Exclusive Review: LG BD300 blu ray player
November 10, 2008
The Blu-ray format has enjoyed the single spot light for a while now. With the demise of HD-DVD, it has not had to compete with any other formats. This might have led to some slowing down on innovation and improvements to the format. The lack of unified Profile on every stand alone in the market can get confusing and frustrating for consumers. This is being rectified in the way of upgradable players via firmware update and the new players being Profile 2.0 compliant. The LG BD300 is Profile 2.0 player with plethora of other nice features.
The overall look of the player is pretty solid. The front panel has glossy black finish. The left front flap covers the disc tray. The right side consists of LCD screen as well as the standard playback buttons. Nothing out of ordinary and perfectly ergonomical. Would of have liked a lighted buttons just for the cool factor.
LG has done a great job implementing the GUI. A lot of players don't have user friendly interface or just plain terrible looking interfaces. The graphics are nicely done in vibrant colors and more importantly, it is very intuitive navigations. You will most likely wont need to read the manual to operate this player. The menus are easy to navigate and the options very well laid out.
The aesthetics aside, BD300 is loaded with great features. BD300 comes loaded with the Profile 2.0. This includes the BD Live and BonusView as well as other features implemented in previous profiles. The new Blu-ray movies are starting to take advantage of these features including the BD Live internet contents. Besides the latest profile, the BD300 is the first player to include the Netflix streaming capability. Anyone who has used the Netflix Roku player should feel right at home using this feature. You can basically stream any movies offered by Netflix streaming content. The contents don't encompass all the movies but has fairly good selection. And, it beats driving out to rent a movie at local video stores.
The most important aspect of any blu-ray player is the video playback quality of blu-ray discs. Watching some heavy action sequence movies such as Batman Begin and Matrix movies didn't display any jaggies or blockiness. If you looked close with slow mode you could see few jaggies here and there. But this isn't noticeable during regular playback. Only the hardcore videophile might object to the performance.
The standard DVD playback is very good as with most other players. It has crips upconversion and does not show any video corruption seen in cheaper players.
There are very good audio options. It has the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD but lacks the DTS-HD Master audio decoding out of the box. As with most players, it can output these and most other formats in bitstream formats to your receiver for decoding. There are your usual array connection options including component and s-video as well as HDMI. The USB in the front is a nice bonus for photo viewing if you need them.
Overall, it is very good player with latest features. If you don't wish to go with the PS3 option, than this is the standalone player to get.
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Rating:
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Just Googled and read the whole article and i must have to say that me and my husband loved reading your post. We bookmarked and will regularly check more updates to come from your website. Thanks for making us one step more enlightened with your blog.
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Great Picture
Love this machine. The picture quality is great, and it’s easy to use. Prompt shipment. Very satisfied.
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Great Blu Ray Player
Had this player for 3 weeks and love it. Picture is great and the ability to stream Netflix is just fantastic. Just added youtube support as well.
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LG Blu Ray
The blu ray player is excellent. The upgrade converter adds amazing quality to regular DVDs, and the Blu Rays play crystal clear. The LG support is lacking to say the least – but Netlix support is outstanding. Streamling Netflix is a huge bonus and based on my service provider I can stream videos in high def.
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Service With A Smile
After successfully hooking this unit up and getting it to work with Netflix, I started noticing a problem. Like most people, the majority of my video collection is still in DVD (I actually own only 1 Blu-Ray disc at this point). My wife started complaining that her Gilmore Girls DVD’s were skipping, and at one point, the player stopped recognizing DVD’s altogether. My theory is that I purchased a bad apple that eventually went bad. I purchased the unit as an “open-box” player at Best Buy. What probably happened was the original purchaser had some of the same problems I did (skipping, etc.) and returned it to the store. If Best Buy did any testing on it at all, they probably popped a Blu-Ray disc in and let it roll for 30 seconds before putting the unit back out on the floor. If I lived closer to the store, I might have returned it myself.
As far as I could tell Blu-Ray was not affected-but considering my earlier point that out of my whole video collection that left me with a total of 1 possible video that I could watch using this player. I tried doing a factory reset on my own as well as making sure I had the most recent firmware-all to no avail. When I finally had enough, I pulled out my receipt and noticed that I was 4 days beyond the 30-day return policy of Best Buy. Not being dismayed, I picked up the phone and called LG’s customer service line. Within 10 minutes the rep had approved factory service on my unit. In two days I had received the return labels and LG paid to ship the unit back via FedEx. Exactly 2 weeks after my call to customer service my unit had been returned. They noted that they “replaced the drive.” Upon re-installation, I noticed that on the home screen, not only was Netflix one of the options, but YouTube had been added as well.
