John Miller from Sweeny has sent in review of Sony BDP-S301 Blu-ray player.

November 3, 2008

The look of this player is a refreshing break from what we see on other Blu-ray players. The dark gray plastic casing has rounded corners rather than the traditional boxy edges. The left side consists of the disc tray and the right side has a nicely sized LED display next to the playback controls. These include handy chapter forward/backward buttons and a resolution toggle which are nice for when the remote goes missing.

The included remote is average and it gets the job done. The area surrounding the buttons is glossy black--a poor choice since the material proved a magnet for fingerprints. There's a nice centrally located directional pad surrounded by important buttons such as Setup and Menu. Playback controls are located underneath and they are reasonably well-placed excluding the ever-important pause button hidden in the corner.

This player is currently a Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player which means it can access picture-in-picture commentary tracks available on some Blu-ray Discs. It is not profile 2.0 also known as BD live. The manufacturer has stated that the player can be upgraded in future to be profile 2.0 compliant. Soundtrack support is pretty good although not flawless. This player can internally decode Dolby TrueHD but currently can't decode DTS-HD Master Audio. That's unfortunate because that means only home theater fans with relatively new receivers can take advantage of DTS-HD Master Audio.

If you've already purchased a new receiver with "DolbyTrueHD" and "DTSHS Master Audio" decoding and you don't care about "Profile 2.0" support than this player will be perfect. This is a second generation player and minor issues do exist. But you won't have to live with them forever. Firmware fixes all.

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