It’s been a while since I’ve been as disappointed in a consumer electronics product as I am with my new Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc Player.

The setup was smooth, and the picture is great – really great.

However: I have certain usability expectations in upgrading from an older standard DVD player, especially given that this is a second generation Blu-ray player. From the “Powered by Java” on the box and the 4 page GNU license in the manual, this is a computer in a DVD player enclosure and doesn’t do a whole lot to hide that fact.

It takes about 3 minutes to boot this particular computer when I hit the power-on, and then another minute or so before I can watch a movie. It also seems to power itself off after being in pause for a bit – helping to keep us green I guess. But it doesn’t remember where I was in the movie, so coming back in the room after a phone call, it takes another 4 minutes to reboot the “computer” and use chapter search (once I’m allowed to do that) to get to approximately where I left off.

Maybe I need to RTFM, but unfortunately, it really is a FM. It looks like it was written circa 1988, and it’s one of those manuals where you wonder why they left 2/3 of the relevant info out of the manual, and then 2/3 of what’s left can’t be found in the index. At least it’s replete with notes that say essentially, “This may not work”.

My guess is that the format wars caused everyone to be a bit too hasty in product development and rollout because it shows.

[updated in the comments - Nov 23, 2008]