The YouTube feature lets you browse and watch YouTube videos on your tv (internet access required). I was able to successfully log in to my YouTube account and watch “My Favorites.” I named this post, “Service With a Smile” as I was quite pleased with how LG handled my problem. They didn’t make me waste time and go through some pointless troubleshooting-they immediately authorized a return. The turnaround time (i.e., the wait) was acceptable. It was right in line with the amount of time I expected to be without the unit. Not only did I get my machine back in working condition at no cost, but received an added feature.
The integration of the internet with our television is finally starting to happen. We now have multiple machines that allow us to access the internet (in our house, the LD BD300 as well as the Nintendo Wii). The newest televisions are starting to ship with integrated internet capabilities similar to those offered by this Blu-Ray unit. The “convergence” that had been talked about for the past 12 years is starting to take hold on the popular level with many different devices being able to talk to each other.
Anyway, thanks, LG, for making right on a bad situation. You saved me as a customer.
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Video Performance OK, Netflix and YouTube Awesome!
With the BD300, LG became the first manufacturer to offer Netflix online streaming in a Blu-ray player and now, courtesy of a firmware upgrade, the first to include YouTube as well. For those who say, “I just want my Blu-ray player to play discs,” you have to give Netflix online streaming and YouTube a chance. Sure you can watch Netflix online or YouTube from a PC or Mac already, but is your PC hooked up to your HDTV or home theater system? Mine isn’t. And yet with the BD300 I can watch HEROES in High Def or The Office or any one of dozens of other shows (or thousands of movies) instantly via Netflix with no rental fee. And while YouTube video generally isn’t that high quality, it looks surprisingly good on the BD300, even blown up on a large projection screen or flat panel HDTV.
We tested the BD300 with the usual suite of video test discs and while it is certainly not the best upconverting player out there, it’s also not the worst. It’s main problem is in handling 1080i Blu-ray Discs, which it does not de-interlace to 1080p properly, losing some detail in the process. But with 1080p Blu-ray Discs (the great majority of what’s out there on Blu-ray), the unit performs extremely well.
The player is also the fastest we have measured in terms of disc loading, bringing up the first screen of a BD-Java Blu-ray title (Pirates of the Caribbean]] in about 34 seconds – faster than the Panasonic DMP-BD55, the Samsung BD-P2500 and even the Sony PS3. It’s also faster than the rest at loading standard def DVDs. If load speed is important to you, the BD300 is one player you’ll definitely want to look at.
Stock on the BD300 is pretty low most places but you should not pay more than the list price ($349).
Our complete review is at Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).
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Excellent Product!
Super Fast delivery of the Blueray to my home! This product delivers the goods – Excellent audio and video performance. I’m very pleased with my decision to buy this item.
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You Tube and Netflix – The Best of the Best
This Player is by far the best deal you could get if you subscribe to Netflix and/or you are a You Tuber. In addition to these extra bonus features, you can hook up a seagate freeagent go or other external hard drives with the usb slot and play all your mp3s and pictures through the player (which provides all you music fanatics with the ability to hear everything through your surround systems).
All in all, this is a great player. Blu-ray discs load 10sec to 1min, with the norm being only 10 secs. The description states that most netflix movies are not HD, but Netflix has just recently updated their instant library to include many more HD quality movies. Unlike what has been said by other reviews, I have not needed to have a usb drive connected for Blu-ray live features.
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LG BD300
Great product. Works right out of the box. Set up with Netflix is a breeze.
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LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player
difficulty setting up with wireless network. seems to only work when attached directly to modem in order to watch netflix..
LG BD300 Network Blu Ray disc player. Had I know this I would not have purchased product.
Moserod
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LG Blu Ray & Net Flix Streamer
This particular unit hit the mark for us as we wanted both the blu ray and the Netflix streaming. I have a VUDU for the HD streaming, so this filled a void with blu ray and regular Netflix broadcast content.
It works well and is easy to use. The menu slection is easy to use without any special instructions or manual.
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Great Streaming
I purchased this product primarily to stream videos from Netflix. It is wonderful! The videos stream quickly; and the quality is excellent. I wish there were other products to stream through this device. The DVD quality is also excellent and easy to use.
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Now with YouTube, awesome product
Got the DVD player 2 weeks ago, I was amazed by the quality and almost instant play of the Netflix movies, some even even in HD (Some sort of HD, I’m not an expert, lets say very good quality).
