Looking to buy a BD Player (LG 370 v Panasonic BD60 v Sony S-360)

[doubleohpsycho]

I've been looking for a relatively cheap BD player to pick up. I was browsing on Amazon and found a bunch around $150.

I've been looking at the Sony S-360, the Panasonic BD-60 and the LG 370.

I'm really tempted to get the LG, since it has Netflix and all of the sound decoding that I want. And I love that it can play .mkv files. But I've read a lot of reviews saying things like "others offer better picture quality." None of the electronics stores around me have it on display though.

So does anyone have the LG? Is the picture quality that noticeably different between the players? I always believed the TV had the most impact on picture quality, but so many reviews mentioned the LG had slightly worse quality.

Also, I'm not worried about the player's ability to upconvert DVDs.

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[jeffredo]

The Sony is generally thought to have the better image quality of the three (both in Blu-Ray and especially the DVD Upconvert you don't care about). I was shopping for a while a few weeks ago, read a lot of reviews and the consensus was the LG 370 and 390 generally seemed to have slightly worse IQ than competitors, so I don't think the claim is unfounded. If streaming Netflix is important you could just get the Sony for Blu-Ray discs and a Roku box for Netflix. It works better than almost any BD player for that use (at $99).

 

[jeffredo]

There's also a new Sony network Blu-Ray that'll stream Netflix and Youtube:

http/www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665968161