Forget Black Friday -- $175 Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player here now
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 7th 2008 1:54PM
posted Nov 7th 2008 1:54PM
[Thanks, Darren F.]
posted Nov 7th 2008 1:54PM
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That sucks - nothing available for me here in NashVegas, TN. It's only available for pick-up.
It's okay. The S300 is a horrible player anyways.
Amazon has the 350 model for $224.
I picked up the BSP-S350 and 4 blu-ray dvds for $231 with free shipping just the other day at Amazon.com...
I saw a stack of sony blu ray players, maybe even this same one, on clearance at Sams Club for $175 the other day.
How does this model compare to the 350 thats going on sale on Black Friday? Just got our first HDTV and I'm waiting until then to snag a player.
what I want to know is where are the carousels? A 3 or 5 disc would be nice.
Forget that, where is the 400 charger Sony has been showing off?
Hey Liqwid:
"horrible" is such a relative term. What makes it so bad? I got one over six months ago refurbished for $220 at a Sony store, and have been updating with the releases of each firmware along the way, and so far so good. What's the matter, can't use BD live and annoy your fellow fanboys? I do not know why all love to disparage a unit that so far has not had the problems that other 2nd genration players have demonstrated. I will admit that Baraka did not play until the most recent firmare released onm 10/31/08 (version 4.30) but works like a charm now, including the 007 flick For Your Eyes Only (which was also alittle buggy). For the money, it's an "ok" if not "good" player, certainly not horrible. Maybe you expect the best, but do you give your best? Just trying to be objective. No worries.
I had one, brand new. It was slow, Fox blu-rays took so damn long to load. The controls got laggy at times. I sold it for $200 and bought a PS3. The PS3 is so much better, especially when you consider what you get for $399 compared to $200.
How's your power bill, LiqwidZero? I'm not a gamer any longer, at least not console. Considering how much power a PS3 sucks down, I would hate to hear so many consumers hawk for a PS3 unless they are a gamer. On the other hand, I do agree this S300 is a POS, but its got to be at least as good as an Insignia.
I only pay $65 a month for electricity. I have a 360, PS3, Wii, LCD TV, iMac, SNES, N64, etc. So it's not an issue for me.
Wow, I'm glad prices are going down but damn that is the ugliest BluRay player I've seen to date. Betamax ugly!
The Prices aren't going down all that low, this is clearance, Sony no longer manufactures this model. New models will continue to come out ever 6 months or so to keep the price as high as they think they can get away with, which right now looks to be $250-$300 for the lower end players by Sony.
PS3 is better, definitley. Don't knw how much juice it uses compared to a stand alone, but you definitely did the right thing. I think I may wait till black friday and pick up a 350 for $179 at sears
PS3 uses way more juice. Here's a good article from CNET on why consumers who aren't gamers should look elsewhere for a standalone Blu-ray player. The S350 is definitely better than the S300, so holdout until you can afford that, or try your luck with the Insignia, as it comes with $100 Blu-ray coupons.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9941740-1.html?tag=mncol
The Sony will be $99 in January...and obsolete in February
Circuit City? We ain't got no Circuit City's here in Phoenix.
@ John.. The reasons that article list are trivial. Lets not forget even if your not a gamer you can store music on it and has alot of multi media functionally. And yes it does support both dts hd and dolby true hd. You have to mess with the audio settings and switch it from linear pcm to bitstream.
The PS3 can't bitstream the HD codecs, sorry pal. it can decode them internally and send them out raw however.
@Spiza
Umm... neither can the BDP-S300: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1050507
In fact, the S300 can't even handle DTS-HD at all. Heck the BDP-S300 isn't even Profile2.0... which explains why it's dropping price so quickly.
As for bitstreaming the compressed codec, who cares? It's a digital signal in both cases (bitstream vs LPCM), and once it enters the receiver, it gets decoded to LPCM BEFORE any processing is applied within the receiver. So, as long as there is nothing functionally wrong with the decode step, it doesn't matter if the BD player or the receiver does it. There is no processing applied to the encoded stream, so it's not like one device can do a "better" job than the other... the magic of digital-to-digital conversion.
IMO, it's better to have the BD player do it, since it means that any LPCM capable receiver can handle the signal. As formats change, BD players can be upgraded (or replaced) while still allowing you to retain your existing receiver...
actually amazon has had this player at this price for over a week, with $100 off when you buy 4 blu-rays that are on sale from a list of titles....
this is a clearance model, but overall a good player.
Small Change Losers,
$99, $100, $137, $150, $175, $199, $200, $224, $225, $239, $250, $275....
Get a damn paper route.
Sell a attic, basement or garage item.
Go without beer, liquor, lotteries, casinos, girlie mags for a month or two.
Get a life!!
Hello, Mcfly...anybody home in there?
You can do this.
KMart is supposed to have the Sony 350 for $179 on Thanksgiving Day. http://www.blackfriday.info/sales/kmart-thanksgiving-black-friday-ad.html
All stores have to take inventory and pay tax on it by the end of January. SO WAIT till after Christmas to find the best clearance deals.
If you buy now, you'll probably buy models that are being phased out.
WAIT and SAVE
This is not a great Blu-Ray player. I bought it on clearance about 5 months ago for $299. So from that standpoint it is a great bargain at $175. I've been extremely dissappointed with the product however. It takes about 3 minutes to load a disk, the response to forward a scene is slow and I already had to request an upgrade to the software from Sony's help line just to play regular Blu-Ray disks. If you want to have a Blu-Ray player just to have one, this is a nice answer, but I would spend another hundred bucks or so and get one that won't annoy you.
they dont have it on there website anymore
Is this new product?