Customer Reviews:
 Baloney July 22, 2008
1 out of 9 found this review helpful
I'll have to say that I've seldom read such a load of baloney as is present in the "J. Preston" rambling, paranoid conspiracy theory review.
My comment is not about this player specifically, but blu-ray players are a significant upgrade to the viewing and listening experience, not a conspiracy by Sony to control your life. ROFL
There was once such a plan, the infamouse DIVX concocted by an LA law firm in combination with Circuit City and a couple of hardware producers, and it fell entirely flat on its face.
The only disadvantage to Blu-ray is that it is still in the early adopter pricing levels, both for players and content. Now that the tug of war with HD-DVD is over, it will be the dominant viewing platform before very long at all .... and you won't have to worry about Sony controlling your life, brain washing you, demanding your first born child, or kidnapping you for secret medical experiments.
If it's not Scottish, it's crap! June 24, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Possibly the crappiest Sony product I've ever owned! The picture quality is indeed amazing, but the drawbacks to this first generation BD player is that it sucks. I remember purchasing a cheap Akai DVD player in 1999 and thinking "Damn, the latency from pressing the button to actually having something happen on the player is terrible!" I can say the same for this second-rate product with a first-class name. Every now and then the player will freeze. I've watched a great deal of BDs on here, courtesy of Netflix. It worked fine for awhile, but then for some reason the BD movies started freezing and I thought it was the discs. Turns out it was the player. Long story short: It's not worth the money yet. Wait to get it second hand if you really need a BD player, or wait until better, newer players come out!
 Sony BDP-S300 June 16, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have been a dedicated Sony customer, purchasing Sony products for most of my AV requirements. As a rule Sony products are very good performers for the price paid.
I recently purchased the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-Ray player, along with a Toshiba HD-DVD player (HD-A30).
When the Sony works, it's night and day between Blu-Ray and watching DVD's on our old DVD player. We have a very respectable sound system which pushes the audio through the full compliment of all the Klipsch Synergy III, -3 series speakers. It would be nice if we could hear the true audio that is encoded on the Blu-Ray. Strange that Sony has the concept but makes players that don't support it.
And to make matters worse, this 4 month old player began to sporadically freeze up after watching about 1 hour of select, various movies. As of this time, I'm unaware how to unfreeze it other than to turn the player off, then back on, then find where we left off, and hope it begins to play without additional issues. That timespan is usually around 7-10 minuutes, waiting for shutdown, power up, loading the DVD and finding where we were. By then, one has almost lost interest in watching the movie altogether.
In researching the web, many have the same issue, no one has the solution other that what we are already doing.
But this problem isn't unique to just the Sony Blu-Ray. Our Toshiba HD-DVD player does the same thing, fixed by the same process.
Some DVD's play all the way through, most don't. We have returned and replaced a number of HD-DVD's only to get replacements that reproduce the same problem.
I'm almost thinking that the commercial Blu-Ray and HD DVD's are dual layer, as both units freeze (when they freeze) at about the 1 hour timeframe. It almost appears than when they try to begin reading the second layer, they lock up making that transition. When you stop, reboot and reload, you usually go past the layer shift, thus playing the second layer all the way through, along with missing segments of the movie.
I have contacted both manufacturers concerning this, neither have responded.
I never had much experience with Toshiba products, and based on the lack of their customer support (even though it's a discontinued product, it should still be supported under their warranty), it is doubtful that I will ever look to them for consideration of purchasing any of their other products. As far as Sony is concerned, I am genuinely surprised at their lack of support to a problem which is obviously becoming more and more prevalent on a product line that is becoming more and more popular.
 SLOW ON THE UPTAKE May 11, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This player has great technical performance however ,for me, it processes and downloads blue ray discs too slowly.It's a good adjunct to the Sony Bravia t.v.it's just that i'm impatiant.My fault,not thr players!
You will be disappointed after 1 month May 9, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This player worked fine for the first eight or so movies, but soon after, the video started freezing up until, finally, the "CANNOT PLAY THIS DISC" message appears. After checking the Sony website I requested a firmware update disc from Sony and installed the update. However, that did not fix the problem. The player tends to run very hot, so don't store in a compartment with other A/V equipment such as a wall unit or cabinet with a stereo. Also, be sure to set the "video format" on the remote to 1080i, or you will not be watching anything in HD. The default, believe it or not, is standard 480p. You will have to get used to how slow Bluray players operate. It is really a disappointment after spending so much money for a product that is inferior to cheap $49 dvd players.
My advice is to wait until the bluray player technology improves.
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