I already took a look at the LG BP530 Blu-ray player here and found it had good video performance, but a couple of flaws that kept it from being as good as some competitors. Now I’ve taken a look at the step-up model, the BP730, for Secrets of Home Theater. The main upgrades that you get over the BP530 are a better design, Miracast, 2D to 3D conversion, 4K upscaling, and the LG Magic Remote. Of course the issues I had with the BP530 had nothing to do with a lack of those features, so can the BP730 fix those?

None of the freezes that I encountered on the BP530 occurred on the BP730. I don’t know if it is a firmware update that fixed them, or if they were random anyway, but the issue didn’t happen with the BP730. Unfortunately the responsiveness of the UI, my other main gripe with the BP530, persists. The UI looks very nice and is very well-organized, but is slow compared to other Blu-ray players.

The Magic Remote is more of a personal choice in what you think of it. I wasn’t a massive fan, but I did prefer it to the Magic Remote for the LG TVs that I have used. It feels great in the hand, but feel the button placement could be improved and it could be a better solution than it is now. I’ll also continue to wish they provided a regular remote as well.

You can read far more in-depth about the LG BP730 over at Secrets of Home Theater and see if it will be a solution for you, or if you should look at another play like the Sony BDP-S5100.