The Sony BDP-S300/301 Review Thread

[huntifosi]

Originally Posted by geoffc

The bdp300 is the most unreliable piece of kit I have ever owned - drive died afterseven weeks

Sorry to hear of your and everbody else's poor luck.

My S300 has worked from day 1, disc 1 to this day, 10 months or so. It has played every disc put in it. I haven't upgraded to 3.95 yet and it still plays everything.

[geoffc]

Worst disc for this player was 3:10 to Yuma , although last upgrade did sort this out. Just bought panasonic bd30 - great piece of kit

[tron3]

Originally Posted by SS316SRV

I get the feeling that my S300 will never die.

Originally Posted by geoffc

The bdp300 is the most unreliable piece of kit I have ever owned - drive died afterseven weeks

Not everyone gets a well built "tank". If an electronic component will fail, it does within 90 days of normal use. That is why you see 90 day warranties. For a component to fail after 90 days usually takes some kind of electrical or physical abuse. Looks like Geoffc got one of the bad ones.

But if SS316SRV is correct, the S300 becomes one of the machines that you regret replacing because it was so reliable. There is always room in the home for a second blu-ray player.

[Yeha-Noha]

Originally Posted by geoffc

Worst disc for this player was 3:10 to Yuma , although last upgrade did sort this out. Just bought panasonic bd30 - great piece of kit

Congrats! That's a really fine machine and another well built tank. For $448 at Walmart it's a deal hard to pass up. It's a better alternative to the S350 that's for sure. I hope you have no trouble with it. When I saw ithe S350 on display, it looked pretty darn cheap to me and way overpriced.

I didn't have any problems with 3:10 to Yuma. I bought it quite awhile back too when my S301 still had an earlier firmware version (3.70? or earlier?). In fact that old tank never gave me the first sign of problems ever.

You know it's puzzling, and you read about so many folks having problems or gripes with this piece or that piece of equipment. I don't know what people do to their equipment or how they can be so unlucky to get bad apples. Same with my V663. I never once had problems with it. Go to a V663 owner's thread, and you'll be bedazzled by so many complaints. The same ol same ol all over again. Poor unfortunates. Often the solution is simple because just not RTFM is the biggest culprit of all. People skip over it and then not surprisingly they got problems.

The S301 served its purpose and served it well. Yes, it's time to move on and upgrade to the next generation player but I am not rushing it.

[tron3]

Any word on when the S30x will see a 4.xx firmware update? I found the FTP link from earlier in this thread. I tried changing the numbers in hopes of something popping up, but nada.

3.95 is great, but being this close and yet so far from 4.xx is maddening.

[dvcmember]

Originally Posted by rwojtalewicz

I didn't have any problems with 3:10 to Yuma. I bought it quite awhile back too when my S301 still had an earlier firmware version (3.70? or earlier?). In fact that old tank never gave me the first sign of problems ever.

You know it's puzzling, and you read about so many folks having problems or gripes with this piece or that piece of equipment. I don't know what people do to their equipment or how they can be so unlucky to get bad apples. Same with my V663. I never once had problems with it. Go to a V663 owner's thread, and you'll be bedazzled by so many complaints. The same ol same ol all over again. Poor unfortunates. Often the solution is simple because just not RTFM is the biggest culprit of all. People skip over it and then not surprisingly they got problems.

I agree. 3:10 to Yuma played without any problems on my Sony. Never have had problems with my S301 or my Yamaha v663. Perhaps some people don't bother to read their manuals to fully utilize or understand how to use their components. Just a thought.

Originally Posted by Disco

In my opinion you cannot compare a $400 player with an $800 player. Like comparing a Porch with a Firebird.

I have had the Sony BDP-S300 for almost 8 months. Really not that much of a differance between the Sony and much more expensive players.

When considering the price the Sony BDP300 is a great Blu Ray player. Both
picture quality (including upconversion)and sound are great!

I concur. Although load times are slow, I have had no problems with any discs, the picture quality is great and I believe Paidgeek is correct, you do get DD TrueHD, even though your receiver only displays PCM. When friends are over who have never seen (or heard) a Blu-ray, they sit transfixed and stunned by the quality.

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Disco

In my opinion you cannot compare a $400 player with an $800 player. Like comparing a Porch with a Firebird.

I have had the Sony BDP-S300 for almost 8 months. Really not that much of a differance between the Sony and much more expensive players.

When considering the price the Sony BDP300 is a great Blu Ray player. Both
picture quality (including upconversion)and sound are great!

I am sorry...but I have to.

A "porch" is a deck or slab at the front of your house.
A Porsche is a German made automobile.

[Disco]

In my opinion you cannot compare a $400 player with an $800 player.
Like comparing a Porch to a Firebird.

I have had the Sony BDP for almost 8 month's. Really not that great of a differance between the Sony BDP300 and much more expensive players.

When considering the price the Sony BDP300 is a great Blu Ray player. Both
picture quality (including upconversion) and sound are great!

[SS316SRV]

^Why did you post the same thing twice?

[ronss]

Originally Posted by huntifosi

Sorry to hear of your and everbody else's poor luck.

My S300 has worked from day 1, disc 1 to this day, 10 months or so. It has played every disc put in it. I haven't upgraded to 3.95 yet and it still plays everything.

i was at costco today..bdp-s301 for $299...the bx1 , which is basically the 350, $378....think i will wait till pass sept.,,,,,lower prices....i really want the bx1,,,but not the $378

one note about costco,s players,,,they come with a hdmi cable...so they are actually a good deal

[LeeS]

A while back, I was inquiring about the soon-to-be-released S350, but have since purchased the S300 since I couldn't see any significant advantages, other than Dolby True HD compatiablility, that would cause us to wait.

