LG BD370 BluRay Player Review (a £130 fanless PC with BluRay)
I've already blogged about how much I like the LG M227WD TV and though I use an Aleutia H1 for my HTPC setup, I wanted to compare it to the set-top experience. After all, a lot more people are going to buy cheap, standalone devices for BluRay, rather than home theatre PCs or Sony PS3s, just as hundreds of millions of more DVD players were sold than PCs with DVDs or Sony PS2s.
I bought the second cheapest I could fine (like choosing wine at a restaurant!), the BD370 on eBuyer (£130 ex VAT with shipping).
It's got a wondeful finish, HDMI output (along with component), very quick boottime and it plays BluRay flawlessly. If it was a PC, I'd stand in awe of its low cost perfection. It even has a 10/100 network port as well as USB 2.0 (to let you play DivX movies)
But actually, if you had a narrow, though reasonable, definition of a PC as "something that can get you on YouTube and let you play downloaded films", then you'd only need this.
There's built-in software that connects you to YouTube (navigated by an onscreen keyboard controlled by the remote). Of course you can't participate but it's a great add-on, directly at the expense of the HTPC market.
This is a major trend - electronics are becoming intelligent. If a Linksys router can run Linux (OpenWRT) and serve as a 5W fanless PC, then what's to stop a very tiny (and distorted) distribution offering a terminal, an office suite, and a web browser? Plug in a USB keyboard and you would have a fanless, smart looking PC with integrated BluRay for just £130.
LG has economies of scale that even Dell would struggle to match, let alone Aleutia.
eBay already sells LCD TVs with built-in DVD players, and a USB key for playing Divx files. And some of these even let you play NES games off your pen drive, since the TV has a built-in emulator.
If you can emulate Nintendo games or build in YouTube, why not a whole range of apps that collectively offer a PC experience?
