Blu-ray Players

Sony BDP-S5000ES Blu-ray Player - Benchmark

Conclusions

Overall, the Sony BDP-S5000ES is a solid Blu-ray player. The picture and audio quality are excellent.  The player is responsive and supports BD-Live with a smooth experience.  It's an excellent CD player and generally does do a fine job upscaling your DVD collection with only a few hiccups here and there.  From my perspective, the real challenge for this player is living up to the ES label.  While the BDP-S5000ES is one of the best constructed players I have tested, it doesn’t have the feature set and overall usability typical of the ES line.  Sony’s own PlayStation 3 technology is significantly ahead of this player in many ways, at a fraction of the price.  The S5000 will certainly appeal to ES fans who want the best in terms of components and build, but it doesn’t raise the bar on what is available today for significantly less money.