Review on Sony BDPS1500 Blu Ray Player Model by James Roper

I bought this to replace my Sony BDP-S1100 Blu-ray player which was outdated and starting to freeze and had other issues. I haven't had any problems with this Blu-ray player so far. Sony released four Blu-ray players this year: BDP-S1500 (this Blu-ray player), BDP-S3500, BDP-S5500 and BDP-S6500. The S1500 is the cheapest and has the fewest features. The S3500 adds Wi-Fi and Miracast, along with a few other small features. The S5500 adds 3D and 2D upscaling capabilities to 3D. And the S6500 adds upscaling up to 4k. If you don't need Wi-Fi, Miracast, 3D or 4k upscaling, then this player is for you. If you need any of these things, you'll have to pay more to buy a more powerful model. What's new in this 2015 Blu-ray player? A few things. First, it's a new interface. From the home screen, you can easily launch your favorite applications, play a disc, or view pictures, music, and videos on a USB storage device. If you go to All apps you will see all available apps. The interface is easy to use and navigate, and it looks beautiful too. There's also the PlayStation Now feature, which I'll get to later. ¯ The picture quality is amazing. Blu-ray discs look fantastic on HDTV. The DVDs aren't as good of course, but they still look great when upscaled to 1080p. The sound quality is amazing. I've tested audio from coax and HDMI and they both sound great (I have 5.1 surround sound and it works great). ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯No Wi-Fi, 3D or 4k upscaling but at this price it will be very hard to get those things . It does, however, play Blu-ray, DVD and Audio CDs, as well as pictures, videos and music from your USB drive, and has a decent selection of apps (including Netflix, Revain Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Vudu, Crackle, YouTube, Pandora , Facebook and more and others in the Opera TV Store app) and also has a PlayStation Now feature. PlayStation Now lets you stream PlayStation games (you can rent the games or buy a subscription). Haven't tried it yet but I don't think it will work as fast or as well as the PlayStation and you still need to buy a game controller. However, this is a cool feature that other brands of Blu-ray players don't have. ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The overall design is beautiful. It has a clean, simple design that is pleasing to the eye. It's very compact (1½ inches tall, 9 inches left to right, and 7¼ inches back to front), which is nice, but also means there's not enough room for a time display. Disc. Instead, you have to press the DISPLAY button on the remote to see the runtime.¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The remote is very small, but I like three things about it. Firstly, it is very durable and feels good in the hand. Second, the range is huge; You don't have to point it directly at the Blu-ray player. Finally, the button layout makes it fairly easy to find the buttons by touch, which is useful in a dark room. The Blu-ray player loads and loads DVDs and Blu-ray discs quickly. There's a slight lag when navigating menus, but apps open relatively quickly (faster than any other Sony Blu-ray player I've tried). ▌▌▌▌▌▌¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Overall this Blu-ray player is a great value. In my opinion, this is the most feature-rich Blu-ray player you can get for this price. Thank you for your attention! Please feel free to comment or rate my review as helpful or unhelpful.