JVC (oddly) opts for Profile 1.1 for its latest Blu-ray player

Matthew Moskovciak | Oct 30, 2009

(Credit: JVC)

These days, what separates Blu-ray players from one another has less to do with how they play Blu-rays--they all do that pretty well--and more to do with the sort of extra features they offer. Many players, for instance, can access a variety of online entertainment options such as YouTube and Picasa. Unfortunately, JVC's latest player doesn't have any of those online features. In fact, it can't even access the online extras found on some Blu-ray Discs.

JVC has released an entry-level Blu-ray player, the XV-BP11 (US$200), which--surprisingly--only complies with the older Blu-ray Profile 1.1 standard. That means it's not capable of playing back any of the Internet-enabled BD-Live content that is included on some Blu-ray Discs. Now, we'll admit that virtually all of the BD-Live content we've seen is disappointing, but that's still not reason to get an underfeatured Blu-ray player when there are Profile 2.0 players for US$100.

The rest of the features on the XV-BP11 are somewhat more respectable, including onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. There's also a USB port on the front panel capable of playing back a few digital media formats, like AVCHD, JPEG, MPEG-4, MP3 and WMA. (Sorry, no DivX.) On the other hand, like we said, there's no support for any online streaming-media services, unlike the entry-level players from LG, Panasonic, and Samsung. In fact, there's not even an Ethernet jack (at least according to the specs) for easy firmware updates.

Via CNET.com

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