Nice surprise yesterday that after upgrading the firmware we got a new section, YouTube! you can also sign up and access all your favorites and more playing full screen.
Very good buy for the price.
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My Opinion of BD300 Blue Ray Player
After many calls to technical support and e-mail chats, they told me that the LG BD300 offers resolution at only 480i when DVI or Component connections are used. My TV is a Dell W3000, receives excellent 1080i resolution, but has no HDMI input, which is necessary for 1080i or higher resolution. Had I known these facts beforehand, I would not have purchased the LG BD300.
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Average BD Capabilities, Poor Netflix Streamer
I bought this player because I was considering buying a Roku Netflix Streamer, but had always lusted over a new BluRay player. And in general I am very pleased with the BluRay function of this player. The Netflix streamer, however, is very poor. Even with my very high speed network connection, it NEVER once has loaded a movie or TV show at more than 3/4 of the possible quality, with the exception of one shorter TV show, which for whatever reason has been able to load in HD. Nothing else does, or has loaded at better than 3/4 quality, and 3/4 quality is not very great. It’s grainy. As a test, I borrowed a neighbor’s Roku Netflix Streamer, and sure enough, all the same movies were able to load at full quality. It is not my connection, it was the LG BD300. For whatever reason, it doesn’t command the quality and speed to get full quality.
For me, this was the primary pull for buying this, and it has disappointed hugely. As I said, BluRay player works great, BluRays look awesome, as do DVDs. But any BluRay player would do that, and there are much cheaper players that are in my opinion, probably better. I’d still advocate a 2-item purchase: a better BluRay player, and a Roku.
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Too expensive right now
I was looking at this just before Christmas, but I thought the price might go down after Christmas. The suggested retail price is around $350 and Amazon had it for a bit less than that. Now it’s $599 and it’s not even in stock? Apparently this is the only item that seems to be selling like hot cakes in this recession we’re having or LG has really screwed up the supply of them.
Either way I’m going to wait it out and if the prices don’t come down to at least retail and actually have them in stock, I’ll look at the competition.
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Love it
Took a little while to get it to link to the web at first, but once it did everything was great. Works fantastic! Love it!
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LG BD300
This product was easy to set up. Instructions were clear and complete. The Blu-ray movie images were excellent and the detail was amazing. We bought the unit because of the ability to stream Netflix movies. This feature is super. It was simple to have Netflix recognize the unit and download videos. I use this feature almost every day.
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Great Blu-Ray Player
I could not be happier with this purchase. The player works great, very easy controls and excellent menus. The Netflix function is icing on the cake. If you’re in the market for a BR player, look no further. You will not find a better player than this.
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The best thing to happen to home entertainment since DVDs and Netflix
I purchased a Pioneer (which I’ve always had great luck with) Blu-Ray player then a guy at work told me about the BD300. I returned the unopened Pioneer and got this unit. $349.88 with free (and FAST) shipping from Vann’s through amazon.com. Setup was quick and effortless. Especially at this price, design, upscaling, picture/sound quality and loading time are excellent. My DVDs look much better than on my upconverting (and slow-loading) Toshiba DVD player and Blu-Ray DVDs are amazing (I broke in the player with “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas” on Blu-Ray). Netflix streaming is great so far (one minor glitch watching “The Mechanic”) and I plan on using it a lot (I never really used it much on my PC). I accidentally pulled the ethernet cable out of the unit and the Netflix movie I was watching didn’t miss a frame (nice buffer). I’m now getting WAY more value out of my DVD library and Netflix subscription. (Updated 2/14/09) Now it streams YouTube. Brilliant.
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Happy NETFLIX customer
I immediately upgraded my regular Samsung Blu-Ray player to this more sophisticated unit. It plays Blu-Ray just fine, but has the added advantage of being able to play my NETFLIX instant movies.
In some cases, even if the movie is said to be in HD, the actual movie source was originally in older 35MM or 70MM print, so the result does not appear to be HD – but that’s the fault of the source movie, not NETFLIX.
You need to make sure that you have really good Internet connection – test it with the NETFLIX site to make sure they see enough speed. But the unit is very easy to use, I use a Logitech Universal Remote that picked up the new LG programming just fine – and the rest is history.
When you consider that the cost of remastering conventional movies to Blu-Ray is probably going to preclude many movies being redone, then the Instant Movie in HD route is probably going to be the way to go.
So – this type of Broadband-Internet play will become the norm.
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