BD300

The LG BD300 is an entry-level Blu-ray player that delivers great picture quality and has Profile 2.0 BD-Live support.

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The LG BD300 is an easy to use entry-level Blu-ray player with Profile 2.0 BD-Live support. It offers good picture quality for both Blu-ray discs and DVDs.

Pros

  • Good picture quality when playing Blu-ray discs, stylish, BD-Live

Cons

  • Image noise and artefacts when upscaling DVDs, no 7.1-channel analog output

Bottom Line

The LG BD300 is a Blu-ray player that offers great image quality and BD-Live capabilities for extra online content. Its DVD upscaling may not be perfect, but it's much better than you would get from a standard DVD player when connected to a large screen.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 499.00 (AUD)

With the Kogan Technologies Blu-ray Player Full HD 1080P, the Panasonic DMP-BD35 and now the LG BD300 all costing less than $500, it's cheaper than ever to pick up an entry-level Blu-ray plaer.

The LG BD300 is 68mm tall, and the piano black fascia with its integrated LCD and aluminium trim will look comfortable as part of any home theatre setup.

The Blu-ray player is accompanied by an uncluttered remote control that makes menu navigation simple.

A USB port on the right side of the LG BD300's face plate lets you play content from compatible storage devices.

Blu-ray Live, also known as Profile 2.0, is a feature being included in an increasing number of entry-level players. If you connect the LG BD300 to the Internet by using its Ethernet port you can access special online content when playing a Blu-ray disc with BD-Live functionality.

Picture quality is excellent when playing Blu-ray discs and relatively good when playing upscaled DVDs. We watched Pearl Harbour on Blu-ray and were impressed by the clarity, colour balance and smooth motion during fast-paced action sequences. When upscaling the The Matrix on DVD to 1080p artefacts were often present in the image. However, the image quality is still much better than standard DVD players can provide for large screens; additionally, the LG BD300 beats the Panasonic DMP-BD35 in this department.

The LG BD300 has HDMI 1.3 output that supports uncompressed 7.1-channel audio. The analog audio options aren't quite as impressive, with stereo RCA composite audio outputs, one digital audio out coaxial port and a digital audio optical output. Even at this price point we'd like to see 5.1-channel analog outputs for surround sound.

The player can decode Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, but you'll need an A/V receiver to really take advantage of this.

The LG BD300 is well worth a look if you're in the market for an entry-level Blu-ray drive with BD-Live compatibility.

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