Sony BDP-S370

The BDP-S370's design - it has a dust-hoarding lip with a trio of very tiny power, eject and play buttons on it - is odd, but there's no complaining about this player's feature set. There's no SD card slot, but it has two USB ports, DLNA playback over the network plus a good array of output ports, including component video and digital audio, plus standard RCA audio and HDMI. Its list of supported formats is no less impressive, and it has internet connectivity for BDLive and - best of all - BBC iPlayer. There are a fair few other services too, including Lovefilm and Sony's own rental service, Qriocity. I'm not a fan of Sony's XMB UI, but it does the job, and there's a free iOS app you can control the S370 with if you don't take to the bland remote that comes with the player. From standby to disc play took 21s, the fastest time recorded, and the S370 is very quick to start up and go to the main menu. But eject a disc and it'll forget where you'd watched to.

Toshiba BDX1100

Like the similarly priced Panasonic DMP-BD45, the Toshiba player has an SD card slot. Unlike its rival, it also has an network port, but I was disappointed when, on first connection, neither my network nor my memory card were recognised. Couple that with the very cheap feeling remote, basic rear port array - HDMI, coax digital audio and analogue audio - and crude, low-res user interface and no USB support, and you'll see this isn't a player to get excited about. That said, it's a good three inches narrower than all the other players here - handy if you're space constrained. But it's a slow starter and loader - 40s - though it does remember where you left off playing subsequently ejected discs.