Sony BDP-N460 Network Blu-ray Disc Player Review

I was at Costco this last weekend and saw the Sony BDP-N460 Network Blu-ray Disc Player on sale for $199.  It usually sells for $249, but most places have it on sale right now.  As a side note, I wasn’t able to locate it on their website, but it was on an end-cap in one of their stores.

A while back, right after Blu-ray was initially introduced, I purchased the Best Buy “Insignia” brand Blu-ray player.  I think I paid $250 for it.  Back then, if you wanted network capabilities, you had to pay a premium, now this type of functionality is pretty standard. 

The Insignia model that I owned was slow to start up.  It took 30-45 seconds for it to power up before I could even insert a disc.  You can’t upgrade the firmware on it, and there are no network capabilities.

That’s why the Sony was appealing.  The BDP-N460 has full HD 1080p, Dolby True HD and DTS-MA audio decoding, BRAVIA Internet Video streaming, BD-Live 2.0 support, DVD playback and upscaling.  It has built-in applications for Netflix, Amazon Video On-Demand, and Slacker, just to name a few.

I hooked it up to my system, plugged in a network cable and powered it up.  It immediately determined that there was a firmware update available and within a couple minutes it had applied it and rebooted the player.  That’s cool. 

I also activated the Netflix application on the player.  I was able to see my queue and I played three different movies over the weekend.  It worked very slick.  No glitches as far as I could tell.  No skipping, very good video and sounds quality.  I also tried Slacker, a free Internet radio service, which I had never heard of. 

One other nicety of this product is that they include an HDMI cable in the box.  Overall, I am very happy with the player.  Historically, I have always had good luck with Sony components.