New Blu-ray player Sony BDP-S300 reviewed by Nicholas Larsen

August 28, 2008

I purchased a Sony BDP-S300, and PS3. In the 10 days that I've had this player, it's done a good job on video and audio quality. I'm watching it on a 46" Sony connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned. I went with this player due to positive reviews and how I feel about the the brand. The BR players are all updatable so it's possible to play the latest movies. However, this player has a VERY weak failure mode and upgrade procedure. This likely makes this required operation out of reach for most people on this device.

I was able to play many DVD that I had already and it does project it very nicely on my new flat screen tv. Very clear picture and very nice sound. Blu-Ray movie displays crystal clear. For those who wonder if it will play homemade Blu-Ray DVDs I can report that I have sucessfully created a Blu-Ray DVD with menus on a 25G Single Layer BD-RE (Rewritable) disk using the LG GGW-H20L burner. One drawback that keeps this unit from being perfect is no ethernet connectability for firmware upgrading. It is my opinion that this player was released prematurely based on its feature set. This player did a great job on the Bluray compatibility & picture quality and the DVD upconversion quality. This player is good as far as disks that work on it but it does not support 48kHz/24-bit HD true sound that some blu-ray disks come with. The sound will pop out of sync with the visual. Before you buy call the manufacturer and ask if they have solved this problem by issuing a firmware (disk to put in the machine to update the harddrive) or not.

Upconversion on this player is excellent, which is very important if you have big library of DVDs. I figured instead of spending $100 or so on upconvert DVD player to work with my new TV, I decided to go directly to Blu-Ray, since the Blu-Ray is now standard of HD DVDs. This player has great Standard disc Upconversion. Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.

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