LG BD590 Network Blu-ray w/250GB Review

Blu-ray players have come down in price considerably and now it seems the fight is on for features and market share. LG has tackled this problem by filling its new BD590 with all of the network features you could want, including built-in 802.11n wireless, Netflix, VUDU, Pandora, YouTube and more. But they went a few steps further, adding USB connectivity for removable drives and even an internal 250GB hard drive. What on earth is a 250GB hard drive doing on a Blu-ray player? Well, for starters, you can store your purchased VUDU files to the drive, though for the most part, VUDU works through "cloud computing" where all content, owned or rented, is streamed through the Internet. You can, however, use the drive to transfer files from USB or discs (like a CD) to the internal storage and thus copy movies, music and photos to the drive for easy playback. The on-screen display then lets you recall specific files, or play back an entire folder or the contents of the drive. This essentially turns your LG Blu-ray player into a media server that can be used by the whole family.

You can also transfer files from the internal 250GB hard drive to an attached USB thumb drive, so data can go both ways. When you are transferring to the internal drive, the on-screen menu allows you to create folders and organize your files however you choose.

The BD590 has a number of other helpful features as well. For instance, when you insert a CD, the player looks up the artist, album, and track info on the Gracenote database and displays it. Compare this to many other players which simply bring up a numerical track listing  (if you're lucky). Since this information is available, the BD590 allows you to sort the music contents of the hard drive by album, artist, genre, or song title. You can also make playlists of your music for any occasion.

If you have a DLNA-compatible media server (any Windows PC), you can stream music, movies and photos to the LG BD590. This is a great feature, but like almost any Windows-centric technology, the list of caveats and exceptions is about a  mile long, so your success will vary with your experience level and the way your files are encoded. For those without proper software, the player comes with Nero MediaHome 4 Essentials on CD to aid in networking your PC-based media files to the LG Blu-ray player.

Not a ton of outputs, especially for analogue audio, but it's got what you need

We were excited to see the BD590 contain all of the third party network services that it does, and especially pleased that it incorporates the new Netflix browser that actually lets you choose new video content and add it to your queue. Most systems simply allow you to access your Netflix queue but require you to log in via a PC to add more movies or TV shows.

At just $299 this isn't the cheapest Blu-ray player you're going to find, in fact, it's kind of expensive. But its impressive list of features makes it an option for those looking to have an all-in-one media storage solution. Honestly, though, if the 250GB hard drive isn't for you, then save $110 and go with the lower priced BD570 which has all of the same features except for the drive.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.