Comments on: Why $100 is the perfect Blu-ray player price

Until DVD players came down to that price, the format wasn't even close to ubiquity. Besides, Blu-ray provides only nominally better picture quality, Don Reisinger says.

[shardsofmetal]

I don't see Blu-ray really taking off until a substantial amount of people get HDTVs. The benefit of DVD over VHS was that you only had a little disc as opposed to a big cassette. You didn't have to worry about the player destroying your discs as you sometimes had to worry about a VCR "eating" your tapes. However, it was essentially the same quality video. For Blu-ray to be appealing, you need to have an HDTV. It won't look any better than DVDs on a standard def TV, and I would never recommend getting it unless you could see it in HD.

[BigGuns149]

I think eventually as the price of the drives drop players that **don't** play Blu-ray will become increasingly rare. If the marginal cost of Blu-ray playback is small than you wouldn't see a lot of demand for players without Blu-ray.

[gp2792]

I don't agree withi shards at all. I think DVD's were an enormous step up from vhs. The difference in sound alone was worth the upgrade, however, the video difference was tremendous even on a tube tv.

just my opinion...

[aztec92154]

Its not the cost of the Blu-ray player -> ITS THE COST OF CONTENT! :-)

[xcal78]

Why not just sell USB drives with HD movies on them? Go into a store then plugin your USB drive and download the movie or swap out your USB drive for one with it already loaded. Or any USB storage media for that matter. You could use the internet as well but to compare apples to apples I was trying to cover offline movies since blue-ray is offline. I just don't see what blue ray offers for the cost that can't be done better another way.

[gp2792]

"Go into a store then plugin your USB drive and download the movie"

blu ray disks hold 50gb...are you telling me you are going to copy 50gb to a usb drive? That would take almost an hour to copy over usb 2.0 at an ideal rate. If the transfer time is more than 3-4 minutes, I don't see people doing it. Even if you "swapped" it out, that means the store has to keep movies in stock on usb drives for you to swap...is that cost effective for a blockbuster store? not to mention that I haven't seen usb key drives that hold that much content so you are pretty much stuck with mini drives at about 80-100 bucks a piece...much more than a blu ray disk. plus they fail over time.

it just isn't feasible right now. I think you have the model for 2020, but not at this time.

[TravisOwens]

$99 has always been the sweet spot for players, this was just as true back around 2000 when DVD players hit the $99 mark, it's a nice solid number people can wrap their wallets around.

[BigGuns149]

That is a great point. The author of the article inaccurately claims that DVD players hit that price point in a *few months.* As long as most Americans don't have access to enough bandwidth at a reasonable cost HD content will largely be distributed through Blu-ray discs.

[ceebee23]

Until the Blu Ray profile mess is sorted out ....so I can buy a Blu Ray disk and be sure it will play on my player without a firmware update etc. I would not touch Blu Ray with the proverbial 10 foot pole.

The debacle last year with the Bond movies only proved that Blu Ray is still a mess!

[tcr071]

Hey. This is funny. I bought an HD-DVD player over 15 months ago and we STILL don't have a blu-ray player that has hit that price.

[BigGuns149]

I saw Blu-ray players for ~$100 over Christmas. Except for Wal-Mart clearencing their HD-DVD players I don't remember almost anyone selling an HD-DVD player for that cost. The reality is that contrary to the HD-DVD fanboys the HD-DVD wasn't significantly cheaper than Blu-ray. They both licensed the same codecs and most of the technical specs (wavelength of light, aperture, etc.) for HD-DVD and Blu-ray playback are virtually identical. The only reason you were able to buy HD-DVD so cheap was because Toshiba was selling the technology at a huge loss.

[writteininwaters]

I'll take this one step further and say the perfect price for a blu-ray player, for me, would be about $20. Other great prices for great products... how about an xbox 360 pro for $15, an elite for $25... and maybe an 80gb PS3 for $25. And while we're at it, I'd really like a new BWM 3 series... a perfect price for me is around $100-150. Sweet!

[trgdr777]

I think these conversations are never truly accurate representations because if you're on this site talking about blu-ray players, you're probably more technologically inclined than most people. Eventually Blu-ray will become the standard just like DVDs and that's when people will buy them. There A LOT of people that don't have HDTVs yet, especially TVs that can handle 1080p. Until the TVs are more common, the DVDs are still going to be the standard. This also means physical media probably isn't going to start disappearing as soon as some people think it will.

[Thranx]

I am repeatedly amazed at the idiocy of this writer. You make some good points, but they're listed along side of blu-ray isn't good for phones? ***? Or that it's not that big of a quality increase from DVD? If you're plugging your bluray player in via some RCA cables... sure, maybe... but if bluray movies look even close to the quality of DVD, you need either someone who know what they're doing to hook it up for you, new tv ... or new glasses.

Yours is, at present, the last entry that I see. And FINALLY, someone mentioned cables! If these ding-dongs are using (and they probaly are) RCA's or A/V cables insteaed of an HDMI cable, they are depriving themselves. Ya gotta have an HD signal running thru an HDMI cable to an HDTV to see the real high def quality. Meeting these criteria, adding a Blu-ray player would surely be an evident improvement to the average viewer.

[abundantsnotbob]

I have a bad TV, so I couldn't tell the difference. DVDs are good enough for me, but if blu rays were about the same price I would consider them. I would also like it better if they put entire seasons on a single Bluray.

