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Heavy discounting on entry-level Blu-ray players

Territories covered

North America

USA,

Author/s

Tony Gunnarsson

Published: 06-Oct-08

Retailers and manufacturers have begun to discount entry-level Blu-ray Disc (BD) players ahead of the fourth quarter 2008 and infamous 'Black Friday' in the US:

Japanese electronics manufacturer Funai has lowered the price of its Philips/Magnavox, Insignia and Sylvania branded BD players by $50 to around $250 in the US.
US electronics retailer Circuit City is at the time of writing selling the Sony BDP-S300 for $199.96.
US retail giant, Best Buy, is to sell Insignia's NS-BRDVD player at £229.99 with other models from Sony, Samsung and Sharp priced at $299.99.
Online retailers Amazon.com and RadioShack both have listed sub-$300 BD players. The cheapest is Sylvania's NB501SL9, priced at $249.99, followed by Samsung's BD-P1500 at $253.36 and Panasonic's DMP-BD30K at $268.75. Both retailers have recently run limited time promotions on BD players at $199, Sony's BDP-S300 and Samsung BD-P1500 respectively.
In the UK online retailer Dixons is advertising the Samsung BDP1400 at the exceptionally low price of £99 ($176), other high street retailers Argos and Comet are selling Samsung's BD-P1500XEU online for £249.99 ($445).

Our take...
For DVD, the introduction of devices in the $200-$300 price range proved to be the tipping point for mass-market adoption. However, DVD hardware prices took much longer to decline, ensuring that consumer awareness for the standard definition format was appreciably higher by this stage. Furthermore, DVD did not require consumers to update their display technology, nor did the specification of the players themselves evolve significantly. The low prices currently available are for lower profile BD players - generally profile 1.1 or earlier - and not from the unbranded Chinese players which helped reduce DVD prices but which have yet to enter the BD market. Retailers are now eager to shift the low-profile machines before newer, higher spec models become the norm; for consumers the choice is between snapping up a bargain in the short term or paying more to ensure that their hi-def experience is not dampened by a lack of specification compliance.