Get an Insignia Blu-ray player for $129.99
This Blu-ray player doesn't have any bells or whistles, but it does have a dirt-cheap price.
(Credit: Best Buy)I said it before, I'll say it again: Blu-ray won't really take off until you can buy a player for $99. We're not quite there yet, but we're close: Best Buy has the Insignia NS-2BRDVD Blu-ray player for $129.99 shipped (plus tax in most states).
That's just about the lowest price I've seen yet on a nonrefurbished, rebate-free player. (Actually, Walmart has a Magnavox model on sale for $128, but it's in-store only. I like stuff that gets brought to me.)
The Insignia (Best Buy's house brand) features the usual features: 1080p output and upconversion, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD audio, a one-year warranty, and so on. Unsurprisingly, an HDMI cable is not included--but by now you know how to get one for just a few bucks, right?
The player supports Blu-ray Profile 1.1, meaning you won't get to take advantage of BD-Live and other 2.0 features. Interestingly, CNET's review of the NS-2BRDVD indicates that a March, 2009, firmware update will add 2.0 support--but the last update was in February. My advice: Don't hold your breath.
You will, however, need to apply that February update, at least according to a smattering of user reviews on the product page. And to do so, you'll have to download the ISO file to your PC, burn it to a CD or DVD, then install on the player. That's because the NS-2BRDVD lacks Ethernet and USB ports, which would make firmware updates a lot easier.
So, yeah, this isn't the world's most advanced Blu-ray player. But it should deliver dazzling images and audio, and that's the most important part, right?
What do you think? Is $129.99 a good enough deal for you to pull the Blu-ray trigger, or are you waiting for that magical $99 price tag?
Rick Broida, a technology writer for nearly 20 years, is the author of more than a dozen books. In addition to writing CNET's The Cheapskate blog, he oversees BNET's Business Hacks. Rick is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive. Disclosure. Deals found on The Cheapskate are subject to availability, expiration, and other terms determined by sellers. Follow Rick on Twitter at cheapskateblog. 
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Sony_PSP/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A1320879
Mine is being delivered today. :)
Yup. Definitely sounds like the best format for the consumers won. Right...?
That's the kind of idiotic thinking that sunk HD DVD in the first place. When you watch high quality 1080p content, at what point do you think "man this looks bad since the disk only holds 30 gigs of data"? The BD platform was always poorly implemented overkill with superior marketing that has obviously taken you for a ride.
@ospideyo - They were able to lower the price because the format was cheaper and easier to produce, not because it was a last ditch effort. Blu-ray players were being slashed in prices as well but the cheapest they could possibly make it was to $199.99 which was a price point HD-DVD was at WITHOUT a sale back in January of 2008.
The few Blu rays I have that were BD Live would not even work in my Laptop player until I updated to 2.0, which wasn't as easy as it should have been btw (thanks to Dell). The Auto update feature kept looping and saying the updated completed sucessfully but it did not.
Buyer beware picking up a player this cheap as there maybe no 2.0 upgrade and that could leave you out of luck with all the latest movies all using BD live/2.0..
For example "The Dark Knight" is BD live.
Also unless you hook this thing up to the Internet, BD Live is not a big deal. You do as mentioned in the review need to install the latest firmware to work with newer disc.
1.) A movie with BD-Live (2.0) features on it will still play on a BD-Bonus View (1.1) player. It just won't activate the BD-Live features. If the player won't play a disc, it's because of the DRM on the disc, not the fact that it has BD-Live features on it that makes the disc unplayable (see: Samsung P1400 player).
2.) HD DVD is constrained by the 30gb size. Transformers, Bourne, and a few others released on HD DVD lacked lossless audio. The BD releases have TrueHD. If that's not proof of the size limitation, give me an explanation of why the HD DVD release didn't have lossless audio.
3.) Triple layer HD DVDs didn't have a prayers chance of reaching the mass market. You know why? Existing HD DVD players were incapable of reading the discs. So the triple layer disc (and its 45GB space) could not be utilized by the (approximately) 1 million people who bought a HD DVD player. Finished spec? Right.
Blu-ray won the HD format war because it had larger support/backing from the studios. More options for DRM allowed more content producers to sign up and make content on Blu-ray. Also, let's not forget the PS3 for helping to push extra BD players into the laps of gamers.
I'm really curious as to how many people actually play back using True HD or DTS HD? Remember when HD-DVD first hit there were only a few high end recievers that offered this feature. For me, it's not major reason to upgrade as I fine with Dobly Digital.
Again if you're looking for a second BD player (i.e. for your bedroom / office) then this is probably a good deal for a player. However in a year from now I suspect most players will be in the $125-$175 range anyway.
Also check your local BB as I've seen this one marked down to $99.
Currently, only the mid-range and up receivers have DTS-HD MA and TrueHD decoding, but almost every single player now decodes the lossless codecs on the player itself you get PCM audio out of your player (all the big name players: Panasonic, Samusng, LG, Sony, etc.). The great thing about this is that you can connect your audio receiver via HDMI or Analog and get the lossless sound. So even those with older receivers can still get lossless sound if they don't want to upgrade to a HDMI receiver.
- by douggdangger June 17, 2009 9:27 AM PDT
- Just buy a Bluray drive for your PC, rent the movies and rip them to your HD.
- Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (35 Comments)For the price of 4 bluray movies, I can buy a hard drive and store about 80 1080p rips in them with no loss in quality. All I pay for is the rental membership.
For about the same price as purchasing 1 bluray movie, that gives me a full month's rental of about 10 bluray discs in my que (if I rip and return them fast enough). Not bad.
That should do it for me in the next year or two until the disc media dies.
Sony and the movie industry help destroy the superior format that was working since day one, friendlier to the consumer, and was more affordable.
I'm taking revenge for Toshiba by giving my money to Netflix and hard drive manufacturers and not to Sony and the studios. ;-)