LG, after months of speculation, demonstrated its new BD300 Blu-ray Disc player at a very crowded press conference during CEDIA 2008. This Blu-ray disc player features the ability for users to stream movies, in real time, from the Netflix film library (You need to be a Netflix subscriber).

Some of the other highlights of the BD300 are that it is a full fledged Profile 2.0 (BD-Live) Blu-ray Disc player with 1080p upscaling for standard DVDs and offers USB host functions for flash drives and digital audio/video devices, and memory enhancement for BD-Live functions.

The announced price for the BD300 is $399, which puts it in the same price class as the Sony Blu-ray-equipped PS3.

On the other hand, there were some disappointments. First, in order to perform BD-Live functions, the user must insert a 1GB flash memory card into the USB host port. The sceond disppointment is that Netflix movie streaming is limited to standard definition content, and the video streaming content is not upscaled as is standard DVD content. However, the LG spokepersons "assured" the press that the video streaming functions are upgradable and should include HD streaming in the future.

The LG BD300 is expected to be available at retailers by the first week in October, 2008.