LG BX580

The LG BX580 is LG’s first foray into the 3D technology race. It also comes with a host of features including high-speed 802.11n Wi-Fi, DLNA media playback and streaming content directly from your PC. It supports the latest HDMI 1.4 and is fully compatible with 3D Blu-ray, normal Blu-ray as well as DVDs.

Latest Update: LG BX580 is shipping and now on sale at Amazon.com

LG BX580 3D Blu-ray Player

LG BX580 3D Blu-ray Player

Design

Occupying a small footprint of just 8 inches depth, the BX580 comes with a new mirror finish and a simple layout. On the left is a thin disc tray followed by eject, power, LCD display play/pause, stop, fast forward, fast reverse buttons. On the right beneath a flip down panel is a USB 2.0 port.

However in going for a clean and clutter-free look with the flip down panel, LG has introduced a fundamental flaw in design. Since the BX580 does not come with internal memory, you are required to insert a USB thumb-drive to enable BD-Live Web content download. This requires you to flip the face plate down, which is an inconvenience, and it spoils the clutter-free look. Incidentally over a period of time, dust will also accumulate on the inner part of front panel.

Actual user review:
“I am mostly pleased with this Blu-ray player’s features and performance. I have it connected via HDMI to a 3D-capable AV receiver and as expected it does a great job playing Blu-ray DVD’s as well as upconverting standard DVD’s. The networking capability works very well; I had no trouble connecting to my secure wireless-N network, but the wireless connection speed seems much lower than I’m getting on my notebook, probably due to the LG player being buried in a cabinet with other electronics. This means that streaming from the internet or a PC via DLNA is somewhat slow, and wired Ethernet would be advisable if you do heavy media streaming. Standard YouTube video streaming, however, worked pretty well due to the lower bandwidth requirement. All in all, a very nice unit, especially considering the substantial discount price that is available on Amazon!” – Charlie (TX,USA)

 

Connectivity

LG BX580 Back Panel Connectivity Options

LG BX580 Back Panel Connectivity Options

All the essential connectivity options are available. You get a HDMI 1.4 output, digital coaxial and optical audio outputs, composite audio/video and component video outs. What’s missing are multichannel 7.1 discreet audio outputs found in higher-end kits for outputting decoded high-resolution surround sound to legacy home theater receivers. Like previous LG blu-ray players, the BX580 has built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi. the BX580 also includes an Ethernet port if you prefer the stability of a wired connection.

Features

Apart from playing back 3D blu-ray content, the BX580 comes with a suite of media-streaming services that is part of LG’s NetCast feature. It delivers video-on-demand (VOD) services such as Netflix and Vudu HD, YouTube videos, Picasa Web Albums for viewing online photos and AccuWeather for weather forecasts. The applications work very well on both Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections, though they cannot be activated or displayed while watching a movie. There’s also no high-def video playback for YouTube which offers up to 720p clips.

The player is also DLNA-compliant and capable of streaming video, audio, and photo files from a network-connected PC via Ethernet or Wi-Fi or viewing them from a USB drive. The file and media format supported are:

Music: MP3, WMA, WAV
Photo: JPEG, PNG
Videos: Standard-definition (MPEG-1/2/4, DivX) and high-definition (MKV, H.264, DivX HD)

Like nearly every Blu-ray player available now, the BX580 offers onboard decoding for both high-resolution Dolby and DTS formats.

Nero MediaHome 4 Essential software is bundled to enable media server capability on a PC based on the Windows XP and Vista operating systems. Instead of showing plain CD track numbers, the BX580 is able to display album cover art, artist names and individual song titles automatically pulled off the Internet. The process takes no longer than a few seconds and is initiated when a music CD is inserted into the disc player.

Furthermore, you can rip CDs directly to an external USB storage such as a thumbdrive or hard drive under its CD-recording function. The soundtracks are encoded in MP3 format using 128kbps, 192kbps, 320kps data compression or in lossless quality with ID3 metadata.

Average User Rating:
Actual User Reviews:

• “I was looking for a feature packed 3D blu-ray player that offered wireless connectivity to my home network. The BX580 fit the bill to a “T”. It has lots of features and for the money I don’t think that it can be beat. I liked the product so much that I bought another one for a second entertainment system. Previous review criticized the USB port on face of unit. I have not found that to be a problem. Easy to access and usually this connection is for a short period and not permanent anyway. 3D works great too.” – Carl (FL,USA)

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• “Setup out of the box was super easy. The BX580′s built in wireless found my network & connected very easily. No connection quality issues despite the router being several rooms away. Startup seems a bit slow but I haven’t had other Blu-Ray players to know how to compare. The Netflix function works great & streaming quality is quite good. I haven’t used Vudu or others yet but if they work as well as Netflix, I’m happy. The box is connected to my LG LCD TV and the remote functions work well between the two. With LG’s Simplink capaibility, I can use a single remote to start & watch a disc. My wife loves this part!” – E.Steeb (CA,USA)

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