Your First Blu-ray

To go with the new HDTV, my mom recently bought a Blu-Ray player. She went with the Sony BDP-S300 without doing too much research other than the price. Having said that, I wish she had done a little more research because there are a few issues that might have prevented her from buying this unit - or at least spending so much money on it.

My biggest problem with the player is the load time for each disc. I used to get annoyed with my DVD player because it might take 30 seconds to get through the startup and arrive at the top menu. With my new player I wait over 75 seconds with most of my discs. Some have even taken 2 full minutes to start up. Of course, once you get used to this sort of thing, you can plan for it: turn on player, go to bathroom, load disc, go pick up pizza, press play, take a nap, and then enjoy your movie. Obviously it's not as bad as all this, but there are other devices out there that can do everything that this unit does and do it faster. Chief among these is the Playstation 3. This has a much faster processor than the stand alone player and of course allows for gaming. Even if you have no interest in anything but the Blu-ray ability of the PS3, it's a worthwhile option to look into because of its capability.

The design of the unit is not as flashy as Sony tends to make things. It has a demure front panel that allows it to fit right in with your other components without drawing undo attention to itself. While the player has a front LCD information display like most other players, it lacks the flashing lights and glowing icons that these other players have. This serves to enhance the viewing experience in that one is able to watch a movie without having a optical assault from somewhere off camera to distract your attention from the movie. The only design flaw that I have found with the S300 is the buttons are not all located on the front of your player. Both the open/close button and the power button are located on top of the player. This means that if you choose to stack your components, you must keep this player on the top so that these buttons remain accessible.

The remote on this device makes a good case for getting a universal remote. While there is nothing wrong with it, it does lack some of the design niceties you might expect from a $500 movie player. There is no back lighting in the remote which makes for difficult operation during the movie, and to compound the lack of lighting, the buttons are mostly the same size and height and cannot be differentiated by touch either. Any decent universal remote will have both of these features and will allow you to control multiple components of you're a/v system without juggling more remotes than you have fingers.

Setting up the S300 is just as simple as setting up any other part of you're a/v system. It may not be easy for those without any idea of what goes in the back, but for anyone who can hook up a DVD player, the S300 will be a breeze. There are a number of output options including HDMI, S-video, and component-out as well as standard and 5.1 audio out. My mom was able to do the setup all by herself within a few minutes of taking the unit out of the box.  Deciding where to place it in the a/v cabinet took longer than plugging everything in.

The picture out of this player is the same that I have noticed with all Blue-ray players: if you have not seen it before, you will try to reach out and touch it, but for those familiar with the quality of Blu-ray, it will seem just like all the other players. I have yet to notice and deinterlacing issues or any color problems on any of the discs I have used.

The S300 is also capable of playing regular DVDs. It attempts to convert them to a high definition format and generally does so well. Some of my movies do show a strange pattern at some points. There are lines present in the film that are not there when I play them back with a regular DVD player. I am nowhere near an expert in this field and I cannot explain this irregularity, but I can say that it exists and it can be annoying, but not so much so that I would stop watching the movie.

Overall, this is a well designed player and a good performer, if a bit slow. The movies look fantastic and I always prefer to watch them over my regular DVDs. While the player is on the pricey side, its value will increase significantly as its price goes down - especially when that dips below the price of the PS3.