I'm not an A/V expert, nor have I ever claimed to be. I do however, have years of experience working with consumer electronics and enjoy learning and utilizing the newest technologies.
This was my first Blu-Ray or home theater system. For the price, I do not think you could possibly find a better set up. Again, I'm no expert, however the system sounds good and works well. I had fairly low expectations, I didn't expect rich sound or accurate surround quality, I am very pleased with this purchase. After weeks of research and flip flopping between other products, I couldn't be more pleased. This product, for it's category (low end, Blu-ray HTIB) is a solid 5 stars. I think in the entire world of Blu-ray and HTIB products, it would be closer to 4 stars, but that's putting the item in the running with products that cost many multipliers more.
The two biggest Pros and Cons of this system are the same item: set up. Physical set up was a snap. A trained (or untrained, like myself) monkey could set it up. Everything is color coded and very intuitive. Buy yourself a cheap optical audio cable so you can feed your TV/cable/satellite/game console sound back into the system. The part of the set up that I didn't like was the user menu. I am very comfortable with consumer electronics. I rarely read the manuals. The menus are so unintuitive that it's not even funny. Out of the box and set up, the system works good. In order to get it to work great, took some effort. A HUGE gripe of mine is that the default setting for the HDMI to TV is 480p, NOT 1080p. It took some serious digging in the manual and menus to change. There are also three separate places to change the sound setting. One of them is a simple button on the remote, one of them are two rather unexplained buttons on the remote and the other is a menu item only accessible via front panel display prompts that the user guide poorly explains how to access. Anyway, even if you are comfortable with these types of products, be prepared for a longer than usual learning curve.
On the good side, again, this system is great. The picture is fast with no issues of mosiacs, artifacts, etc. The sound is deep and rich. I, in my humble opinion, think it sounds just as good as any other, more expensive system, I've heard. Again, I'm no expert, but my ears love it. It interfaces well with my TV. The remote was easy to program and the two (even though different brands) work well together. My regular DVDs are upconverted to a more than acceptable level. As far total speaker power goes, I'm more than happy. I put in Lord of the Rings and during the loud action scenes, we got some serious rumbling that I'm sure my neighbors won't appreciate. It felt like we were actually in a movie theater.
Pros:
Easy physical set up
Great sound
Powerful sound
Quick loading time
Quality
Price
Easy calibration
Cons:
Poor menus
Short (but not unacceptable) speaker wire length
Out of box settings
Cannot connect to the internet for services like Netflix
All in all, I'd highly recommend this product for anyone looking for a reasonable home theater system. Be aware that the menus are a pain. I think for the money, you just can't do better. I think even for more money, a lot more, you'd be hard pressed. I'm more than satisfied with the entire set up. Now that I'm used to the menus, it's tolerable, although They also confused by bits
Sony BDVE300 5.1-Channel High-Definition Blu-ray Disc Player/DVD Disc Home theater System (Black) Features
- Plays your Blu-ray Disc movies in Full HD 1080p
- Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
- BD- Live ready
- Plays DVDs and upscales them to near high definition
- HDMI output
