Newsletters
Facebook
RSS Feed
EH Store
LG BD590 Blu-ray Player
LG Electronics released its new BD590 flagship Blu-ray Player at CES 2010 in Las Vegas.
The LG BD590 is using hard drive storage to distinguish it from the pack. With a 250GB hard drive capable of storing music, photos, and online video content (purchased Vudu movies), the BD590 builds on the popular BD390 and aspires to act more as a media hub than basic Blu-ray player.
Streaming video content comes in the form of Netflix (with updated interface), Vudu, CinemaNow, YouTube, Pandora, Picasa, and AccuWeather. Internet connection is supplied through either wired Ethernet or internal 802.11n WiFi.
CD music is ripped directly to the HDD with metadata provided by the Gracenote MusicID-Stream.
Two other lower-end models, the BD570 and BD550, join in with similar specs. The BD570 drops the flagship’s hard drive, and the BD550 also drops the 802.11n WiFi.
All three players are Profile 2.0 with built-in decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audio. Price and availability have not yet been released.
I’ve used VUDU’s HDX format via streaming. That is after is verifies my connection speed, which I have plenty. And I trust the 1Gb acts as a buffer of sorts to help it work. All that is missing is the newer offerings that other brands already had. I was surprised to they didn’t when fired up my 390 and after the initial update. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they made the 390 a 590 clone is you add a hard drive via the USB port. It’s all firmware.
I was expecting the 590, but was offered a deal on the 390 that one would be fool to pass up. As soon as the 590 has some mileage on it, and the price stabilizes, I’ll put the 390 in the family room and get the 590 for the my studio/HT. Any word on which Freq Spectrum the 11n is? If it’s still 2.4GHz, I’ll wait for the 690 or 790 @ 5GHz MIMO.
^^^I hope LG will expand these services to the rest of its BD line. I imagine Pandora, Picasa, and AccuWeather could be administered pretty easily, but VUDU is a different story.
Their HDX (highest quality) format requires pre-downloading, so the LG BD370/90 would not be able to utilize this format. At the very least, we could take advantage of streaming VUDU .
So is the BD390 going to get the provider upgrades/add-ons? It’s only firmware. And ya really don’t need an internal hard drive for them.
- News
- Cool Homes
- Blogs
- Photo Galleries
From Xbox 360 to Xbox One
Microsoft’s next game system is anything but just a game system
A House of Many Mounts
Home with a variety of viewing situations calls for variety of mounting solutions.
Brighter LCD TVs on the Horizon?
3M technology poised to boost the vibrancy and richness of colors on LCD screens.
22 Outdoor Speakers for a Sizzling Summer
We take a peek at some of the current options for outdoor audio.
I can’t seem to find more specific information, but it appears to me that the BD390 (with wireless connection) is a better machine than the newer BD550 (no wireless connection). So what does the BD550 have over over the BD390? Similarly, the BD570 sounds like the same thing as the BD390. What does the BD570 offer over the BD390?