BD370 is a different beast altogether. It’s a surprisingly solid product in almost all respects — and it’s got a bunch of very interesting features I’ve yet to see in its competitors. Taking all that and its low price into account, it’s easy to make the following judgment: BD370 offers currently the best bang for buck as far as stand-alone Blu-ray players go.

So, what makes it so special? First of all, it’s fast. While some other BD players feel sluggish in everything they do, BD370 zips along at almost PlayStation 3 speeds. Pop-up menus… well, pop up very quickly, unlike on some other players I could name. You will still have to endure loading screens on the more elaborate titles, but at least you will no longer be waiting for minutes.

I did a quick comparison test by measuring how long it takes to enter the main menu of Pixar’s Cars BD. BD370 did it in 1 minute 26 seconds. PlayStation 3, still the uncrowned speed champ of Blu-ray players, did it in 1 minute 22 seconds. The difference is almost negligible.

Then there’s the impressive feature set. BD370 is a Profile 2.0 player and therefore handles everything Blu-ray discs can throw at it. Granted, you need to plug in a USB memory stick to use BD-Live features as the player has no internal RAM for BD-Live. The internet connection is also used for firmware upgrades and – get this – YouTube. Yes indeed, you can browse and view YouTube videos on the BD370. Once I got the internet connection to work (more on this later), I was viewing YT videos with ease. BD370 makes it easy by having a nicely thought out user interface, with large buttons labeled Featured, Recent Videos, Most Viewed, Top Rated, Search, History, Sign In and Local Site on top row. Selecting Search brings up a virtual keyboard which is responsive enough. All in all, I’m quite amazed by how well the YT feature functions.

But wait, there’s more! LG has decided to add support for Matroska container. That’s right, BD370 plays High Definition .MKV files as well as a myriad of SD resolution file formats. The manual also lists HD resolution support for XVID and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC formats. (Transport streams, such as MPEG-2 .ts files, are not supported.) Unfortunately BD370 supports only USB Flash Drives with FAT16 or FAT32 format so you can forget about connecting an NTFS formatted HDD. The player seems to have no such restrictions when it comes to DVD media, however. A UDF 1.02 formatted DVD9 containing a 7.94GB x264-encoded 1080p Blu-ray rip of a popular animated movie played flawlessly. Even embedded English subtitles worked perfectly, as did the DTS-ES 6.1 Matrix audio which the player sent via HDMI for decoding in the amplifier.

While this is an impressive technical feat, I can’t help but wonder whether LG has inadvertently hammered the first nail in Blu-ray’s coffin. A Blu-ray player which plays 1080p Blu-ray rips? Think about it. This is clearly a subject for another post, so I won’t spend any more time on it here.

A bit more on nice touches, starting from design. The player actually looks good. That silver square in the fascia contains power, eject and play/pause buttons in a clever and functional way. See that blue circle in the middle? It reacts to user actions. Skip a chapter and the circle dims for a moment, then brightens up again when playback resumes. What’s more, the circle changes color to red when you insert a DVD to denote that the player is now using a red laser instead of blue. Menu system looks great and offers five selectable skins that change the way the GUI looks. It’s also fast and easy to use.

OK, time to harp on the few negatives. Firstly, the flip-down fascia lid makes a very cheap sounding clank whenever disc tray opens or closes. It’s not such a big deal, I know. Some might moan about connectivity: BD730′s rear panel features HDMI, component and composite video outputs. For audio there’s optical and coaxial digital outputs, and a measly stereo RCA output. In other words, forget about 5.1/7.1CH analog outputs.

The biggest issue I’ve bumped into so far has to do with the player’s network connection. I set the player to acquire an IP address automatically from my DHCP server and switched the player on. 15 seconds later all hell broke loose. My router/DHCP server went nuts, dropped out of LAN thus cutting all my PCs from the internet, reset itself and lost connection to both ADSL modems. I yanked the ethernet cable out of the BD370 and the router recovered.

“Oh you buggy POS”, I thought and updated the player’s firmware to the latest one (v4.090) available on LG UK’s website, then tried again. Same result. I then entered a static IP address manually into player settings and rebooted it with ethernet cable attached. Router stayed sane and player accessed the internet without problems.

With the internet issue solved, I have to say BD370 is easily my favourite stand-alone BD player at the moment. It’s affordable, fast and has features no other BD player currently offers.