Price Watch: Memorex Blu-ray, $146.98 shipped

The first Blu-ray player to qualify as "affordable."

(Credit: Buy.com)

If you missed this player on Woot the other day, here's your chance to get it for just a couple bucks more. TheNerds.net has the Memorex MVBD2510 Blu-ray player for $136.99, plus $10 for ground shipping. (Buy.com has the same player for $149.99 shipped if you'd rather go with a bigger, better-known store.) Best of all: no rebates!

The MVBD2510 is a new model (and new-in-box, not a refurb). CNET has a brief overview of it, but, alas, no hands-on review. Hardcore home-theater types will bemoan its lack of Profile 2.0 support, but on the audio front it's all good: Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD. Also: analog 5.1-channel audio output. (I won't pretend to understand any of this audio jargon. At this point I'm just regurgitating specs.)

Anyway, now we're getting somewhere! At $150, a Blu-ray player is worth buying, if for no other reason than to make your current DVDs look a helluva lot better on your HDTV than your old, non-upscaling DVD player ever could. And let's not forget: The Dark Knight is coming soon to Blu-ray (and Wall-E is out now). What do you think? Is this the magic price point for Blu-ray to finally take off? Or do the players need to dip below $100?

One last note: You'll need an HDMI cable. For heaven's sake, don't pay 50 bucks for one at your local big-box store. Or 40 bucks or even 30. Meritline has a six-foot HDMI cable for $5.99 shipped.

[Dragon_Myr]

Rick, this is a great find! If I wasn't moving in a few weeks I think I'd pick this up. Under $150 gets sufficiently close to what I'd be willing to pay for a quality player. It's a very tempting offer since I just got a new HDTV. Yeah, around $100 is the magic mass market number I think, but I prefer to get players that don't cut features or look like plastic boxes when lowering price.

[chrisfrary]

If this is anything like their media, it's crap. Since when are they a hardware company? Who really makes this?

Meritline is a great store for media and the like, but if you want cables I suggest monoprice.com you pay the exact shipping they pay, often for $3.

[chrisfrary]

Never mind Meritline seems to be cheaper right now with the free shipping if your only buying 1

[ballssalty]

Funai is the maker, Memorex just rebrands it. It's also the same as the Insignia model that Best Buy sells.

[sartor1]

Does is do DIVX?
I looked at the web site, but no mention...

[gsmiller88]

So, generic BRD players are just now below $150 while a year ago name-brand HD-DVD players were going for less than $100.

Oh yes, such a bargain.

[guymatrin]

There was a good reason HD-DVD players were sold at $100. Though this time last year was still two, three months or so before the end of the format war I think most people who were in the know knew HD-DVD was going down. They has nothing to lose by selling players at $100.

[Mishii86]

Hey rick...idk if this is a good idea to post up. I just ordered a xbox 360 60gb pro bundle with 2 games..usinf the dell code provided... 15% off..totals to 254 plus tax..which isnt too bad, it can also be used on the elite, ps2 80gb n i think the psp as well...it expires on the 23rd of nov or until it reaches 5k

http://dealspl.us/PlayStation-3-w-80-GB-for-Xbox-360-Elite-Xbox-360-Pro_110878

[Mishii86]

typo ...i meant to say ps3 80gb =)

[rlawlis]

From a user stand point, the implications of the "audio jargon" are significant. This unit internally decodes all the various multi-channel sound streams a movie viewer may encounter. This includes legacy multi-channel surround sound and and the newest Dolby Labs and DTS Inc. high bit rate codecs; ie., high bit rate codec = high bandwith = high resolution audio. Check their websites (dolby.com, dts.com) for endless boring detail. For those of us who have older multi-channel recievers with 5.1 channel analog inputs (including many 15 year old receivers), this means we can hear these new higher resolution sound streams for, at most, the cost of 6 analog audio cables, saving the cost of having to buy a new receiver.

For those of us who have a newer receiver which can internally decode these new audio codecs, the claim is this unit also will "bitstream" the digital audio tracks directly from the BluRay disk to the receiver without conversion. You may ask yourself why wouldn't it anyway. The answer to this is it should but the fact is many BlueRay players don't. For example, the PS3, in all respects an otherwise excellent machine, cannot. It has to internally decode the the digital sound and then send it to the receiver. This is fine as long as the Sony does an equal or better job than your receiver on the audio. If it doesn't, then you have this nice new receiver with better sound capability that you paid for but cannot use because Sony decided to cheap charlie the digital interface electronics on the PS3. (To use the jargon, the PS3 HDMI 1.3 chipset is a deficient hardware implemention of the HDIM 1.3 audio standard which cannot be fixed with a firmware update.)

The actual build quality of the Memerox MVBD2510 and whether it performs well awaits serious hands-on testing and evaluation. On paper, however, it appears to offer substantial value to many kinds of users with no obvious omissions.

[jvh212]

i love it

[xsraid]

I bought one from woot. Thought I was getting a great deal. It worked on some BD movies such as Wall-E and Hancock. However, when I put in the new X-Files on BD, the screen indicated that I needed a firmware update in order to view this movie. Then I put in the regular X-Files DVD and it said that the disc was not in a region that was supported by the player. I needed a power cycle in order to get the unit to recognize any discs after that. So, it loks like BD XFiles caused the player to lose its mind.

Then I went online to get the firmware update, and discovered two issue:

1. there is no firmware update yet available for this player.

2. firmware update requires burning a CD, which is a little less elegant than using ethernet, or even USB which is a port on the front of the box.

So, it was cheap, but it is not issue free. Not sure what other BD discs will not work on this player.