Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony BDP-S300 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

I am having some serious problems with my BDP-300. Initialy it worked fine. But after playing a few DVD's both Blu-ray and standard, my player is getting slower and slower. (Trust me, I'm not just getting impatient.) Is there a problem with the softwear Sony wrote for this player? Worse than that, when I finaly hooked it up to my surround sound system the sound on Blu-ray dvd's cuts in and out.

My previous dvd player was a Sony DVD-S7700. It was so well built its almost a work of art. The BDP-S300 is a huge step backwards as far as construction and reliability. It has the feel and look of a cheap boom box. I can't argue that the BDP-S300 has an awsom picture, and it upscales better than my TV set(46XBR3),but this is a gigantic dissapointment in every other respect. Shame on you Sony! I expect way more out of a 500 dollar Sony DVD player. Even if it worked better, how can you charge so much for such a flimsy product?

If you are looking for a high quality Blu-ray dvd player you may want to spring for the Sony BDP-S1. It looks like there are good deals on them right now. What would be even better is if Sony made an updated version of the BDP-S1 at a lower price point.

*** Added July 28, 2007
I ended up getting a Sony BDP-S1. It is a beautiful looking BR DVD player.
Unfortunatly, the picture on the Sony BDP-S1 lacks the video processing of the second generation model BR players and it shows. I've been watching standard DVD's and BR DVD's on the BDP-S1 and wondered what the heck happened. I was on the Sony site checking out the difference between the three available models. It turns out the 300 and 301 have a circuit called "24P True Cinema" and the S1 doesn't. It not only made a big difference in standard DVD's but also made the BR DVD's picture better as well. I'm not ooing and awing with the picture from the very expensive BDP-S1 the way I was when watching from the BDP-S300, but it does get coo does for its beauty and construction. So if you have a high end tv you are better off getting a BDP 300/301. Or maybe you can wait and see. I'm really hating Sony right now.

Bought this, and as everyone says, it's frustratingly slow. So, back it went. Got the Sony Playstation 3 instead (which is also a blu ray player) and i can't believe sony would bother making anything else. Startup and loading are so much faster, the picture is actually better (although i wasn't disappointed in the BDP's picture) and of course then you have the PS3 and web browsing to boot! Problem solved plus bonuses - i highly recommend the PS3 as your bluray player!!

I held off purchasing this until the price was below $400. Amazon had a special with free shipping. Setup up was easy, just HDMI to TV, power cord, and left & right audio outputs to my surround sound.

First movie was Pirates of the Caribbean, great detail however it was only marginally better than my Panasonic S52 upscaling DVD player. The biggest difference was the lack of blurring during fast moving sequences or when the camera panned quickly.

2nd movie was transformers on regular DVD, again no major difference from my $89 panasonic player.

3rd movie was Bridge to Terabithia, this movie was not disiplayed in wide screen but filled up the entire 40" Sony Bravia LCD. This picture was the best I've seen yet, you lose a little of the frame from left to right but gain much more picture overall.

Went to Sony's website and updated the firmware (quite easy to do with a DVD burner). Watched Premonition on blu ray, at 52 minutes in the screen froze. FF, rew, stop, etc had no affect, had to power the unit down. Skipped to the scene and this time had not issues. Later on in the movie more skips. Not sure if it was the disc or the firmware upgrade I performed. I'll update later if I continue to have the problem, if I do I will contact tech support and try to undo the firmware upgrade.

I'm only giving this 3 stars due to the disc skipping. If the trouble is a bad disc I'd raise it to 4 stars.

I've traced my trouble to a bad blu ray disc, I have not seen the skipping problem since. (10-31-2007)

When it worked it was fine, with great image and sound... much better than DVD. But at only 5 months old, it now refuses to play the disc inside, and won't even eject it. I'm sending it back to Sony for repair.

Our company bought three of this model; one of them died within a week under very light usage. So, of the four models I've used, TWO of them failed. That's a staggering 50 percent failure rate.

We purchased our player December 07 as a Christmas gift for ourselves. After reading the DIRECTIONS Sony made it VERY clear that the load times for the videos would take 90 seconds. If I'm not mistaken, that is 1.5 minutes, unless you are sitting and watching the clock, I think many are exaggerating your times.

We had NO issues with our player (even through 3 moves, US Navy) and only recently with the BD-Live videos did we ever have to update our firmware.

I found the firmware update extremely easy to download, burn and update my player and I'm a woman! After the update the newest BD-Live videos load up in exactly the 90 seconds stated in Sony's guide.

For regular DVDs it takes no time at all to load. I like the player, it has served us well, and the firmware updates are fine. I would recommend though if you do purchase a player, go on Sony's website and download the latest firmware so that you can watch the newest BD videos without issue.

We found out about the firmware update by using Sony's interactive support chat, the analyst was very knowledgable and gave us exactly the information we needed very quickly.

I would recommend.