Sony BDV-E300

Zitat: Pro: + Scale and seamlessness combined with precision, detail and attack + stunning pictures by the standards of the class + great looks and sturdy build Contra: - At this money, nothing

Zitat: For: + Scale and seamlessness combined with precision, detail and attack + stunning pictures by the standards of the class + great looks and sturdy build Against: - At this money, nothing

Zitat: The good: + Not a fan of tweaking speaker settings to get the best performance? No problem – Sony has included an automatic calibration mode on the BDV-E300, which tests the speaker placement using a series of bleeps and adjusts the settings accordingly, giving you optimum audio performance without the fuss. It also loads up Blu-ray movies fairly swiftly, and most importantly delivers on both the sound and picture fronts. The speakers supply a dynamic, distortion-free performance with a wide, enveloping soundstage – and that applies with both loud, bassy content and quiet, more dialogue-led scenes. The player’s picture quality boasts the levels of detail and clean, rich colour we’ve come to expect from Blu-ray, and its upscaled DVD performance is excellent to boot, adding detail without adding noise. The bad: - There really isn’t much to pick at here, although Sony’s use of the proprietary DM Port instead of standard USB for media file playback means you’ll have to shell out extra for its own brand of connector. It would also have been nice to have seen Wi-Fi included, both for BD-Live and media streaming, as you’ll find it on rival systems from LG and Samsung. While the Sony BDV-E300 isn’t hugely impressive on the feature front, it hits its marks more than adequately when it comes to the nitty gritty of audiovisual performance. Factor in the easy setup and it makes for a truly solid all-round home cinema system.

Zitat: With limited digital media support – including an inexplicable inability to play MP3, WMA and DivX from discs and USB sticks – the BDV-E300 isn’t the kind of all-singing, all-dancing system you’d get from LG or Samsung. What’s more, the lack of Wi-Fi (as found on Sony’s latest players) further underlines the system’s outdated feel. But the Sony makes up for this with the kind of performance you don’t normally associate with one-box systems. It’s powerful, sonically insightful and side-steps the harshness we’ve heard from some of its rivals, which might just be enough to win your favour despite the gaping omissions on the feature list. And it earns further Brownie points with the inclusion of auto calibration and a superb operating system, which Blu-ray newcomers will be really grateful for.