This is one of the first V2.0 players available from a non tier one manufacturer that is an in-house design and fully representative of the companies design ethos and qualitative market position.

We are fascinated that we are able to offer as an option a hardware upgrade that will enable the player to play Blu Ray discs from any region ... $200 and thoroughly under the counter apparently ...

The 650BD is a full-featured universal Blu-ray disc player supporting BD Profile 2.0 (BD-Live and BonusView), DVD-Video,DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD (SACD),HDCD, CD, digital music and photos.

The 650BD has apparantly been optimised to produce excellent picture and sound quality from your existing DVD’s too, which can be viewed in full HD 1080p resolution. Cambridge claim that the 650BD excels with DVD playback relative to other Blu Ray players in its market segment. The 650BD will be a multiregion DVD player, so there is no need to suffer the indignity of discovering that your hard sought US titles won't play back on the new device.

Interestingly the 650BD supports all high-resolution audio formats including DVDA and SACD, both can be output via HDMI, or output through the 7.1 channel analogue outputs. The 650BD is targeted at audiophiles who want the best from both music and movies, with dedicated DAC’s for its two channel,and multi channel outputs.

The player has a "Pure Audio Mode" wherin 640BD shuts down all video processing to prevent any audio signal interference or degradation.

For movie soundtracks, the 650BD supports onboard decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio meaning it can be utilised with a non HD Audio Receiver with 7.1 inputs to allow the user to exploit these formats which of course can also be output as bitstream to allow an AV receiver to decode these internally.

In use, the 650BD is claimed to be mechanically whisper quiet and lightning fast, with disc loading times a fraction of the competition, so there is minimal delay to access a disc.

It is capable of parallel output from its various video and audio connections, meaning it can play HDMI on a primary screen for example whilst outputting Component video to a whole house distribution system, a feature currently lacking from the competition at anything like this price point.

There are front and back USB 2.0 ports to enable easy access to music, photos and video collections.