Sony BDP-S790 review

Sony’s top-end Blu-ray player for 2013 is largely unchanged from 2012’s top model, but this isn’t a bad thing as the S790 was one of the most comprehensive Blu-ray players of last year. With Wi-Fi, Smart TV features and 4K upscaling, its feature set should please even the pickiest home cinema enthusiast.

Although its design is fairly restrained, especially compared to this year’s fairly radical-looking players, the BDP-S790 Blu-ray player looks sleek and stylish thanks to a combination of brushed metal-effect plastic, round edges and touch-sensitive buttons. It also has a single-line LED display and a USB port on the front panel.

It has a fairly typical set of connection ports, although we applaud Sony for adding two HDMI video outputs as this lets you connect the player to a TV and an amplifier or projector at the same time, saving you the hassle of switching cables when you want to use different devices. It also has a composite video output for legacy devices, as well as digital optical and coaxial audio outputs, stereo RCA outputs for analogue audio, a USB port and a Fast Ethernet port. Of course, you may prefer to use its built-in Wi-Fi to connect to your network rather than its Ethernet port.

A major feature making a welcome return is Sony’s SEN (Sony Entertainment Network) internet portal, in virtually the same guise as the version used in Sony’s 2012 TV range. It includes access to both Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited, Sony’s on-demand movie streaming and subscription-based music download channels. SEN could give it the edge over other manufacturers, particularly if you already use Sony’s services on an Xperia smartphone or PS3 games console. LoveFilm and Netflix are also built into the player, so you have a huge choice when it comes to renting and streaming films and TV series.

The SEN interface has been redesigned to make it easier to navigate, with oversized tiles that are colourful and easy to read from across the room, letting you jump between apps quickly. There’s a large selection, including catch-up TV in the form of BBC iPlayer and Demand 5, streaming video from Dailymotion and YouTube, up-to-date news from Sky and Eurosport and a selection of games.

Jump back to the main menu and you’ll see the same XMB interface Sony has used throughout its home entertainment systems for the past few years. It’s beginning to show its age, with long lists of files proving a challenge to navigate through if you aren’t meticulous with using the correct file names, and we’re glad to hear it’s getting a facelift for 2013. We don’t know if the S790 will receive an updated interface, so for the time being you’ll have to use XMB.

With media split into categories, you have to jump between sections to play music, video and photos from a USB memory stick or external hard disk. The BDP-S790 played our MKV, H.264, MP4 and WMV HD videos, but it didn’t play our DivX video.

The BDP-S790 plays a Blu-ray disc from standby in less than 30 seconds, making it average in terms of speed, but it has a comprehensive set of image quality options. They’re contained within a pop-up menu that’s only accessible when watching a Blu-ray disc, but you get complete control over brightness, contrast, colour and hue, along with block noise, frame noise and mosquito noise reduction. There are also more advanced settings that include options for increasing detail and sharpening and smoothing images, such as Clear Black, Super Resolution and Contrast Remastering. You must play around with each setting to get the best results, but we were impressed with how far you could take each one without introducing unwanted noise or motion artefacts. If your TV lacks more advanced image processing settings, you’ll still be able to get fantastic results with the BDP-S790.

Here’s a 100% crop from Star Trek, showing sharpness from Blu-ray video – click to enlarge

For reference, here’s the same scene played through a PS3 console – click to enlarge

We couldn’t test its 4K upscaling feature, but it coped well with 1080p Blu-rays. Dark scenes had plenty of depth, but colours were always preserved and shadow detail looked gorgeous. Colours were vibrant and images were impeccably sharp, even without the extra image processing. You get slightly less colour control than you do with Panasonic’s high-end Blu-ray players, but we think Sony’s image processing gives it the edge.

With so many features, it’s obvious why the BDP-S790 is Sony’s flagship Blu-ray player. Its Smart TV services are fantastic and picture quality is outstanding, especially if your TV lacks more advanced processing functions. We’ll have to withhold judgement on its 4K abilities until we get the chance to put it through its paces, but it’s currently one of the best Blu-ray players you can buy.