Disc compatibility is good, spinning all known variants of DVD recordables, as well as esoteric fare such as Dual Discs and MP3/WMA/ JPEG CDs. It's not compatible with DVD-Audio or SACD, though.

Despite the battleship build, the player – specifically the disc drive – struck me as a tad noisy, drawing attention to itself during the quiet passages of the bombastic Master and Commander. More mundanely, there's no disc eject on the remote, which is a curious operational omission.

For Yamaha fans looking to match a high-performance BD player with their other components, the BD-S2900 can't come soon enough. Build quality is best-in-class and it shines both as a Profile 1.1 machine and a CD player. Some reservations remain, but it's good to ï¬nally see Yamaha with a BD solution