Home Theater Blog has a solid review of the new Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player here on their website. The BDP-S300 is Sony’s cheapest Blu-ray player selling for an MSRP of $499. Home Theater Blog does an excellent overview of the capabilities of the device as well as picture performance - especially in comparison to the PS3’s Blu-ray performance. One of the unfortunate missing capabilities from the player is the lack of a network connection but really - shouldn’t this be a mandatory feature on all players? Can it really jack up the cost of a Blu-ray player that much? I doubt it.

Specs for the Sony BDP-S300 include the following:

• BD-ROM, DVD Video, DVD+R/+RW/DVD-R/-RW, CD playback
• AVC-HD media playback with x.v.Color output
• Supports MPEG2/MPEG4-AVC/VC-1
• Full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema Video Output
• DVD upscaling to 1080p via HDMI
• Support for BRAVIA Theater Sync
• Cinema Tuned Picture Presets
• Support for Uncompressed Multi-Channel Linear PCM output, Dolby Digital Plus decoding, Dolby Digital and dts 5.1 channel output
• BD-Java interactive capability
• Screen saver
• MP3 and JPEG playback from DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW
• Measures 17 x 3 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches and weighs 10 lbs

In any event, here’s the current recommendation from Home Theater Blog on the BDP-S300:

At this point if you’re looking for a stand-alone Blu-ray player I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the BDP-S300 quite as easily as before these issues came to light. It’s still a good player, but certainly not quite as good as our first impressions indicated.

If you’re interested in reading the instruction manual, check out the PDF link here at SonyStyle’s website.

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DigiTimes is reporting that Funai Electric will be launching a new 42 inch LCD television set as well as a new Blu-ray disc player in North America this coming fall. The 42 inch LCD TV will utilize panels made from Taiwan with unit shipments expected to number between 100,000 to 200,000 units in the batch.

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Technorati Tags: Funai Electric, LCD TV, Blu-ray player

Did you get yourself a new HDTV or Blu-ray/HD DVD player? Not sure if your components are living up to the manufacturer’s claims? Well now you can get check things out yourself by getting the Silicon Optix HD HQV Benchmark disc. The test disc is available in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats and provides an objective way for users to evaluate the picture quality of high definition products.

Jordan Du Val, VP of Marketing for Silicon Optix, says the following about the new HD HQV Benchmark:

“For the first time, consumers will be able to test the high-definition performance of their products to make sure they live up to the manufacturers’ claims”

The benchmark begins with a quick introduction, an overview of the tests, and an explanation into how to use the included scorecard to assess the product like a professional would. The benchmark comes with tests for noise, video resolution loss, “jaggies”, and film resolution loss - all recorded in 1080i video. The resolution test is used to determine whether your player or display properly deinterlaces 1080i input which is the most common video format used today on cable and broadcast HD programming.

You can order either the Blu-ray version of the HD DVD version on the HQV website here for $20 dollars. I think I’ll pick up both versions for my own testing needs. You can also pick up the standard definition version of the benchmark in DVD format for $20 dollars. Silicon Optix also sells bundles but the bundles are sold out right now.

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