Call me crazy and bias, but I do own more than one Blu-Ray player. My most recent acquisition is easily the best, standalone player in this household. Even if you are new to the world of Blu-Ray and players, you gotta check out this beauty. The Sony BDP-N460 is hands down, the best Blu-Ray player on the market right now. What makes this device so great? It’s so much more than just a Blu-Ray player. From the moment I tore this device out of my UPS driver’s hands initial power-up, I knew I had one incredible piece of electronics on my hands.

Besides playing Blu-Ray discs, DVDs, AVCHD encoded discs, photo discs…etc (the box displays too many formats to list here), once hooked up to the internet, the Sony BDP-N460 opens up an entire world of streaming media to its owner. Right out of the box, I noticed it had a USB connection on the front, which gives you the ability to show photos, listen to music, and watch movies via a thumbdrive or external harddrive. Exploring the back panel, I noticed several connections for a wide variety of setups, to include another USB port to house the memory stick required for BD-Live content. It does not have wireless built-in, but you can connect a wireless access point (by purchasing an additional device) to connect to the player in order to stream via a wireless network. I use an Apple AirPort Express to connect the device to my network. It was as easy as plugging in an Ethernet cable into the back of the Sony and into the Apple AirPort Express. No setup required! It even pulled down the latest firmware update, which is a necessity for nearly every player these days.

Let’s talk about the streaming content for a second. You can certainly connect to the big players out there: NetFlix, Amazon-on-Demand and YouTube, but there are many other sites you’ll have access as well. I can watch the most popular video podcasts on the web, play music videos, listen to music and get tips from the “How-To” channel. You could spend days watching the video content accessible through the beautiful, easy to use, award-winning graphical interface.

If you just want this player to play movies, this player will certainly not disappoint. Movies look incredible! The player has a quick-start mode, allowing immediate playback in only a few seconds. As far as background noise from the on-board fan, I could not even hear it running. For the money…and I mean very little (<$200)…this is perhaps the best Blu-Ray player I’ve come across.