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Value & ease of use
Selling for such a low price, you could argue that the S470's ability with 3D as well as 2D Blu-ray discs comes virtually free of charge. And if you think that's good value, you're going to love the S470's Bravia Internet Video.
Some brands – LG springs to mind – are about to launch separate adaptor boxes of around the size of an Apple TV to bring web video capabilities to any TV.
Effectively, that's what the S470 already is, with the bonus that Sony's web TV service is one of the best around. As well as on-demand TV from the BBC iPlayer (surely the headline act) and Demand Five, there's movie streaming via Lovefilm and the delights of YouTube and Eurosport, among many other services – including Sony's own Qriocity service. If only there was integrated Wi-Fi…
We suspect that the S470's 'wired-only' reputation will leave the rapidly improving (thanks to frequent automatic firmware updates) Bravia Internet Video service unused by many.
Digital media is handled terrifically well by the S470. Firstly, because the interface – Sony's XMB, which is common to all of its connected home products, including the PS3 – was born to tie-up disparate sources. Secondly, it's utterly comprehensive (we can confirm MKV/DivX HD support), with WMV HD alone in not being supported.
Sadly, DLNA networking is not nearly as impressive. For some reason, the S470 completely ignores a plethora of file format stored on a PC on the same network, managing to playback just AVC HD, AVI (DivX), MP3 and JPG formats.
