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

Page 5 of the owner's manual (BDP-S300/301) states, "This player supports BD-ROM Profile 1 only. Playback of later versions and BDs other than BD-ROM is not guaranteed. Since the Blu-ray Disc specifications are new and evolving, some discs may not play depending on the disc type and the version...."

If you don't care to watch the extras that profile 1.1 and 2.0 provide, it doesn't matter, as you may not be able to watch the disc at all, i.e. I, Robot. I have latest firmware as of this posting, 3.80.

Key features of the Sony BDP-S350 that is scheduled to come out summer 2008:

Supports BonusView, which means it is Profile 1.1 compliant
BD-Live ready, which means it can gain BD-Live capability with a firmware update
Ethernet port for firmware upgrades
Supports 1080p output at both 24 and 60 frames per second
Onboard decoding for Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD
Bitstream output for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
About $[...] list price.
[...]

Update: I recently upgraded to the newly released firmware 3.90 and have to say, I, Robot now works perfectly. Good job Sony. However, considering the BDP-S350 is coming out in a couple of months and will cost about the same as the S-300, wait.

This is a magnificent Blu-ray DVD player. It enhances regular DVD viewing and presents Blu-ray discs in full 1080p (if you have a 1080p HDTV). One necessary step is to obtain a firmware update from Sony; I run a Mac computer, so I could not download the firmware update from Sony's website - only Windows. But, I called Sony and got the firmware disc in three days. Contrary to what you may have read in some reviews, this machine works great with the update!

We have owned an s301, which is technically identical to the s300, for about a month and have been very pleased with the video performance. Audio is great with PCM lossless (but read further for the problem with audio).

Like most HD players, it is slower than the cheapest DVD player, but that is okay, we have come to expect it and that no longer bothers us.

The problem with this player is that it does not output Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA in any way, shape or form. The closest it comes is transcoding the audio to plain old Dolby Digital or a somewhat better DTS. Wow, classic DVD audio performance at a Blu-ray price. The real problem comes from some studios moving away from PCM lossless audio to TrueHD and DTS-HD MA. These include Sony Pictures whose latest release announcements have TrueHD only and FOX who is releasing only in DTS-HD MA, which very few players can play properly at all.

If you care anything about audio, I cannot recommend this player. If you don't have the whole home theater setup, but a nice TV, I guess you can get it if the price is cheap enough.

Bought this unit in June...Picture quality is awesome but when i plug in the 5.1 analog inputs to my receiver(no hdmi) i get nothing from my subwoofer. So sound is just okay till i figure out the issue. I understand this unit is slow (about 45 seconds) but my pirates movies freeze at times. Its frustrating because there are NO firmware updates yet available for this player. Paid $450.00 bucks and I expected alot more from Sony. My advice to everyone is to wait.

Picture looks great, but when you turn it on, it takes FOREVER to start up. I will keep my old Marantz DVD player to play DVD's and use this only for BRD's.

Also, it doesn't like old-generation TV's. I had a Hitachi 42" monitor with DVI input. The Sony unit refused to even power up correctly with the Hitachi attached to it. I thought the unit was broken at first. In the end I used this as an excuse to upgrade to a 1080p unit with HDMI, but I shouldn't have had to....