By Matthew Moskovciak
(CNET) — Sony has been the public face of Blu-ray since the format’s inception, and while most of the focus during the bitter Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war was on the company’s PlayStation 3, Sony has been making stand-alone Blu-ray players from the start, beginning with the $1,000 BDP-S1.
Unfortunately, that player set the mold for stand-alone players: expensive, oversize compared with standard DVD players, and poorly featured compared with the cheaper PlayStation 3.