Blu-ray Player Reviews

Setup & Tests
All Blu-ray players require firmware updates on an ongoing basis, and BD-Live offers online and downloadable content, so you'll want to establish a permanent Ethernet connection to the BD300.

From the Setup menu, you select the appropriate video resolution based on your display and whether the BD300 will decode the advanced audio codecs or pass their bitstreams. Unique to this player is a choice of audio sampling frequencies, a feature I've not seen on any other Blu-ray player. You can select 48kHz, 96kHz or 192kHz, depending on the capabilities of your AVR or pre/pro.

To test the BD300's internal deinterlacing, I started with the HQV Benchmark Blu-ray test disc. The two tests for jaggies demonstrate the player's effectiveness at diagonal filtering, which is determined by the appearance and severity of jaggies along diagonal lines. The BD300 performed poorly on these tests compared to my PS3 and the Sony BDP-S350.

In one test, there are three bars moving up and down on the inside of a circle. With the BD300, jaggies were visible on the lowest bar, and in the second test, the rotating bar started to reveal jaggies at 20 degrees, and they got progressively worse at shallower angles. The shallower the angle at which jaggies first appear, the better the interpolation abilities of the player. Unfortunately, 20 degrees is considered a borderline fail.

The video resolution-loss test showed some serious flickering in the high-frequency vertical burst. On the film resolution-loss test, there was the same flickering, and the high-frequency horizontal burst was solid gray, indicating that the player rolls off high frequencies. There was also a color cast from pink to cyan in the low-frequency horizontal burst as the test pattern changed direction. In addition, there was flickering in the low frequency vertical burst, something I have not seen from other players.

Next, I tested the player's upconversion capabilities with the HQV Benchmark DVD. The same jaggies tests in standard definition had slightly different results. With the rotating-bar test, jaggies were always apparent though they worsened around 20 degrees. In the test with three bars, jaggies were visible on all three bars, though they were most pronounced closer to the center of the circle.

The third jaggies test is a flag waving against a brick building. The LG tested similar to other players I've seen, with jaggies appearing as the flag unfurls in the breeze. The brick building also lacks much detail. An additional test evaluates the detail of objects located in the distance. In this case, the BD300 tested well—objects were more recognizable than I am accustomed to with most players.