Flawed Player, Great Picture

I bought the Sony BDP-S300 as my first player as I journeyed in the realm of Blu-Ray.  I was already a HD-DVD owner, twice over, with the Xbox 360 add-on then an Toshiba A2.

First off, the picture is outstanding and as good as any Blu-Ray player on the market.  The build quality of the unit feels solid.  The Sony BDP-S300 did it's job most of the time, however it's not without it's flaws.  

The main thing a new owner will notice is the atrocious load times.  It takes around 2-3 minutes for the player to "boot up" so that you can access it's menus or open the disc drive.  This is definitely a nitpick that soon builds into a major annoyance!  I'm so used to DVD players where you go over to it, crouch down, hit power, pop in the disc all within about 15 seconds.  Here, you will be in "old DVD player habit" and crouch down, then suddenly realize.. "Crap, I gotta wait".  So you either stay crouched down there waiting for it to boot up, or go make a sandwich.  Either way, it's pretty ridiculous. :)

Another flaw I have run into, way too often, is that that it sometimes refuses to play some discs.  This could be a firmware issue, but this is definitely something that should have been ironed out in the whole Blu-Ray release.  There is no reason this player should refuse new releases being such a new piece of hardware.  Other times, it will just skip 2-8 minutes of movie on newer discs.  Looking around the net, I've seen this is quite common.

Lastly, some of the menus chug along as if the player is just not powerful enough to display them.  The highlights of options will lag as you hit over on the remote, taking a second to switch options.

Overall it's been a pretty good experience.  The sound is good through optical, though a bit low in volume on my receiver.  I know this has to do with the down-mixing but my new Blu-Ray player (PS3) does not have this problem.

Which brings me to another point.  For the retail price of these things, I don't think it's worth it.  I scored mine slightly used, otherwise I just would have gone with the much more future proof PS3, which has the ability to update through the internet avoiding LONG sessions of renting a movie, finding out it doesn't play, and going to make a firmware update disc on your computer to update the BDP.

I've since upgraded to a PS3 and am much happier.  I'd recommend the Sony BDP-S300 to people that can find it on the cheap, otherwise, your better off with the PS3 or waiting till the prices come down.