Well, it's been an interesting couple of months for news of new and upcoming Blu-ray A/V players.
First, Samsung released their second-gen player, the BD-P1200, adding Reon DVD upscaling and 1080p24 output, all for $799.
Japanese OEM manufacturer Funai (the largest maker of DVD players in the world, and one of Walmart's largest suppliers) announced that they will be making a presumably lower-cost Blu-ray player to be released later this year. No word on where this player will be sold, or for what cost.
Then, Panasonic announced a refresh of their current model, the DMP-BD10A, adding TrueHD and DTS-HD decoding, and lowering the price to $699.
Pioneer quickly responded with their own announcement of a new Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player, the BDP-94HD, which adds CD playback and Dolby TrueHD decoding to the specs of their existing BDP-HD1 player, while lowering the price to $999.
Sony then made a couple of shocking moves. The first was the firmware 1.8 update to the PS3, which added DVD and PS1/PS2 game upscaling, 1080p24 output, and RGB expanded range output to the PS3's already excellent capabilities. The second major announcement, which has not been officially confirmed yet by Sony, is that their upcoming BDP-S300, due this summer, will be released at $499 MSRP instead of the previously reported $599. Definitely excellent news if true!
And perhaps the most odd 'announcement' came this past week, when a little known Hong-Kong based manufacturer Gowell, announced their G875 Blu-ray player, complete with hard disk and media card capability, and both wired and wireless networking. Also interesting is that the specs include the ability to playback Divx and WMV9 files. No word on pricing or release region.
0 comments:
Post a Comment