LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Player Real-World Performance

Real-World Performance
The BD300 actually achieved faster load times for Blu-ray discs than most players I've tried. It took only 15 seconds to load The Punisher, though Iron Man took 26 seconds.

Next, I accessed the BD-Live material on Iron Man—a quiz that tests your IQ on all things Iron Man from the movie and comics. It was fun, though I tend to bore easily with quizzes, especially when my knowledge is rather sketchy on the topic.

The picture quality of Blu-ray discs was excellent but no better or worse that any other Blu-ray player I've reviewed recently. Color saturation, detail, and black levels were first rate on the various discs I sampled, especially Dreamgirls and Michael Clayton .

However, when comparing the BD300's upconversion of DVDs to my JVC projector's processor (with the player set to output 480p), the JVC was the clear winner. This didn't surprise me, considering the test results. I used chapter 4 from Moulin Rouge DVD for the comparison, and I found that the BD300 was a little softer and lost more detail during the fast-moving and colorful dance sequence. In static sections of that sequence, the quality appeared more equal between the two processors.

The internal decoding of Dolby TrueHD was very good. I compared the BD300's decoding against the decoder in the Pioneer VSX-94TXH A/V receiver using the Blu-ray version of The Departed. When I passed the bitstream audio to the AVR, the dynamic range was marginally wider, but I doubt many people would hear much of a difference at all.

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