Sony BDP-S300 Blu-Ray Player

Pros: Image quality
Cons: Slow startup

To go with my new HDTV, I recently bought a Blu-Ray player. I went with the Sony BDP-S300 without doing too much research other than the price. Having said that, I wish I had done a little more research because there are a few issues that might have ...

Pros: Picture Quality, Build Quality
Cons: Retail Price, No Network Plug for Updates, Some Movies Have Issues Playing

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 ...

Pros: Good beginner camera, Charge by USB, pocket-size, lots of features and scene selections
Cons: Small dial and buttons, blurry edges of shots

I've been holding out on entering the digital camera world, but I was getting ready to take a trip to some small villages in Guatemala and needed something that could fit into my pocket. My big Cannon EOS Rebel film camera does not exactly fit the bill. ...

Pros: Great video and audio, even with standard DVD's.
Cons: Load times are longer, unit runs hot.

Having owned DVD players since they first arrived on the market, I was familiar with 'red' DVD playback (480i/480p), but had not used either the now defunct HD-DVD or the Blu-ray formats. I had garnered as much information as I could prior to our ...

Pros: Excellent picture quality.
Cons: Painfully slow; no HDMI cable. Not 2.0 standards.

Early pricing on this model was $400 and sadly, not worth even with the new lower prices. The early models of the Blu Ray players are slow. And, I do mean slow. The issue with early Blu Ray players makes it a wonder the format beat out HD. The Sony ...

Pros: Stunning visuals and sound.
Cons: Sensitivitiy to disk quality and operating procedure.

I bought this unit from BestBuy to go with my Hitachi Plasma unit via HDMI connection. The results are nothing short of scintillating unless the DVD won't play at all. The problem initially manifested itself with Disk 3 of Planet Earth, a first class ...

Pros: Good picture/sound.
Cons: Extremely slow.

If I knew I would have never bought this. Picture is awesome no question about it. But the only possible way to use this player is to put the disc in, hope and pray that it will be compatible and not corrupted. Then you have to sit back relax and enjoy. ...

Pros: Picture quality and Audio format switching.
Cons: Speed and playback reliability

I bought this player for both movies and as a CD player. I have it connected via HDMI to a 720P DLP rear projector and coax to a fairly high end audio system. The picture and sound quality are both quite good (not using the internal DACS anyhow) but ...

Pros: Nice design, good remote, reasonable price.
Cons: BUGGY. SLOW.. SLOOOW and BUGGY

I have owned many Sony products and have always been very pleased. This is the first to break that chain of success. I purchased this with a Sony VPL-VW60 projector which is amazing, (see my review on here as well), and I am not happy with the results ...

Pros: HD quality is awesome. Upconversion is awesome too.   
Cons: Just about everything. Takes forever to load.

Without a doubt, the single worst piece of electronics I've ever purchased. Takes FOREVER just for the machine to turn on. And while it's "loading" you get a series of LOUD annoying clicks for several minutes. It never Ejects when you want it to. Once you load a movie, get ready for another nice 3-6 minute wait. Then when you finally get past all the crap they make you watch (trailers, FBI Warnings, etc.) you can finally press "play" and wait a few more minutes before your F'ing movie starts. Honestly, if someone were to ring my doorbell right now, I'd just hand this piece of crap to them and pay them $10.00 just to get it out of my sight. Sony made this P.O.S. ???? You gotta be kidding me. I will never trust that name again.

Pros: excellent picture quality on Blu-Ray & DVD
Cons: deadly compatibility issues w/other equipment

I recently set up a home theater costing in excess of $50K, and purchased an SDP-S300 on the recommendation of the installers/designers I hired for the job. It has been nothing but trouble, apparently due to HDMI compatibility issues with my Anthem processor. Every couple days the machine freezes and needs to be screwed with/restarted in order to function. Now it has gone totally belly up as far as relating to the rest of my system, to the extent that it won't even power on. If you're just hooking a DVD player stright to a TV, maybe this'll work; but otherwise, skip it for sure.

Pros: Numerous video outputs
Cons: This player does everything slowly

I could go on-and-on about the impressive quality when playing Blu-Ray discs on this player. But we all know that already.

My big gripes about this player is how slow it is at doing anything. When you first power it up, it takes about 15 seconds just for it to display "POWER ON". From that point it takes about another 30 seconds until it recognizes clicking any of the buttons on the front. This can be particularly frustrating when all you need is to get your disc out.

Pressing any buttons on the remote also seem to have a lag time. Getting this payer to do anything requires plenty of patience.

The manual includes a software license for the GNU/Linux system. That explains the slow loading and response times - Sony has included a slow bloated operating system. Hopefully Sony will pare it down or replace it for the next software release.

Overall I am happy with quality of Blu-Ray, but sure miss the responsiveness of my old Sony DVD player.

Pros: Great picture
Cons: Limited disk media that it will play

Bought this and using on a high end Yamaha system with SONY LCD TV. Won't play any DVD- disks, data disks, etc. Taking this back because my Yamaha DVD player plays everything without issues. I guess with SONY supporting DVD+ media, no wonder they do this - when these are compatible with all disks, I will buy one, but not until then.