Sony Slashes Blu-ray Costs, Again

When Blu-ray and HD-DVD players launched into the home market last year, most consumers balked at the technology.

Why?

Despite some very impressive image resolutions, both the players and movies were far more expensive than the average DVD player. Those that could afford one of the two preferred Toshiba's HD-DVD lineup, however, since it retailed for about $400, or less than half the cost of the cheapest Blu-ray device. That's all changing now, as Blu-ray continues to drop in price. (Source: monstersandcritics.com)

During the latter half of 2007, Toshiba certainly owned the advantage over Sony's more expensive Blu-ray. With a popular add-on for the Xbox 360 and relatively affordable players, HD-DVD looked good headed into the holiday 2006 shopping season.

Although the Blu-ray-packing Sony PlayStation 3 was largely a failure, Toshiba's advantage was lost when it became clear Blu-ray had the most studio support. Although few consumers were ever willing to pay $1,000 for the mere hardware for HD movies, they may be willing to pay $499 -- ever so close to the under-supported Toshiba line.

The player in question is Sony's BDP-S300, an evolution from the original $1,200 BDP-1000 and BDP-S1 Blu-ray devices. The BDP-S300 made headlines a few months ago, since its release slashed the price of the average Blu-ray player in half, to $599. With another hundred bucks knocked off that total, Sony hopes consumers will finally look more closely at high definition movie machines. (Source: theage.com)

With Toshiba running out of price territory, it had better seduce at least one fringe movie studio... or watch HD-DVD go the way of Betamax.