Pioneer’s Entry Level Blu-ray Still Costs $599
What’s the sweet spot for an entry level Blu-ray player? $150? $200? $599? We’re going to say that it’s definitely not the latter…
That’s not to say that the Pioneer BDP-120 isn’t worth $599. Who can asign value to these things in today’s crazy consumer electronics market anyway? For $599 you get a BD Profile 2.0 player with a 0.8 second startup time, a super sexy slim design and your typical 1080p/24Hz playback and HD audio decoding. But it’s worth noting that the same model was priced at under $US300 back in January, and the Aussie dollar isn’t doing that badly at the moment…
Also announced yesterday was the BDP-LX52, a premium Blu-ray player worth $999 which has 48-bit deep colour gradation and heaps and heaps of video tweaks for videophiles.
The question now is whether or not these premium Blu-ray players can compete with the cheaper players on offer from the Korean manufacturers, which include extra video services like YouTube, and in the US, Netflix. While we don’t have similar offering here just yet, when we do, these pricier players are going to need to support them in order to survive…
[Pioneer]
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Comments
So long as Blu-Ray discs still cost $40-45, who cares?
You really need to go into a JB – the “ZOMG, blu-ray discs are too expensive” days are basically over.
Or buy your Blurays from Amazon, which is where I source all mine from.
RE: The Pioneer deck. For that sort of coin go buy an Oppo BD-83 direct:
http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/
It’s the ducks nuts.