The BDP-S560 was most impressive in our black-and-white test. Even water glasses sitting on a banquet table popped with clarity and brilliance. It did almost as well in color movies, with a nice feel of dimensionality in the test. Only in the animated did it disappoint, where a sense of flatness earned it a rating of only Good.

The player earned ratings of Very Goods down the line in our two DVD tests. In the test, the colors looked less saturated than those from the reference Sony PlayStation 3 player, but more pleasing and realistic.

You get more than BD-Live when you plug the BDP-S560 into your home network. If you have a computer that runs DLNA server software on your network, this player will recognize it and display the photos from that computer. It can also display photos from a USB drive, but it can't play music or video over a network or USB.

This is the first Blu-ray Disc player we've looked at that comes equipped with two USB ports, one in the back for BD-Live storage, and one in the front for photos. That's a very smart design move on Sony's part.

You don't have to stretch an ethernet cable from your router to your home theater to use the BDP-S560's networking capabilities. This Blu-ray player includes Wi-Fi, but setting up Wi-Fi on the BDP-S560 is no picnic. The setup screen often leaves you wondering what option to pick and what to do next. And the always-difficult task of entering a password via remote control is even harder because the BDP-S560's text-entry screen is so ugly and unfriendly. Fortunately, the player comes with a small booklet for setting up Wi-Fi.