Amanda: Hi. I'm Amanda.

Julie: And I'm Julie, and we're here in the Crutchfield Studio with Sony's BDP-S5000ES Blu-ray Disc™ player.

Amanda: Now, this isn't the smallest or slimmest player we've ever seen before —

Julie: No.

Amanda: — but it is absolutely loaded with features.

Julie: Yeah, there's no empty space under this cover.

Amanda: No, not at all. And we could spend a lot of time covering all of those features, but we're just going to focus on the highlights that we think really set this player apart from today's Blu-ray players.

Julie: Right. And so the first thing that we're going to get into is what makes this an "ES" player. "ES" is Sony's badge for their high-end components — in fact, their top-of-the-line components — and "ES" stands for Elevated Standards. With Elevated Standards, you get rock-solid build quality and you also get superb performance.

Amanda: Absolutely.

Julie: And the way they've done that with this player is they've got really rigid frame-and-beam construction. You also get isolated audio and video circuit boards inside, so that they're not introducing interference to each other's signals. And you'll see that this player has a five-year warranty.

Amanda: That's huge.

Julie: When you see a five-year warranty on a component, as opposed to a one-year warranty or even a two-year warranty, you know that the manufacturer has built it to be so reliable and so durable that it's going to stand up to years of use.

Amanda: Absolutely. And that build quality really comes into play with video performance.

Julie: Right.

Amanda: When our customers get this home, they love it. They've reviewed it on our site, they're very very impressed. Now of course, like any Blu-ray player, it will send a 1080p picture to your TV via HDMI.

Julie: Yep, and it'll upconvert DVDs, also via HDMI.

Amanda: Definitely. But it takes it a step further than that, because it also has, built-in, this really advanced video processing that makes the picture look even smoother, even more natural.

Julie: Right. So, a good example of that processing at work is — once upon a time, you've probably seen a sunrise, a sunset, maybe water, or smoke: something that has these sort of variations in color. And video processors have a tough time with that.

Amanda: Very much so.

Julie: So what they'll sometimes do is they'll separate it into these noticeable bands of color as the color transitions throughout the screen. Well, this processing goes ahead and it kind of attacks that problem by making the transitions much smoother, more natural, more believable, throughout, so you don't get those distinct bands.

Amanda: Yeah, and that can be challenging, so it's nice that Sony put that extra effort into the player here.

Julie: Right.

Amanda: Now, it also has a built-in digital-to-analog converter for component video. It's a very high-quality one —

Julie: Right.

Amanda: — so if you're going to be hooking this up to maybe a slightly older HDTV that just has component video and doesn't support HDMI, you're still going to get really reliably excellent picture quality from this player.

Julie: And that's nice because too many players just ignore the fact that we don't all have the very latest technology to connect. So, another thing we wanted to tell you about it what this player offers if you have an HD camcorder. A lot of people have HD camcorders that record their movies as AVCHD files.

Amanda: Yep.

Julie: And those movies look great, but there aren't a whole lot of ways you can play them. This player supports playback of AVCHD DVDs. That means all you do is you take your AVCHD files, you drop 'em onto a DVD using your computer's DVD burner, you pop the finished disc into the front here, and you play them back. And you're playing them back in full HD, just as you recorded them — not as DVD-quality videos that you've had to downconvert.

Amanda: Exactly. And you're also — you're watching those HD files on your big beautiful HDTV, not your little computer screen. So, it's a very very nice feature. We've been talking a lot about video performance, but this player is very very capable on the audio front as well. It has built-in decoding for the latest surround sound formats, including Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD™ Master Audio.

Julie: Right, and these lossless formats are going to give you the effect of listening to the studio master.

Amanda: Yeah, they're very very detailed. And it can send that sound to your receiver via HDMI or 7.1-channel analog audio outputs, just whatever works best with your system.

Julie: Yep. Now, if you'd like to learn more about the '5000ES, and there's a lot more to learn, you can go to crutchfield.com/Sony5000ES .

Amanda: Or, of course, you can always give us a call at 1-800-555-9408.