CEDIA Expo in Denver marks the official launch of the LG BD300 Network Blu-ray DVD Player. LG representative John Taylor demonstrated a final, fully operational sample of the BD300, which in addition to being a top-quality Blu-ray disc player is the world's first with the ability to stream Netflix content instantly. The player is shipping now to arrive at retail the first week of October, at a confirmed suggested retail price of $399.
The BD300 starts out with all of the features you'd expect on a new Blu-ray deck: BD Live, BonusView, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus output as lossless PCM audio. It also offers USB Media Plus for playback/display of photos and music on connected media, and external memory must be added to enable the BD Live functionality.
The deck must also be wired into a home network via the network port on the player's rear panel (Wi-Fi is not currently supported) to access a Netflix account previously set up on the home computer. Plans starting at $8.99/month offer unlimited streaming, and the BD300 uses a clear, simple interface to access the Netflix streaming feature and manage to cue of content. At its best, the video quality is near-SD, and when we fast forward we are shown thumbnails of upcoming scenes. Although the player upscales DVDs, it does not upscale the streamed content. Streaming HD content is being planned however, and the internet connection also makes future firmware upgrades extremely easy.
The Netflix folks assured us of their growing library of approximately 12,000 "select" streamable movie and TV titles. The live demo included streaming presentations of a couple of Warner movies, namely Omega Man and Singin' in the Rain. Despite the vertical black bars on Omega Man, we were assured that all titles will be offered in their original aspect ratio, and a later stream of an episode of The Office was in fact presented in all its 16:9 glory.
