Lo Bueno: Picture detail and clarity.Sound detail, clarity, and impact.

Lo Malo: Drop down glass front.

Resumen: Now that the HiDef format war is over, I thought it was time to invest in a good player. Even though the lower priced BDP-S500 ($700) is virtually identical to the BDP-S2000ES ($1300), I opted for the BDP-S2000ES because of the better build quality and better circuits, which past experience with ES components has shown to be worth the extra money. Plus, the 5 year warranty is nice to have, especially for a complex computing device such as this. The player was very easy to set up and did not have excessively long load times (for a Blu-Ray player), although the load times for Blu-Ray discs varied from disc to disc. Load times for Blu-Ray discs ranged from 16 to 55 seconds. Load times for standard DVD's ranged from 10 to 35 seconds. I upgraded to the BDP-S2000ES from a Sony DVP-S9000ES DVD player. I compared the S-DVD and Blu-Ray versions of three movies and switched back and forth between them. The BDP-S2000ES beat down the DVP-S9000ES in every performance aspect. Even the standard DVD playback of the BDP-S2000ES was clearly superior with more fine details and less noise in dark scenes. While I expected the picture quality to be excellent, I was very pleasantly surprised by the substantial improvement in sound quality. The overall sound of the BDP-S2000ES was crystal clear and dynamic and the bass had much more impact than with the DVP-S9000ES. Dialog was particularly more clear. At first, I thought it might just be the difference between the encoding for the S-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, but playing S-DVD's in the BDP-S2000ES breathed new life into them. My player came with ver. 3.0 firmware and ver. 3.6 is the current version. I played movies before and after the firmware upgrade and did not notice any performance improvements. I used Nero Burning Rom to burn the ISO firmware image file to a CD-R. The firmware update took 10.5 minutes. There are also free ISO writing programs available, an example of which is "ISO Recorder". I don't particularly care for the blue tinted glass front panel, which is on a motorized slide. I would have preferred just a plain black front. The glass panel is just one more thing to potentially go wrong.