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Sometimes if you leave a disc in and power down, it will not load properly when you power up. Prior to this update, the machine would not play many newer discs, although it was hit or miss as to which ones.
You have to remove it, power back down, power up, reload, wait for the excrutiatingly long load time, then, maybe it will work. I had this less than a year before I had to download a firmware update to my computer, burn it on to a DVD and then load into the machine to update it.
I purchased this in February 2008. Even after the update, the loading times are slow, the machine is temperatmental, and nearly every disc I rent has at least one glitch in it where it skips sound and/or part of a frame.
Once you are playing a Blu-Ray Disc, of course the picture is fantastic on your hi-def Monitor, but this has been a very temperamental piece of gear. Very, very slow load times.
I would recommend waiting a bit longer to make a Blu-Ray player purchase, or pay more money for a better machine.
But come on, a minute. It's a solid player that very rarely has any problems (provided that you keep the firmware up-to-date). Most of the people I know that are interested in HD content don't really care about these feature anyway. However, if you find a good deal on this one (as the prices on these soon-to-be discontinued models is bound to drop dramatically as we enter the holiday season) and you are only interested in watching the movie in pristine HD detail with very solid audio, buy this one. The player does not advertise True HD audio, so you can know that before you buy it. It will NOT display PIP material on newer Blu-rays. The load times are not quite as lengthy as some would have you believe.
It will not play Dolby True HD. If you can find a comparable 1.1 profile player or even 2.0 for a decent price, get it. It also will only output 1080p through the HDMI output and not the component (720p/1080i max). The player is a 1.0 player. It will play PCM audio (which is uncompressed). Some of the criticisms of the player are largely the result of the apparent ignorance of the reviewers. It does take around a minute for the machine to boot up. It's a first generation player (Profile 1.0).
But it wasn't designed to. It will NOT display online BD Live material. It will properly display 24p material and 60i material for 1080i source material. It does an adequate job displaying BD Java material (again provided that the firmware is up-to-date).The BDP-S301 cannot compete with the features of the newest players. I got this player about a year ago as a Christmas present. Here's the player in a nutshell. It has always worked quite well.
What does that say about our society when we are complaining about having to wait an entire minute before we can watch a two hour movie. That means that some of the newer discs are going to require a firmware update in order to play them. Some of the problems that other reviewers are describing sound very much like firmware conflicts. I've been very happy with it.
It takes a stpd amount of time (many minutes) to load a disk and often requires the disk to be reloaded several times. Many of the other buttons also require several touches before the unit will respond. I should have sent the unit back. All said this product was a total waste of money.
The technology is not where it needs to be. Then I play games with it for the next 20 minutes waiting for it to restart, and then deciding which part of the movie I am going to skip in order to at least see the end.Perhaps all Blu-ray players have these problems. Save your money and wait for the next generation of players that have fixed these problems.
I don't care. I am much happier using my upscaling DVD player that I bought for half the price. I've had this player for about a year now.
While its booting, you cannot open the tray to put in a disc or take one out.I like many others have had the treat of a movie freezing up after about an hour. I get incredibly frustrated almost every time I use it. It takes about 1 minute to start up.
The picture is nearly as good from where I sit, and the audio is just as good.
I have a 46" 1080p Vizio and Panasonic Home Theatre - it's not a Sony or a Bose but hey it works :). I've had the S301 for two weeks now and, besides the slow load time (about 60-90 seconds), everything works perfectly. As soon as I click pay, I thought to myself crap, I should have researched this a little further. I'll give it a few more weeks and see. It hasn't skipped/froze on me and read all the Blu-ray/DVD movies just fine.
The picture is amazing and the sound is great. After reading good/mostly bad reviews from Amazon and other websites, I was disappointed and wished I didn't buy it. I recently purchased my S301 for $270 brand new without reading the reviews first. But I'm glad I did. I'm scared, I hope none of that bad stuff people say will happen to my player.
Oh well, it was cheap. Oh well, at least it wasn't super expensive.
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