Panasonic prices DMP-BD50 at $700, releases more details

The Panasonic DMP-BD50 is packed with features, but is it too expensive?

When Panasonic announced the DMP-BD50 at CES 2008, home theater enthusiasts who didn't want a game console as their Blu-ray player finally had a fully-featured standalone player to look forward to. The Panasonic DMP-BD50 promises the two big elusive features: Blu-ray Profile 2.0 and onboard decoding for both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Tuesday, we attended a demonstration of the DMP-BD50 and learned some new details. Here's a quick glance at the spec sheet as far as we know right now.

Key features of the Panasonic DMP-BD50:

• Blu-ray Profile 2.0 (BD-Live)
• Onboard Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding
• Can output Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio in bit stream format
• Can output DVDs and Blu-ray discs in 1080p at 24 frames per second
• 5.1 analog outputs
• SD card slot capable of playing back AVCHD video
• $700 list price, available this spring

The big news that we didn't know from CES was the $700 list price, which is more than we were expecting. Whether it's fair or not, all standalone players are going to be compared with the PlayStation 3, which costs $400, has all the major Blu-ray features, and loads discs must faster than any standalone player we've tested. (Panasonic told us that the DMP-BD50's load times aren't significantly faster than its predecessors.)

Compared with the recently announced Pioneer BDP-51FD, the DMP-BD50 is well-positioned, as the BDP-51FD is only a Profile 1.1 player and will only have onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding when it's released--with DTS-HD Master Audio coming later via a firmware update. On the other hand, the BDP-51FD is $100 cheaper and has 7.1 analog outputs, for those still using older non-HDMI receivers.

We're starting to sound like a broken record, but our instinct is that the majority of buyers are going to stick with the cheaper PlayStation 3 until quality standalones become more affordable. What do you you think? Will any of these standalone players compete with the relatively cheap PS3? Or is the PS3 positioned to be the best Blu-ray value for (at least) the rest of 2008?

[crazycarl1999]

Come on, I'd buy a Blue-Ray player if it were priced at $200, there are plenty of high end players out there already, it's pathetic that the "winning" HD technology is still priced out of reach of the vast majority of consumers.

[Wes#1]

Too much is being made of the "Profiles" (1.0 vs 2.0), trying to get people to "upgrade" to junk features when all we really want is to play the MOVIE and not spend a fortune on the machine. The manufacturer who drops a stripped-down, $199 Blu-ray player on the market will find orders outpacing supply -- something that this $700 Panasonic will never see. Just look at what Visio did for the flat-screen TV market; the big boys are now scrambling and Visio has gone from a nobody to a major player.

[Woodrow_Packer]

US prices for BD players reached their low point in Dec. 2007, at $299, in the final phases of the battle with HD-DVD. Now that the battle is won, the two victorious samurai insist on the spoils of war. Sony and Pansonic did not slay Toshiba, or wine, dine, and entice the Hollywood studios, for nothing.

BD player prices will stay high until the format is threatened by a high definition alternative, perhaps fiber optic downloads or even tiny flash memory cards, which are falling in price and could allow one to store a movie library in a book-sized album. The other alternative might be hard drive media servers equipped for remote control and do not require a PC. Trekstor sells something of this sort, although not specifically geared to AVCHD.