I ended up buying a BDP LX 54 on Saturday and have it paired with my LX73 amp. So far I am very happy with both pieces of equipment. It's my first blu ray player so unfortunely I dont have anything to compare against. I was originally planning on buying a Sony S770 before it was discontinued so have ended up paying a bit more - cost £370 from SSAV (I guess a S570 can be found for half of this).
A few comments below:
- start-up time: from closing the tray to having a picture on the screen is typically 30 secs (seems quite constant across different discs). I'm not sure if this is judged as long but personally I dont mind the short wait - gives me a chance to go back and sit down.
- build quality: very happy with this. It's a solid piece of equipment and has a fine brush effect black finish to the front - matches the LX73.
- 2D picture quality with BluRay (I'm viewing on a Sony KDL-52Hx903)- I've noticed that this varies from one film to another. Newer films like 'The A-team' and 'Gladiator' and 'Braveheart' look really good and I can't fault them - colours and motion. Older films like 'The Shining' still look good but there are some scenes which don't look perfect. I guess this is a result of the source material rather than the BDP player itself. For example, at the very start of The Shining when the camera sweeps over the water, the sky appears noisy. Animations like Toy Story 3 look really great - bright colours, smooth motion and nice textures.
- 2D picture quality with DVD - I've not had a chance to view a lot yet but from what I've seen this is very good and sometimes looks as good as the blu ray equivalent film. I have a few films on both blu ray and dvd so its quite interesting to compare.
- 3D picture quality - have watched 'Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs' and it looked good all the way through. There was no sign of any cross talk, which I've seen in shops when viewing the fish swimming around demos - have seen shadows of the fish following the main image.The non-animation films also look good. Have tried piranha 3d. My eyes/brain struggle to keep up with a few of the faster moving scenes which didn't happen at all with the animation. The glasses began to feel heavy after about an hour. (I had normal glasses on too)
- audio: I'm in the process of looking for a speaker upgrade as I currently have some 14 yr old Mission 734 floorstanders which cost £400 at the time. Nevertheless, the LX54/LX73 combination sounds great through the 734. There is plenty of detail and lots of punch.
- I've had no issue with the PQLS. The amp and BDP auto-detect the pairing and PQLS runs without requiring any intervention.
- Disc Spinning Noise - sounds silent - I've not heard any whirring at all.