Onkyo BD-SP807 review

If speed is important to you, this might be a deal-breaker. Once a disc is loaded, however, all the menus work in a speedy and slick manner.

THX-certified
High-quality playback of movies is assured by the BD-SP807's THX certification. To get the best out of the BD-SP807, you may need to calibrate your TV with a THX demo disc, or, even better, connect this player to a THX-certified TV. That way, you should start seeing movies as the director intended. Trust us -- when it comes to movies, seeing everything on properly calibrated equipment makes a world of difference.

Remote hell
Like so many other devices we've seen recently, the BD-SP807 has a remote control with all the visual appeal of an infected wound. It's massive, ugly and doesn't suit a player that costs £600. It also bears a striking similarity to the equally detestable remote controls that Toshiba supplies with its Blu-ray players. Onkyo and Toshiba have always enjoyed a close relationship, and we can't help but wonder if parts of this player are based on Toshiba's technology.

Spot-on picture and sound quality
Paired with the high-end Panasonic Viera TX-P50G20B plasma TV, the BD-SP807 produced fantastic picture quality. Casino Royale was a feast for our eyes, and the first scene, shot in black and white, looked nothing short of brilliant. The deliberate grain in this scene looked natural. It was neither excessively corrected or left to go wild.

The machine's audio quality is excellent too. At the most basic level, the stereo downmix is excellent, with enough detail to make speech clear and easy to hear. You'll see massive improvements if you connect this player, via HDMI, to a decent AV receiver and speakers, though. When you do that, you'll hear lossless soundtracks as the director intended, and, depending on your speaker set-up, you're quite likely to hear detail you didn't even notice at the cinema. It's certainly well worth investing in your sound system, because, without a decent set-up, you'll miss half of what makes Blu-ray great.

Output delight
The BD-SP807 offers plenty of outputs to keep socket fanboys happy. You get 7.1 analogue audio outputs, for connecting the BD-SP807 to receivers not capable of dealing with HDMI audio or lossless codecs. You also get gold-plated terminals, both coaxial and optical digital outputs, and component and composite video outputs. Most people should be happy with these connections, and there aren't many more options that Onkyo could have thrown in.  

Conclusion
We like the Onkyo BD-SP807 a great deal. Pair it with a decent amp and a great TV, and you're in for a massive treat. We also love the fact that it has a wealth of high-quality video and audio outputs. That said, we're rather disappointed that the player doesn't load discs faster. We also think that, given the machine's price, Onkyo should have jolly well included some built-in storage. 

Edited by Charles Kloet