Sony BDP-S300
Pros:
Great video and audio, even with standard DVD's.
Cons:
Load times are longer, unit runs hot.
The Bottom Line:
From what is available in this price-range, the Sony is a smart choice.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
Having owned DVD players since they first arrived on the market, I was familiar with 'red' DVD playback (480i/480p), but had not used either the now defunct HD-DVD or the Blu-ray formats. I had garnered as much information as I could prior to our purchase and visited different electronics stores to try to see and 'use' the various products to find out what was available and what each offered. I then narrowed it down to the Sony and Panasonic. At that point, we selected the Sony.
We settled on the Sony BDP-S300 even though I was originally waiting for the S350 which was due out soon. It came down to what the 350 would have vs. the 300 and I didn't feel that what the 350 offered would be better suited for us, so we opted for the S300.
The BDP-S300 came with version 3.80 firmware, but I contacted Sony and received the v. 3.95 disc, which I have uploaded into the S300. The performance was better, I felt.
The Blu-ray players are different from standard DVD players in that they need time to power on (30 sec.) and time to load a disc (30-40 sec.) and they run hotter than their predecessors (standard DVD).
We have ours connected to an A/V receiver via HDMI, which is connected to our TV the same way.
The performance of the BDP-S300 is very good with both Blu-ray discs and with standard DVD's, which are 'upscaled' to 1080p. To me, load times are inconsequential, but the video and audio outputs are most important and the S300 does a great job with both. Not advertised, the 3.95 firmware reportedly provides Dolby True HD lossless audio, but I haven't confirmed that since our A/V receiver is HDMI 1.1 (1.3 is needed). We will be swapping out our receiver soon with the manufacturer (Harmon/Kardon) for an HDMI 1.3 version, so I'll know for sure at that time. Until then, we have the audio set on PCM, which sounds great.
We rent standard and Blu-ray discs thru Netflix and I've found that if a Blu-ray disc isn't clean, then it may jump to another scene rather than try to make out the data.
Overall, we're very happy with the S300 and glad that we made this purchase.
