of more, but not always).



Some of you guys sound like Dana Carvey's grumpy old man character from SNL. "In my day, we didn't have no Blu-Ray, we watched black and white TV from three channels on a 5 inch oval screen and we LIKED it!"

[Alistair @ Jan 5th 2006 6:04PM]

My boss actually still uses his Sony DVP-S7000 (the first DVD player, I believe). It's a beast, and cost something like $1,000 when he got it. However, it's still going about eight years later. So it may have seemed like wretched excess at the time, but it actually seems like god value in retrospect. This Blu-Ray player will likely be similarly overpriced, but should be similarly robust.



I didn't get a DVD player until the PS2 came out, and didn't have a standalone one for several years. I suspect that it might be the same way for Blu-Ray and the PS3.

[seth @ Jan 5th 2006 6:24PM]

There's one problem with buying this bad boy -- i had a DVP-s7000 and that sucker broke the minute dual layer discs became popular. Don't buy first gen!

[Sean @ Jan 5th 2006 8:45PM]

"Apparently you don't remember the DVP-S7000, their first DVD player, and how it compared to the PlayStation 2."



You mean the same DVP-S7000 that came out *3* years *before* the PS2?

[Version 1.0 @ Jan 5th 2006 10:04PM]

Is it BDP(title) or DBP(sentance)???

[Mike @ Jan 6th 2006 12:53AM]

This probably won't be read...but to everyone complaining about size did you buy a first generation dvd player in the states? They were just as big as this one was. I remember when we unwrapped it from 'santa' thinking 'wow, this is huge'.

[Nick @ Jan 7th 2006 9:59PM]

The first DVD player I bought happened to be the first multidisc. It was a 5 disc panasonic and was $500. It still works great despite that it can't play cdr but with progressive scan built into my Hitachi HDTV the picture is great. My bedroom dvd player is on its third one and each has been a name brand. Each was also smaller, lighter, and cheaper (in both respects).

[Omar Saboor @ Jan 9th 2006 9:38PM]

Why is it soo huge like the xbox

[ken thompson @ Jan 12th 2006 1:18AM]

Does size matter? What I see is a beautifully crafted piece of equipment that will dekiver us the full power of hd. Toshibas hd dvd will max out at 720 P and that means upgrading again at a later date. Oh, and I still have my first sony dvd player, big and heavy and still playing.All the dvd players out there now are like plastic and tiny, they look cheap. So get a grip and marvel at the outstanding picture when they arrive. One last thought, the Toshiba hd dvd player at the ces vegas show wouldn't play so that says it all.

[Michael @ Jan 14th 2006 4:20PM]

Obviously the persons complaining about the size of this unit do not own any truly high end a/v equipment. This is not a $40 Cyberhome or Funai disposable DVD player. This is a seriously high end peice of home entertainment equipment which will make a trememdous difference in the HT industry. If you haven't seen native 1080p media on a 1080p display then you need to not post comments here because you do not know what you are talking about. That being said...I will wait until 2nd gen, not because 1st gen is big or will have bugs, but because it is useless without a display that can represent a native 1080p input (these are very rare at the moment). And before you say "wait I have a SXRD 1080p", stop and realize that almost all 1080p displays currently on the market WILL NOT accept a native 1080p input- even through HDMI. Do your homework folks, and stop bitchin, cause you're all gonna want one of these badly in the next 1-2 years.