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The S300's upconversion of standard DVDs was fine, if a few notches below that of some other Blu-ray machines I've checked out. Overall, its performance with test DVDs was underwhelming, but no serious "jaggy" artifacts cropped up to mar the picture when I watched movies. Compared with the other high-def deck residing in my system, Toshiba's similarly priced HD-A20 HD DVD player, the DVDs I watched looked slightly soft and a bit noisier overall. But for the most part, I had no serious complaints about the Sony's performance here.

The player also proved to have decent baseline audio performance. In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the pounding of tribal drums in a scene where Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is about to be roasted on a spit by cannibals had a full, resounding impact. And in a subsequent scene where Sparrow's shipmates flee from the tribe, the screams from both parties and the swirling, swashbuckling score combined to deliver a genuinely chaotic, over-the-top effect. But compared with Sony's BDP-S1 - which, compliments of a recent firmware update, can now internally decode both Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks - the S300's audio features are somewhat limited. (At press time, no similar firmware update had been announced for the S300.)

BOTTOM LINE Anyone looking to experience the formidable pleasures of watching movies on Blu-ray Disc, and at a reasonable startup cost, is advised to check out Sony's BDP-S300. But I'd shop around before making the jump. Sony's own PS3 console not only offers the same features at the same price, it adds both wireless and wired Ethernet connectivity for future interactive content as well as an HDMI 1.3 output - a feature that could enable you to pass lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks in bitstream format to a compatible A/V receiver for decoding. And then there's Samsung's $599 BDP-1200, which provides a similar feature set to the S300's but tosses in standard-setting Silicon Optix HQV processing for DVD upconversion.

Whatever your decision, Blu-ray Disc playback is a mandatory upgrade for home theater enthusiasts, and the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc Player helps to make that upgrade a bit easier to swallow.

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