I found myself incorporating a great deal of what I'm going over in this installment in the Black Friday Buying Guide. I've reworked and consolidated the basics of picking a Blu-ray player here.
Profile 1.0 vs. 1.1 vs. 2.0: What That Means
1.0 & 1.1: Birds of a Feather
A Profile 1.0 or 1.1 Blu-ray player may not play newer discs well or at all (in theory). They also do not support internet connection for firmware updates or BD-Live. To update the firmware, you generally have to download a file from the manufacturer's website, mount it as a CD image, and then burn that to disc. If all of that meant gibberish to you, then you are among the 90% of people on the planet that are disadvantaged by this "inconvenience". BD-Live pretty much blows at this point anyway, so you aren't missing much on that front.
Across the board, it takes forever for them to open the tray after you push eject, and the load times are longer than any 2.0 player. 1.0 players do not support BonusView (though 1.1 players do), which includes all of the pop-up trivia tracks or enhanced commentary tracks. BonusView features can be found on a lot of discs, and the studios all use different names for it. Disney, for example, calls this Cinexplore. Warner Bros. uses BonusView for their Maximum Movie Mode found on Watchmen, 300, and Terminator Salvation, among others.
2.0: The Wave of the Future
All Profile 2.0 players support internet connection in one way or another, whether over ethernet or WiFi. Any one of these players should, without fail or hesitation, play all the Blu-ray discs currently on the market. Not all 2.0 players are created alike. Newer ones tend to load and open the tray much faster. None of the older players support BD-Live, but these do. The only BD-Live feature I've thus far found even marginally useful to anyone is the IMDb Live Lookup on some Fox discs. The real reason to flock to 2.0 players is the newer, faster operating system for the player.
Services, "Apps", and So On
Now we're seeing newer Blu-ray players with built-in compatibility for services like Netflix Watch Instantly (the most popular), Pandora for free music streaming, YouTube, and Roxio CinemaNow. Honestly, if you already have a device that does things like Watch Instantly, then just get a good player that loads quickly and ignore the extra bells and whistles.
WiFi versus Ethernet
Not having Wifi built-in isn't a deal-breaker, but it makes things like firmware updates (which happen fairly often) a pain in the ass. On top of that, BD-Live is no big loss, but if you want to use new features like Netflix Watch Instantly or Pandora...get ready to run a cable or spend extra for a Wifi adapter of some kind ($75-95 depending on model and quality). Until prices come down a bit on the WiFi-enabled players with the extras (if you care about those) or not, it's actually cheaper to get one of the hard-wired ethernet players and one of these adapters.
WiFi Adapters and Dongles
If you have a Samsung player that's "WiFi ready", then you can go with the proprietary Samsung USB Wifi Adapter. Otherwise, you'll need the brand-agnostic Linksys Dual Band Wireless-N Adapter.
Brand Loyalty
I trust the following brands: LG, Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic. The more recent the model, the better. Amazon does a great job of listing the date of release on these.
The HD Guide is an ongoing series focusing on the evolving world of HD in the home: getting started, understanding the lingo, and appreciating the best (and worst) discs that are out there.