Just in time for summer blockbuster season, Sony's pre-announced its new BDP-S300 budget Blu-ray player. It'll MSRP for a cool $600 -- still significantly less than the better-late-than-never S1 -- and will apparently have all the fixins of its predecessor (as well as CD playback), and a size closer to a traditional DVD player. Which makes you wonder why they'd announce such an attractive "low end" model model so early when it's got all the same features as the current generation. Perhaps because consumers still aren't as confident about picking up a Blu-ray as Sony might have hoped? We don't know, but we have a feeling they just killed S1 sales through summer.