I was this close to jumping into the HDM market last week and was going to buy an A2, but some things delayed my purchase, and I'm glad I hadn't.

I was willing to jump in because the price was so low, and the free disks offset the initial gamble.

Now with all the news and what certainly appears to be a deathknell for HD-DVD, I'm willing to pay a little higher price for a BR player because it seems like less of a gamble.

I'm also an avid gamer, so I'll shell out for a 399 BR player in the next couple weeks. I really have no interest in it as a gaming platform, but again, in my mind, it lowers my initial investment because of the gaming possibility.

I still think there's a decent chance that BR will fail, but I'm more willing to gamble on it now.

The new Panasonic BD50 will be a BD Live 2.0 player and decode all lossless audio.

If Toshiba can sell HD-DVD players for $99, Sony/Panasonic can sell a BD player $150-$200. I mean, come on; is is THAT much more expensive to make a BD player? What a crock. I hate Sony.

I believe Toshiba sold their player at $99 for a grand total of 1 day. 1.

The BD manufacturers are trying to make money on their player sales. Why take a loss this early in the game? I don't recall dvd players being $150 during year 1.5.

If you hate Sony, then that means you hate Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Pioneer, Sharp, and every other manufacturer, right?

Yes, I do. You forgot to add Toshiba in the list as well.

$100 for me, I'm in no rush. I was only looking for an upconverter when WM sold the $100 HD-A2's. Then got a LOT of great movies with all the Buy1Get1Free sales. I can wait for another good Xmas deal this year on Blu-Ray.

Not on the retail level, but due to the dot-com boom, you could have bought a DVD player for $150 during year 1.5. I bought mine for $140 from ValueAmerica in October 1999 (was that in year 1.5?). I also bought 3 DVDs for $1 shipped from 800.com around the same time. There wers tons of websites pratically giving stuff away during that time.

I've said for well over a year that my price point is $250. But so far there is no player that meets my requirements at any price: Profile 1.1, 5.1 analog out, on-board decoding of TrueHD (at least). And even if one was made, the chances of it being sold at $250 or less seems remote for the next year or two.

The other option would be to buy a new HDMI capable HT receiver but I hate the idea of throwing away the perfectly good receiver I have now just because BD player manufacturers can't be bothered to make players that support lossless sound over analog out.

At this point I don't know what to do, so I wait.

Given how the market has changed with there now being more of a built in user base/interest level for HDM versus when DVD was launched, widespread movie collecting, seemingly more streamlined production/distribution costs for an electronics product of this sort, approaching the two year mark of HDM first release and there really only being about a 5-7 year window for HD disc based media to truly entrench itself.. I would hope CE companies would be aggressive in price points. Allowing another 12-24 months to pass before players reach mass acceptance price levels would seem to be counterproductive versus making a smaller profit per unit multiplied by volume (what Toshiba seemingly could do by being the sole manufacture).

Perhaps there really isn't much of a profit margain to be had in them for all I know though.

I am just simply amazed that people are clambering for sub-$200 players and saying more than that is too expensive. I mean, really folks, when I got into dvd the first time $500 was the minimum that the technology was going for. People are cheap.

Maybe if I can get the same deal as the A3 with 10 free movies for around $160. The whole HD-DVD thing has left a sour taste in my mouth and I really have not gotten very into HD movies yet, having had a player only since Christmas. On top of that, I don't find myself watching very many movies right now.

Sorry but I don't feel $400-500 is worth the upgrade over DVD. If I were into new technology back in the day, going from VHS to DVD might've been worth $500, but not this time. I'm waiting it out because if Sony wants BR to take off, they're going to need to lower prices. No way in hell am I going to spend $400+ for something that might not even be that popular 5 years from now.

If Sony doesn't lower prices, it makes me wonder how serious they are about all this. But I think they will because why spend billions only to have their format become a niche product.

$200 - $250...

That said, I picked up my (rear projection) HDTV (Panny) at least 4 or 5 years ago and it doesn't even have a HDMI input. So... Until I upgrade to a new flat panel I won't be buying one at any price point.

On top of that, even when DVD launched, you couldn't get a VCR for much less than $100. We are now conditioned to assume that prices will drop. If you can live without it for a while, why not wait until it falls into your comfort zone for price. Not to mention that whatever you buy later will be more fully featured than anything on the market now.

I think that by the end of the year, BD will be a much more stable and CE supported platform. IMO, that would make my entry-point a little higher.

Are there any patents or other built in royalties to the two formats these companies were supporting? Meaning, is there any possibility that there is more going on behind the scenes for the winning format other than just the Blu-ray/HD DVD disc based format itself?

Well is PS3 and Blu-Ray teaches us anything, it's that it doesn't matter what price tag Sony throws on their products. People will buy. So I don't see a sales price anytime soon. Just more expensive models coming out reducing the price of older players.

I was deep into LD with the $100 collector editions. The prices for BD is nothing compared to those and the machines that drove them. Good grief, people are making this out to be more than it should be.

I guess the "people will buy at any price" is the reason the PS3 has gone down in price by $200?

Well that's nice that you can spend that much money on electronics, but not everyone can or wants to.

Affordability to the general public is a big issue if people want BD to take over SD (which is an almost impossible task). The majority are not going to spend $300-$400 for a standalone BD player when they can go down to Wal-Mart and buy a $40-50 Philips player.

By reducing hard drive space and stripping away the ability to play games backwards compatable? I'm talking about the main unit price upon its release and the original pricing of Blu-Ray... as well as current prices in stand-alone Blu-Ray players.

What I said still stands. HD-DVD was just as good in picture quality, had more features earlier on, was cheaper... but Sony ended up winning in the end due to its big name. There's nothing wrong with that, and it wasn't as negative as it sounded. It's just that with a more affordable and as far as player reliability went also just as good choice, the more expensive still wins. And in the end, who loses? We do, because it means they'll rob our pockets in the future on the next expensive toy.

So again, what players are 1.1 at this point and how much do they run, I'm still curious about this. I want to get into blu-ray but if it's not in the realm of affordability I need to know.

At the moment, only the Panasonic BDP-30 is 1.1 Compliant.
The Samsung dual will be eventually if you trust them.

I wasn't the only one doing so, since many of the Disney collector edition LDs were bought by more than just a few. Also, many people paid $400-500 for a basic DVD player back in the day.

People on these types of forums might have spent that much. Read Namja's post, if you knew where to look during the dot com era, you could have easily got a good player for $150-$200.

That's what I'm hoping for in the case of the BD30...

It's 1.1 compliant and since I don't care about internet connectivity, that profile will be just fine for me.

I bought my PS3 at $475