![]() Nothing beats the quality of a Blu-ray disc though. Amazon’s Unbox with TiVo HD is a nice option too. If Netflix could wrangle more titles loose from Hollywood in a streaming format, add HD and 5.1 surround options, they would be best. Overall, the combination of iTunes and Apple TV seems to be leading the pack (HD Movie Rentals and TV shows, iPod, iPhone, computer and TV compatibility, Streaming and Downloading options, no subscription fees). Also since there are never enough HDMI or Optical Audio ports to go around, less is more! Another thing to ponder is that since there is no additional charge to use the Netflix streaming service if you already have a Netflix account, it’s like Netflix is maintaing a growing on-demand video library that is accessible to you whenever you want without you physically having to store the media. However, having the Netflix streaming combined with a Blu-ray player means only having to worry about connecting and controlling one device. If you need a Blu-ray player AND you have a Netflix account, this is your player! It’s about $100 more than the Sony BD S350 (it’s much cheaper now at $266), which you could argue is the same price as the Roku box. Since I use an Apple TV for pictures and music, I don’t really have a need for this on the LG, but it’s there if you need it. This allows you to hook up USB hard drives or thumb drives to handle content such as pictures or music. There is also a USB 2 port on the back of the player. It would be great if these Blu-ray players either came with Wi-Fi built-in or at least offered a low cost external option like the one available for TiVo HD. So you will need either an ethernet drop near your TV or an Ethernet to Wi-Fi bridge (which I have not tested). This player connects to your network via Ethernet. The minute I connected the player up, there was a firmware update waiting. It also upconverts standard def DVDs to HD. "Iron Man" playing back from Blu-ray on the LG BD300 You can stop it and it will remember where you left off the next time you go to play it. You can pause, fast forward or rewind any movie that’s playing. The movie starts playing in about 15-30 seconds (this will depend on the speed of your internet connection. Streaming a movie was as simple as selecting it and hitting the OK/Play button. By the time I made it back to the theater room (not sure why I didn’t just take my laptop in there with me), there was a message waiting that my account was ready to go. You go to your computer and log in to your Netflix account and key it in. Once you have it connected to your network, you choose the Netflix menu option, you’re given a 5 digit activation code. The New LG player is very easy to setup for Netflix streaming. Since I was in the market for one more Blu-ray player at some point for my living room, I decided to move the Sony BD S350 to the living room and put the new LG in my theater. However, it offers one more thing and that is Netflix streaming. This “Network”  Blu-ray player sports all the latest and greatest advancements in Blu-ray technology including BD-Live support. That’s it! Again, I thought this was cool, but I wasn’t ready to spend $100 to only watch a handful of titles. It connects to your TV and your internet connection and streams movies from the Netflix service. Secondly Netflix has authorized hardware manufacturers to build the Netflix streaming technology in. Out of my 100+ DVDs/Blu-rays, these are the only ones available for streaming ![]()  Still only a small percentage of my queue is available for streaming Netflix is boasting over 12,000 Movies and TV shows for streaming. I was shocked to only see 4 out of the 90 titles in my queue available for streaming! Those 4 were older titles that I want to see at some point, but not anything new or urgent. As a matter of fact I normally have anywhere from 70-90 DVD titles in my queue at any given time. While Netflix has over 100,000 titles on DVD (many on Blu-ray), there were only a handful at the start, available for streaming. It was more about the selection of available streaming titles. It actually had nothing to do with running Windows. While I can certainly boot into Windows on my Mac, I just wasn’t inclined to. When the service first rolled out, it only worked on Windows PC’s. So when Netflix started offering movie streaming at no additional cost, it got my attention. As a Netlfix subscriber, the only thing that I don’t like about the service is having to wait for the discs in the mail. The New LG BD300 Blu-ray Player can also stream Netflix movies. ![]() However, I was intrigued by the NEW LG offering. It wasn’t long ago that I reviewed the new Sony BD-S350 Blu-ray player and I’m still quite happy with it. ![]()
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