Strengths: Picture Quality

Weaknesses: Power on Time, Boot up Time, Selection of Blu Ray titles, Price

Summary: 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 shown 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 satisfactory due to the disc skipping. If the trouble is a bad disc I'd raise it to 4 stars.Turns out my problem was a bad blu ray disc, I've not had any skipping problems since.

Strengths: Blu-ray is awesome. Picture is the best with surround sound.

Weaknesses: Upconverted Player is very weak. The picture is shaky.

Summary: I am very disappointed in the upconvert player of this blu-ray combo DVD player. The blu-ray is great. Installation is easy. The size of the box is good compared to the older version. I used this player to play the picture I took with my HD camera.

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: does not play dvds. Locks up all the time.

Summary: I bought this blue-ray player today, and I'm taking it back first thing tomorrow. It started to play one DVD well, then I paused it for a phone call. That was a mistake. After 15 minutes trying to get it to play I gave up. Then it played Kill Bill okay, but lots of skips. After over an hour trying to get it to play other DVDs, I gave up permanently. I tried several different ones and the best I got was 4 seconds worth of the menue option. Then just a blank screen. I hooked it up with a HDMI cable to the reciever and kept switching ports. I rebooted several times, switched cables, etc... Bottom line: Save your money! This is the worst piece of crap ever made. To bad all the major studios are going Blue-ray, because sony is supposed to be the best. And if this is the best they have, we are in a world of hurt. This is a defective product. I picked it up today shipped directly from the manufacturer. It will be going back tomorrow. Buying this product is no different than someone putting a knife to your throat and robbing you of $500. Trust me.

Strengths: Excellent picture and build quality. Excellent upconversion capabilities.

Weaknesses: Long startup time (from powerup) and more than usual load time.

Summary: I bought the Blu-Ray player to go with my new Sony 50" 1080p Rear-projection TV. I have watched about 4 blu-ray movies so far (Superman Returns, Open Season, Mission Impossible Fugitive) and have been blown away by the picture clarity. I have watched the Fugitive about 5 times already but I was able to see little things that I never noticed before in a regular DVD. I also threw in couple of DVDs that I own (Die Hard 3, Independence Day) and once again was impressed with the excellent job this player did to upconvert it to 1080p. Highly recommended.

Strengths: mutliple advanced features

Weaknesses: none

Summary: With this Blu-ray DVD player you will be able to enjoy movies in full 1080p format, the way how they were meant to be seen; wast of additional options that this DVD is offering will make that viewing session even more enjoyable

Strengths: Blu-ray picture quality, easy setup, well built machine

Weaknesses: slow load time on Blu-ray Java titles, remote is not back lit, no HDMI cable included

Summary: I received this player last week and hooked it up to my 40V2500 Sony Bravia LCD via HDMI. Setup was very quick and easy. Load times are similar to other HD players. Power up takes about thirty seconds and loading Blu-ray discs and DVDs takes about another thirty seconds. The load times on the two Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-ray discs took almost two minutes each and navigating through their menus was a little slow. I watched Pirates 1 2 Blu-ray discs without any problems and the picture and sound quality was great. The picture quality on Pirates 1 2 is in the top tier of any HD disc released so far. I tested a few other Blu-ray discs, DVDs, and CDs and they all played fine. I could not tell any real difference in the DVD upconversion between the BDP-S300 and the HD-A2. Sound quality was also good although I am not using a receiver or surround sound speakers.This player is not really a great value at $500, but overall, I am happy with the purchase. The player is very solid and Blu-ray discs look great. The player came with firmware 2.0 already installed, but hopefully a future firmware update can fix any slow load times with the advanced Java titles. I suspect many Blu-ray promotions, discounts, and new players are on the way so you may be better waiting until the fall to buy a player; however, if you are impatient like me, this seems to be a very good player.

Strengths: Better price point, plays CDs, Dolby TrueHD

Weaknesses: No memory for resume when unit turned off, slow loading, no remaining time display

Summary: Sony has finally come out their second generation Blu-ray player at half the original price of the original! The BDP-S300 is priced at $499.00 which looks like a bargain compared to their previous BDP-S1 model. Besides the cost benefit, what else do you get with this player? Unlike the previous model the S300 can play CDs in addition to DVDs. This player has Dolby TrueHD capability installed. In addition, it seems to load slightly faster than the previous model.Most of the weaknesses are shared by the previous model and Sony has not made any effort to improve on them. Specifically, when you turn the unit off, all memory has disappeared so that when to turn it on next time, you have to find where you left off. Very time consuming! A high-end product such as this should have memory for at least 6 discs.The other complaint is that I would expect Sony to have a remaining time display in addition to elapsed time and total time displays. Sony offers this feature on most of its lower end DVD players, so why is this feature not possible on a high def player?All in all, the BDP-S300 delivers what it promises. If it would correct some of these problems, it would be a first class product. The best improvement on this player is that Sony has reduced the price to make it affordable to more people wanting to get into Blu-ray technology.