This player will handle pretty much anything you throw at. Firstly it's a respectable Blu-ray player, handling 24/50 frames per second playback, BD Live compatibility for playing extra content from the web and 7.1 channel audio decoding including DTS HD and Dolby True HD sound tracks. It also upscales DVDs to 1080p and plays audio CDs. The only disappointment is that it's not region free, even for DVDs, so you can't play movies from overseas.
For those with a taste for downloading, the BD370 also handles a wide variety of video formats such as high-def MPEG1/2/4 files (including DivX and H.264, plus downloads from divx.com/vod). Backyard movie-makers will appreciate the fact it plays high-def AVCHD camcorder files. Once you throw MP3 and WMA music, plus JPEG, GIF and PNG images into the mix you've got yourself an extremely versatile media player. You can even play files straight from a USB stick.
Of course the headline feature is YouTube playback and here the BD370 performs admirably. Similar to the iPhone, the YouTube menu offers you a choice of Featured, Recent, Most Viewed and Top Rated clips as well as a Search option. Files are reasonably quick to load and playback very smooth.
YouTube clips don't play full screen by default, which is probably for the best. The video plays on the left of the screen with details on the right and, even on a 46 inch screen, the picture quality is very good for well-produced content such as Chad Vader series. One frustrating quirk is that widescreen YouTube clips are squashed to 4:3. When you switch to the full-screen view they look right (although obviously more pixelated) yet, in full screen mode, 4:3 content is stretched to widescreen. If you're a regular YouTube watcher you could consider this a deal breaker, although we suspect LG might fix it in a future firmware update.
The BD370 is a little more expensive than the competition, but if you'll use any of the extra MPEG, AVCHD or YouTube features it's certainly worth it.
LG's BD370 YouTube-enabled Blu-ray player retails for $449.