New Sony BD Player Launches At $499

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 6/4/2007

San Diego – Sony said it has cut the retail pricing on its just launched next generation Blu-ray Disc player by $100 to an expected street price of $499.

The BDP-S300 is a fully functional HD 1080p/24fps Blu-ray player that includes the advanced Dolby Digital Plus audio codec as well as BRAVIA Theatre Sync unified system operation and DVD and audio CD playback.

“The BD format gained great momentum in the past several months, and we're going to capitalize on that with the new model,” said Chris Fawcett, Sony Home Products marketing VP. “The player gives a broader consumer segment the opportunity to experience the exceptional quality of Blu-ray Disc format at a competitive price.”

In addition to playing native 1080p signals, the new BD player will upconvert lower resolution signals to 1080p through its HDMI v1.3 output. The model also supports AVC-HD discs encoded with x.v.Color (xvYCC) technology, a new international standard for wide color space. The standard expands the current data range of video by about 1.8 times allowing the player to output more natural and vivid colors similar to what the human eye can actually see.

Surround sound audio support includes multi-channel linear PCM via HDMI, and Dolby Digital Plus. The unit has optical and coaxial digital audio out, along with 5.1 channel decoding capability for backward compatibility with existing receivers.

It also supports BD-ROM, AVC-HD Media, DVD video and DVD playback from DVD/DVD+R/+RW encoded discs, CD playback, as well as MP3 audio files and JPEG images stored on DVD recordable media.

Sony said the BDP-S300 player, “will be available shortly at Sony Style stores, online at the new Sony Style and at other retailers nationwide.”