Sony BPD-S300/BPD-S301 - Are these the same player? (1 Viewer)

[alan halvorson]

I was at Sam's Club yesterday where they had the Sony BPD-S301 for ~$277. On the spur of the moment, I bought it but haven't opened the box yet.

What I want to know is if the BPD-S300 and BPD-S301 are the same machine? If they aren't, what are the differences or which is considered better?

 

[Chris S]

To my knowledge they are the exact same machine.

 

[Shane Martin]

Yes, the 301 was sold at Sams/Costco and included an HDMI cable. That's the only difference.

 

[alan halvorson]

Thanks - I thought so. How good a machine is this? I know its startup and loading times are rather slow, but other than this, how is it?

 

[Shane Martin]

Seems solid but lacks in the audio and profile area.

No bitstream out
No advanced audio decoding. It only outputs PCM only which is OK but not great. Most discs have pcm as an audio format but that's changing now.
No Profile 1.1 - not an issue if you don't care about extras.

 

[Larry Sutliff]

I have the S301, picture and sound quality are fine. It is a little slow when loading a disc, but that's not a major gripe for me. YMMV.

 

[Marvin]

Is the slow loading for all discs (SD and BD) or just BD?

 

[Larry Sutliff]

It takes a while to get going when you first turn it on. Once it's on, regular DVD's load fairly smoothly. BD's take about 40 seconds; a few(such as the POTC movies and the Spidey flicks) take over a minute.

 

[Mike Heenan]

So far some WB titles I've watched load up rather quickly, no worse than the SD DVDs.

 

[Nick]

I bought mine at Bjs for $279.00
Yes, load time is slow but picture is breathtaking, even DVD looks really nice too. I still have 5.1 receiver. So as long as it can decode that I'm all set for now.
Within a year or two the price will be dirt cheap just like DVD players,
then I'll can get another one and put this one in my bedroom.

 

[shockt327]

Hmmm, It says it has bitstream out via HDMI, or are you referring to something different? Not sure if I know the difference...


I wish I could post a link to the specs page to point out what I'm seeing...but I need 10 posts But it says:

LPCM : Yes (multi channel decoding); Yes (HDMI™ bitstream out)

 

[Shane Martin]

Something different
Meaning the S301 can't pass lossless undecoded audio to an advanced receiever to do the decoding.