[CFSacks]

I got my Sony blu-ray player just after "black Friday" for $190. Love it! Does a great job upscaling and showing blu-ray disks. I see a wonderful difference in blu-ray and people that visit agree. Also does an incredible job of showing photo files. I have updated the firmware twice via download and burning disk only to keep up to date. I will never connect it to the Internet. I believe that manufacturers could sell more cheaply players that omit this feature. What the average user wants is a unit that plays blu-ray disks, not BD Live. Firmware updates will diminish. The original DVD players had many updates too. Anyway, I imagine that BD Live is expensive to include. Some here argue that extra features are unecessary while others want more features through BD-Live. Can't win. Streaming involves very expensive broadband connections. Also many hard-drives to contain the movies. This is good how? I can rent a blu-ray disk for $1.00 at blockbuster. Why wouldn't anyone who purchased an HD TV not watch HD? On cable you use the QAM tuner and the local channels are free in HD. Then there is OTA. I'll stop now.

[warrengreer]

Many people argue about the $$ of the content. I say don't let that be your problem. Just go to Netflix. Problem solved. And for those that can't see the difference, there may be any number of problems. But even what I saw a few years ago was substantially better than a regular DVD, that's why it is blu-ray. If you can't see the difference at home, most likely, the DVD player is not setup properly or the TV is not setup properly. When I got my HDTV and upscaling DVD player two years ago, the picture quality was terrible on the manufacturers settings. I was really upset and wondered how I made such a bad decision. Then, I spent an hour or two dialing in the two devices and now it looks great. Bottomline, I'm waiting until there is some stabilization in the market and I can be at least reasonably sure that it will be here for a while. I'd really like to know where the normal CD is heading too? Soundtracks on some DVD movies are so much better than a CD. I know it's because of the improved chip sets but..... Can't wait to see where it will all go. And to the original question, a $100 blu-ray player. For the foreseeable future, and more likely for a long, long time, what you get for $100 may only provide compatibility with Blu-ray. Not the great video and sound of at least a moderatly-priced player, defeating the whole reason of the purchase, to upgrade the audio/video experience to a cleaner sound with significantly improved resolution.

[crazybabydoc]

1) Upconverters vary dramatically in quality/performance. In essence, the best POSSIBLE SD DVD can indeed give some HD content a run for the money particularly if the transfer to Blu-ray was suboptimal.

2) Display quality, size and viewing distance matter.

3) It's presumptuous to claim there's 'value' in what may be a distinction without difference. All things being equal; yes, Blu-ray looks better than SD DVD. But for many people that have 37"-46" displays and view from 8ft"+, the 'higher quality' just isn't enough to write home about. It certainly isn't enough to spend several hundred dollars on a new media player and then an arm/leg for media.

Audiophiles and videophiles, notwithstanding, most people that work for a living could care less about lossless audio or top end upscalers. 99/100 people don't know what 1080/24 or 5:5 pulldown means. Nor do they care b/c the picture and sound are 'good enough'.

[AnthonyNYC]

did you mean 3:2 pulldown? I never heard of 5:5, maybe I am not up to date!

[valgehiir]

yep, love blue ray quality, can't handle tha price. here in Thai I see a nice Sony player but at 24 000 baht I will wait.. that's about $800 US.. no way.. and buying all the favorite movies again.. the price has to come way down

[supoman]

I just bought a DVD player ($50 walmart) that upconverts to 1080p and the picture is awesome. Sounds to me like the Blueray upgrade is not worth the money unless you want the games, extended content or enhanced audio. For the average Joe they are going to have to do a lot better than $150 to justify it. I would wager that until you can buy one for the same price as one that upconverts ($50) they'll be sitting on the shelves.

[DJOmega6]

"Do I really want to spend $150 on an underwhelming player when the jump from DVD to Blu-ray isn't that great on good players and a high-quality HDTV?"
Isn't that great? My God, why do they let you write for CNET?

[doug20666]

@jsl4980
Blu-Ray movies are way more scratch resistant than DVD. As far as cost yu got to look around . Amazon and other sites are always having sales on Blu-Rays. Streaming has a way to go before it will be equivalent to media. The other thing that no one thinks about is if you have a hard drive full of movies and you drive craps out do you think they are going to let you download all those movies for free? I sure as hell don't. http://news.cnet.com/Try-scratching-this-DVD/2100-1041_3-5455621.html

[BigGuns149]

Even local retail stores are having bargain bin prices for Blu-ray discs. Fry's has an entire bargain section for Blu-ray now starting at $7.99.

[the_iceman]

since the Sony S350 already hit 180 on black friday deals I'm now waiting for $150 players to jump into Blu. One still big drawback however is the cost of Blu movies, these need to fall closer to DVD levels if they want bigger market share and more mainstream popularity. I'm also waiting for new tech, profile 3.0, which means the introduction of Blu-ray audio discs! (we really need a better format to replace the aging CD format)

[AnthonyNYC]

you would think! But I just googled your sony s350, almost every cheap site, amazon, buy.com etc... all had it for $299, no where near your $180 black friday deal. so $150 isn't as close as you think.
But as the players start to sit there, eventually they will have to lower the prices to get them to sell again.
I know my local Costco, stopped selling all but one brand of BluRay player, they were wasting too much shelve space and not producing and profit, no movement. They now have upscaling dvd and vhs combo units there, and a few dvd recordable, vhs units.
I guess people who never got to burn there own dvd from vhs can now finally get one of those machine for around $150 or so.

[doug20666]

The other issue I forgot to talk about was the fact that ISp like ATT and comcast are starting to impose limits on their net works.

[the_iceman]

large screen 1080p owners are really the target audience for Blu-ray, in my opinion. Meaning these are the people that really get the max benefit from the HD format.