Review: Sharp BD-HP20U Blu-ray Disc Player

Late to the party, Sharp enters the Blu-ray fray

February 2008 By Greg Robinson

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When you examine the product offerings from the biggest players in the consumer electronics world, most of them have chosen sides in the format war and they’re now marketing second or third generation hi def disc players. Sharp has long been a Blu-ray proponent, but their first Blu-ray Disc player is only just now making its way to market. With the addition of the BD-HP20U, the Blu-ray Disc camp now has a veritable army of high def players arrayed against lone wolf Toshiba and its HD DVD format. With a reasonable price tag (for a Blu-ray player), the question remains: how well does this Sharp stack up against its Blu-ray competition?

Sporting the familiar “Aquos” moniker of its LCD cousins, the BD-HP20U is a classy-looking machine with a bizarre mixture of lights and indicators on its front panel. Sharp went for an uncluttered look offering just two buttons (Power and Eject) on the deck itself. However, this cleanliness is overshadowed by two large, circular LED’s which serve to tell you the type of disc you’ve put in - BD or DVD. They both blink white when you insert a disc and when the disc is identified, the proper indicator becomes a solid blue ring and the other turns off. Why Sharp didn’t make the DVD light white and the Blu-ray light blue is beyond me. Sitting on the couch, the large blue circle tells me absolutely nothing.

Located between the large, pointless circles is a small, front panel display and it’s another head-scratcher. As my friend Michael put it, this diminutive readout looks more “like something from a solar-powered calculator” than a next generation movie player. Making matters worse is its terrible off-axis readability. Put simply, the front panel looks great when the machine is off but it’s not terribly informative when you need it most.

Comparing its spec set with that of other Blu-ray players, one feature that does stand out is the BD-HP20U’s relatively quick load times. The machine is fast to boot up and discs tend to load in 15 seconds or less; that’s hardly fast when compared to DVD, but it’s downright speedy for HD DVD and BD players. These are the fastest loads I’ve seen from a standalone BD player, but Sony’s Playstation 3 still holds the record.

Like other newer Blu-ray players, the BD-HP20U is capable of 1080/24p video output. That is, it can output a 1920 x 1080 image, progressively-scanned at 24 frames per second – the frame rate of film and what’s been encoded on most DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Not all HDTVs and projectors can accept a 1080/24p image but if yours does, this will arguably provide the best possible image from film-based content. On the Sharp, HDMI video output needs only to be set to “Auto” – if your TV can handle a 1080p 24Hz signal, that’s what it’ll get.

In terms of audio, the BD-HP20U offers onboard decoding for Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD. It also supports DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio, but it can only extract the “DTS core” portion from those soundtracks. Audio can be output via HDMI or from its 5.1 channel analog outputs – a welcome attraction on the rear panel.

As a standard definition DVD player, the BD-HP20U is adequate but not exceptional. Although picture quality looked fine when playing a few episodes from Boston Legal’s third season, the BD-HP20U struggled with a few tests on Silicon Optix’s HQV Benchmark DVD. Specifically, the “jaggies” tests were disappointing and the 3-2 pulldown detection during the race car sequence had the grandstand area looking rather noisy.

Although I didn’t care for the front panel and its standard definition playback is only average, I was hard pressed to find fault with the BD-HP20U’s Blu-ray Disc performance. Watching Fox’s Live Free or Die Hard (my new favorite Blu-ray demo disc), I was utterly blown away by the vibrant colors and rich detail being served up by the combination of the BD-HP20U and a Panasonic PT-AE2000 projector. Backward compatibility with DVD is certainly appreciated, but once you’ve watched a few high def titles that look this good, it’s hard to watch a DVD and still feel impressed by the experience.

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