Launched at CEDIA US in Atlanta, Cambridge Audio released details of the company’s first Blu-ray player 650BD and a matching AV Receiver 650R.

Well respected for their Hi-Fi products Cambridge Audio’s new Blu-ray player has a lot to live up to. Set to sell for $779 in the US, the 650BD is equipped to handle CD, HDCD, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, SACD and of course Blu-Ray discs.

As you would expect the 650BD has great audio performance with 24/192kHz Digital to Analogue Converters and Cambridge Audio tell us, “meticulous attention has been paid to the audio circuitry design to ensure that the 650BD can reproduce the dynamics and scale required for modern movie soundtracks whilst also being able to deliver a genuinely musical performance with either stereo or multi-channel music discs.”

All surround-sound formats are supported including decoding of Dolby True HD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio in Stereo, 5.1 or 7.1.

Cambridge Audio claim, the 650BD boasts power-up and loading speeds which are amongst the most impressive of any Blu-ray player currently available. Energy consumption is also said to be less than 1W whilst in standby.

The 650BD benefits from the new Azur wrap-around casework design and its proprietary engineering is housed within a new low resonance, acoustically damped chassis. The Azur Navigator remote which also controls the matching 650R home cinema receiver completes the package.

The 650R is to sell for $1799 in the US and will decode all the latest high-definition audio and delivers 7 x 100W of power.

The 650R is also the first to feature Cambridge Audio Mic Controlled Auto Set-up (CAMCAS) with a supplied microphone for extremely quick and easy installation.

The receiver handles HDMI 1.3c and uses a completely new Cirrus Logic / Crystal chipset with the latest twin core 32-bit DSPs.

Both the 650BD and 650R are set to be available late 2009.