The price of Blu-ray discs and the fact that the PS3 is an excellent BD player, among other things, has resulted in the poor uptake of standalone BD players to date.

Players like the LG BD300 are however creating a stir with their cheaper pricing (R3999) and networking capabilities. The BD300 is a good looking machine which offers good HD movie playback. It has all the necessary inputs and outputs (including HDMI and USB) and even offers Dolby TrueHD decoding and DivX playback. The user interface on offer is equally good.

The “Network” bit in the BD300’s title is however completely meaningless for South African’s at this juncture. What makes the BD300 a big deal is the fact that it is the world’s first standalone BD player with built-in Netflix streaming capability. Since this service is not available in SA, our bandwidth constraints aside, its best feature is lost on us.

That being said, if all you are looking for is a well priced BD player that offers decent HD playback the BD300 will do the trick.