Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Player

BDP-S300

Posted Oct 31, 2007 - I held off purchasing this until the price was below $400. Amazon had a special with free shipping. Setup up was easy, just HDMI to TV, power cord, and left & right audio outputs to my surround sound. First movie was Pirates of the Caribbean, great detail however it was only marginally better than my Panasonic S52 upscaling DVD player. The biggest difference was the lack of blurring during fast moving sequences or when the camera panned quickly. 2nd movie was transformers on regular DVD, again no major difference from my $89 panasonic player. 3rd movie was Bridge to Terabithia, this movie was not shown in wide screen but filled up the entire 40" Sony Bravia LCD. This picture was the best I've seen yet, you lose a little of the frame from left to right but gain much more picture overall. Went to Sony's website and updated the firmware (quite easy to do with a DVD burner). Watched Premonition on blu ray, at 52 minutes in the screen froze. FF, rew, stop, etc had no affect, had to power the unit down. Skipped to the scene and this time had not issues. Later on in the movie more skips. Not sure if it was the disc or the firmware upgrade I performed. I'll update later if I continue to have the problem, if I do I will contact tech support and try to undo the firmware upgrade. I'm only giving this satisfactory due to the disc skipping. If the trouble is a bad disc I'd raise it to 4 stars. Turns out my problem was a bad blu ray disc, I've not had any skipping problems since.

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Great player-worked flawlessly from day one

Posted Jan 24, 2008 - I bought this Blu-Ray player last July to watch movies and it has worked flawlessly for me from day 1. I am not a viewer who will use picture in picture (which this does not have)nor do I play any of the games which are on some of the discs. I wanted a Blu-Ray player which gives me full HD video and great sound. The audio sounds great on my surround sound system when I use it. Sometimes I just use the TV speakers and the audio is excellent. If you are interested in a Blu-Ray player with outstanding video and excellent sound this player is for you.

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Decent Player, Certainly Room for Improvement

Posted Dec 29, 2007 - This player had promise--more reasonable price point, full 1080p Blu-Ray playback. However, this player is fraught with problems. The first thing you'll notice is the LONG LOAD TIMES. Blu-Ray Discs can take upwards of 2-3 minutes to reach the title screen, even after loading the latest firmware. While we're on the subject of firmware updates, the lack of an Ethernet port is completely UNACCEPTABLE when every other player in its class has one. The lack of this port means that you must download the update from Sony, burn it to a disc, and then load it in the player. What a joke. Other than that, the player works fine. Blu-Ray playback is great once you get it loaded....the problem is getting there. This player would be a good option if it was $200. The player can generally be found for $400 or less, but this is just too much for a slow player with no Ethernet port.

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The format war rages on...

Posted Dec 19, 2007 - Truce! With the help of recent price drops I was able to grab this unit for just $256 at a local Military Exchange to go right along side my Toshiba HD-A3 (Black Friday $179) Now I have both formats for just over $400 not to mention 15 free High Def movies! In comparison to the HD-A3, the Sony player is way bigger and has more connectivity options, including a full set of 5.1 surround sound analog outputs. But as far as picture quality they're undistinguisable. The Sony also has the advantage to fully integrate with some Sony HDTV's as far as control is concern. But this matters little to me since I don't have a Sony TV. Overall a great buy for those who want to explore the HD world without braking the bank.

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Sony BSD-300 Blu-Ray DVD player

Posted Dec 5, 2007 - Very good picture quality. I have it set up with a Pioneer 60" Kuro plasma TV along with a Yamaha receiver with JBL wall mount 7.1 speakers. The picture is impeccable along with the best sound I have ever heard.

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Blu-Ray DVD

Posted Dec 4, 2007 - I hope Blu-Ray wins the battle in the DVD market.The picture quality is exceptional. The response time on the eject system is a little slow. Great buy and value overall.

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Finally, a Blu-ray Player Reasonably Priced!

Posted Jun 21, 2007 - Sony has finally come out their second generation Blu-ray player at half the original price of the original! The BDP-S300 is priced at $499.00 which looks like a bargain compared to their previous BDP-S1 model. Besides the cost benefit, what else do you get with this player? Unlike the previous model the S300 can play CDs in addition to DVDs. This player has Dolby TrueHD capability installed. In addition, it seems to load slightly faster than the previous model. Most of the weaknesses are shared by the previous model and Sony has not made any effort to improve on them. Specifically, when you turn the unit off, all memory has disappeared so that when to turn it on next time, you have to find where you left off. Very time consuming! A high-end product such as this should have memory for at least 6 discs. The other complaint is that I would expect Sony to have a remaining time display in addition to elapsed time and total time displays. Sony offers this feature on most of its lower end DVD players, so why is this feature not possible on a high def player? All in all, the BDP-S300 delivers what it promises. If it would correct some of these problems, it would be a first class product. The best improvement on this player is that Sony has reduced the price to make it affordable to more people wanting to get into Blu-ray technology.

