Right at the core of the $500-600 price point, Yamaha BD-S1065 Blu-ray player enters against some stiff high-end competition.   It’s a sect currently dominated by Oppo’s BDP-83, a jackknife player that does just about anything needed.  Yamaha’s unit, however, is up to task in offering some healthy competition; as a Blu-ray Profile 2.0 player with a mind audio quality, it certainly impresses with its capabilities.  Whether its highly-chiseled sonic class alone justifies the price depends on individual preference and the necessity for media adaptation, but everything the BD-S1065 offers certainly packs a hefty punch underneath the hood. 

Out of the Box:

At first glance, the size and weight of Yamaha’s S1065 will be a surprise – at least a marginal surprise, as those familiar with the company’s components are accustomed to their girth.  Close to double the height, roughly 4 inches tall, and just as wide and deep as other players, this hefty 10-pound model is a beast that’s built to last.  Its design aesthetic matches that of other Yamaha devices, with the style of buttons, silver platforms at the bottom, and dividing line shot right across the frame to match an underlying receiver.  Of course, placement of a Blu-ray player on top of a high-temperature receiver is discouraged, but at least it’ll match the rest of the equipment in other portions of your media rack.  A standard, light Yamaha remote, a generic A/C power cord, Composite A/V cables, and a hefty tri-language Manual that goes through the bones, bits and pieces of setting up the unit in very descript not-so-robotic fashion.

Raised, semi-textured buttons are available at the front of the unit for remote-free usage, including a circular Power button to the left and Eject, Play, Pause, and Stop buttons to the right.  The time display offers an adjustable bright blue LED readout, with crisp lettering that can be seen even at its lowest dimness (discussed a little later).  It’s a cheerful hulk of a Blu-ray player, welcoming us and saying “Bye” with each power up/down.  Once the unit’s been turned on, it offers indicators for the type of disc inside (BD, CD, DVD), title, chapter track, and several repeat options. 

 

Yamaha owners are fully aware of the company’s prowess in offering a multipurpose array of jacks to the rear of their equipment, and the S1065 shouldn’t overly disappoint in that regard.  As to be expected of most Blu-ray players, it carries an HDMI port for transmission to HDTVs and applicable receivers, along with S-Video, Component, Composite Video, and a Toslink optical port.  The big satisfactory element comes in the 7.1 analog jacks, making transmission of HD sound possible to non-HDMI receivers.  For BD-Live and BD-Java, we’ve also got a LAN Ethernet port and a USB 2.0 extension port.  Rounding things out, an Infrared Remote In/Out jack is also available, though RS-232 isn’t available.  For the larger portion of this review, Yamaha’s BD-S1065 was connected via HDMI to Onkyo’s SR605.

Remote:

Yamaha’s remote is a very meager affair, offering little beyond the stock offerings on others.  It’s a light, relatively inexpensive remote without a lot of weight to it.  A gray circular directional navigator adorns the center with an Enter button directly in the middle, with Top Menu, Pup-up Menu, Return, and Exit at the applicable points around the circle.  Above that sits the four-colored bookmark buttons and the numerical keypad, as well as six gray toggle buttons for Open/Close, Subtitle, Dimmer, Audio, Video-Reset, and Angle.  At the very bottom, we’ve got the stock in-movie buttons – Play, Pause, Stop, FF/RW, etc. – as well as Status and On-Screen buttons.  The Status button shows the elapsed time of the film/feature playing, while the On Screen goes a little more in-depth in showing the audio track, angle, and other elements.  It doesn’t, however, have a codec indicator through the interface.  The Yamaha remote doesn’t come with any form of backlit buttons.   It’s simple there to do the job. 

Setup:

Once the BD-S1065 has been fired up, pressing the SETUP button makes four separate functions available – Display Title List, On Screen Language, Picture, and Settings.  It’s under the settings that the player’s attributes can be tailored in a fairly dense number of options.  It allows for the following to be adjusted:

 

• Audio/Video Settings
• Speaker Settings
• Quick Start
• Auto Power On
• HDMI Control
• Playback Setting
• Communication Setup (Ethernet)
• Version
• USB Memory Management
• Software Update
• System Reset
  

Audio/Video Settings branches out to TV Aspect Ratio, HDMI Video Out, Secondary Audio, Audio Out, and Dynamic Range Control.  In order to enable Picture-in-Picture special features via BD-Java, Secondary Audio must be turned on – which, in effect, disabled direct DTS HD Master Audio / Dolby TrueHD tracks to be processed, instead decoding them internally to Multichannel PCM.  The Audio Out function is where you can select whether to use HDMI, Digital Output, or the 7.1 or 2.0 analog outputs.  Along those lines, the Speaker Settings function can also be used to alter speaker options when using the 7.1 analog jacks.  Most of the other settings options are fairly explanatory, with Quick Start enabling unit power on/off when the Eject button is pushed, the Auto Power Off function sending the unit into Standby Mode after 10 minutes.