We've had the S300 for about four months and I haven't noticed anything that I don't like about it. Sony sent us the V. 3.95 software which I loaded into our Blu-ray as well as a friend's player. Disc loading times seem to be improved, but I don't really care about waiting 30-40 seconds anyway, so it's not paramount to me.

We haven't noticed anything that we don't like. It plays Blu-ray dics well, as expected with brilliant video and audio, which we have set up in PCM. It's rumored that V. 3.95 provides Dolby THD audio, but I can't verify that, but will soon as we are exchanging our HDMI 1.1 Harmon/Kardon receiver for a new HDMI 1.3 version. That will verify is that is true or not. If it isn't, it still sounds great.

What I was surprised about was standard DVD playback, which I feel, it does extremely well.

The only downside, if it is one, is the player runs hot. I had it on top of our receiver, which is not ideal anyway, but have since seperated them with a shelf raised above the receiver to promote better air flow. It seems a little cooler now, but much warmer than a standard disc player.

We rent movies from Netflix and then have our own, also, but I haven't seen one disc that didn't play well, except 'Cloverfield', but it had a lot of scratches on the disc, so I couldn't really blame the player.

I'm glad that we have the S300 player, it's great machine.

[ronss]

Originally Posted by LeeS

A while back, I was inquiring about the soon-to-be-released S350, but have since purchased the S300 since I couldn't see any significant advantages, other than Dolby True HD compatiablility, that would cause us to wait.

We've had the S300 for about four months and I haven't noticed anything that I don't like about it. Sony sent us the V. 3.95 software which I loaded into our Blu-ray as well as a friend's player. Disc loading times seem to be improved, but I don't really care about waiting 30-40 seconds anyway, so it's not paramount to me.

We haven't noticed anything that we don't like. It plays Blu-ray dics well, as expected with brilliant video and audio, which we have set up in PCM. It's rumored that V. 3.95 provides Dolby THD audio, but I can't verify that, but will soon as we are exchanging our HDMI 1.1 Harmon/Kardon receiver for a new HDMI 1.3 version. That will verify is that is true or not. If it isn't, it still sounds great.

What I was surprised about was standard DVD playback, which I feel, it does extremely well.

The only downside, if it is one, is the player runs hot. I had it on top of our receiver, which is not ideal anyway, but have since seperated them with a shelf raised above the receiver to promote better air flow. It seems a little cooler now, but much warmer than a standard disc player.

We rent movies from Netflix and then have our own, also, but I haven't seen one disc that didn't play well, except 'Cloverfield', but it had a lot of scratches on the disc, so I couldn't really blame the player.

I'm glad that we have the S300 player, it's great machine.

thank for the insight on your s300,,the costco,s s301 i believe is the same thing...but with an added hdmi cable...i bought a new sony 40 incher, lcd, and thought it would be a nice addition

have seen some s350,s on ebay,,,,but i believe they do not have the hdmi cable,,,costcos is 378, but do have the hdmi cable..says it right on the box

i called sony, and they stated it was a costco feature , getting the players with hdmi cable....and the hdmi cable is not usually added to regular sony blu ray players.

might go to costco and grabe the s301, would love to get the bx1, but $ speak.

[Rolo71]

New firmware out: 4.20

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/HAV/BDP/FW/

This is the official european ftp site

[Fatboymart]

The UK Sony site still has V. 3.95 up and no mention of this latest patch.

Who's going to be brave and try 4.20?

[tron3]

Originally Posted by Fatboymart

The UK Sony site still has V. 3.95 up and no mention of this latest patch.

Who's going to be brave and try 4.20?

WOO HOO! New Firmware. I would try it but not from the Euro site. Could be a smidge different from the USA site. So, what does it do? Let me guess, something about improved Java support.

[Lucy Diamond]

Gotta tell ya...Nightmare Before Christmas in the PS3 took, like, a minute to load, but in THIS player....hooooooo-leeeeeeeeee!!!!

Completely dead-assed me.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by Lucy Diamond

Gotta tell ya...Nightmare Before Christmas in the PS3 took, like, a minute to load, but in THIS player....hooooooo-leeeeeeeeee!!!!

Completely dead-assed me.

I'll ass-sume you mean it took forever? What was your anal-ysis of the load time?

[JasonR]

Originally Posted by tron3

WOO HOO! New Firmware. I would try it but not from the Euro site. Could be a smidge different from the USA site. So, what does it do? let me guess, something about improved java support.

I have pulled it off of the UK site for the past three updates, I will update mine tonight and let you guys know how "improved my Java support" is.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by JasonR

I have pulled it off of the UK site for the past three updates, I will update mine tonight and let you guys know how "improved my Java support" is.

Thanks Jason, but can you try a little experiment first?

Time some of the longest loading movies with 3.95, then time them with 4.20.
I usually start timing from the moment the tray clips shut to the first image on screen.

Some long load times:
POTC 1, 2, 3
Spider-Man 1, 2, 3
Fantastic Four: Rostss (Second longest load time I know)
Independence Day - I know it takes like 2.30 under 3.95. (Longest I know)

The reason I keep track of this data is because though new firmware always resolves the play issues, it sometimes does it as the expense of slower load times. Some movies load faster, and some slower.

[JasonR]

I will try, if I have time. I have family stuff tonight. I might only be able to do one of the Pirates. You pick....