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Very good Blu-ray player

Posted Jul 1, 2007 - I received this player last week and hooked it up to my 40V2500 Sony Bravia LCD via HDMI. Setup was very quick and easy. Load times are similar to other HD players. Power up takes about thirty seconds and loading Blu-ray discs and DVDs takes about another thirty seconds. The load times on the two Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-ray discs took almost two minutes each and navigating through their menus was a little slow. I watched Pirates 1 & 2 Blu-ray discs without any problems and the picture and sound quality was great. The picture quality on Pirates 1 & 2 is in the top tier of any HD disc released so far. I tested a few other Blu-ray discs, DVDs, and CDs and they all played fine. I could not tell any real difference in the DVD upconversion between the BDP-S300 and the HD-A2. Sound quality was also good although I am not using a receiver or surround sound speakers. This player is not really a great value at $500, but overall, I am happy with the purchase. The player is very solid and Blu-ray discs look great. The player came with firmware 2.0 already installed, but hopefully a future firmware update can fix any slow load times with the advanced Java titles. I suspect many Blu-ray promotions, discounts, and new players are on the way so you may be better waiting until the fall to buy a player; however, if you are impatient like me, this seems to be a very good player.

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Sony BDP-S300 Blu-Ray Player is just awesome

Posted Jul 23, 2007 - I bought the Blu-Ray player to go with my new Sony 50" 1080p Rear-projection TV. I have watched about 4 blu-ray movies so far (Superman Returns, Open Season, Mission Impossible & Fugitive) and have been blown away by the picture clarity. I have watched the Fugitive about 5 times already but I was able to see little things that I never noticed before in a regular DVD. I also threw in couple of DVDs that I own (Die Hard 3, Independence Day) and once again was impressed with the excellent job this player did to upconvert it to 1080p. Highly recommended.

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SONY BDP-S300

Posted Mar 22, 2008 - Beware of 5 Star ratings, Since they are usually posted by electronics sales people. I Purchased the Sony BDP-300 at a local retailer for $418.00 including tax, 3/13/2008, Returned it and got a full refund 3/17/2008. Load times are to much to bare, Local Video rental very limited in Blu-Ray selection. After having it for 4 days i couldn't bare dealing with it anymore. My opinion for a player this disfunctional, it's worth $100.00 Paid to you by Sony Per day to test their new products. The next Generation of blu rays to look for will be coming out soon. Sharp BD-HP50 Blu-ray Player (2nd Q 2008) and Panasonic DMP-BD50 Blu-ray Player (May 1st 2008).Click below for upcoming Bue ray players. www.blu-ray.com/player...

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magnificant

Posted Jul 17, 2007 - With this Blu-ray DVD player you will be able to enjoy movies in full 1080p format, the way how they were meant to be seen; wast of additional options that this DVD is offering will make that viewing session even more enjoyable

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Good player for ~ $ 300

Posted Jan 5, 2008 - I bought mine from WalMart.com for $ 350+ tax. Very easy out the box setup. Rather big and heavy unit. I bought HDMI cable from Amazon for $ 5. I upgraded the firmware to v3.3 and eventually to v3.7. No increase in loading and boot-up speed noted (with BD disks). It becomes annoying after a while. Anyway, great picture quality and integration with SONY Bravia TV. Remote has several functions and allows menu selection while DVD is playing - without exiting the movie. Has several audio outputs. Mine started giving trouble a week into using it. The player would drop video and audio output randomly and this got worse, requiring the player to be returned. Also, this player does NOT suppot DVD-HD audio decoding - which Samsung does support. Overall a decent player for $ 300-350. It appears to be a "first generation" BD player and hopefully better (and faster) BD players will be released soon. I am planning to purchase this again soon. This time I will buy extended warranty!

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Don

Posted Jan 11, 2008 - This is the worst BD player out there, It can not play a movie without skipping at the beginning or end. You cant access special features, the unit freezes at certain times, no wonder they dropped the price, they cant get rid of them. A word of advice, check out Samsung, LG or Panasonic, but stay as far away from the Sony.

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Needs work

Posted Nov 6, 2007 - For this price, it needs to be much faster, and address all audio codecs. I'm sure Sony will eventually provide a killer Blu-Ray console that is affordable, but it's not here yet. Probably not till after Blu-Ray 2.0 specs are pushed. Wait a bit. In the meantime, just get a PS3.

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rian

Posted Aug 3, 2007 - I bought this blue-ray player today, and I'm taking it back first thing tomorrow. It started to play one DVD well, then I paused it for a phone call. That was a mistake. After 15 minutes trying to get it to play I gave up. Then it played Kill Bill okay, but lots of skips. After over an hour trying to get it to play other DVDs, I gave up permanently. I tried several different ones and the best I got was 4 seconds worth of the menue option. Then just a blank screen. I hooked it up with a HDMI cable to the reciever and kept switching ports. I rebooted several times, switched cables, etc... Bottom line: Save your money! This is the worst piece of crap ever made. To bad all the major studios are going Blue-ray, because sony is supposed to be the best. And if this is the best they have, we are in a world of hurt. This is a defective product. I picked it up today shipped directly from the manufacturer. It will be going back tomorrow. Buying this product is no different than someone putting a knife to your throat and robbing you of $500. Trust me.

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