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http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=62701

Wow! There's finally a BR player cheaper than the PS3... Sucks that it is an un-upgradeable POS, and can't play games though. $50 more and get a PS3, or $50 less and get an old 20GB model on eBay.

$299 w/ free shipping (or free 2-day if you have Prime)

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDP-S300-1080p-Blu-ray-Player/dp/B000PALZE0/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1218121460&sr=8-1

#2, un-upgradeable? You can definitely upgrade the firmware on this thing, a number of firmware updates have been released
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=BDPS300

screw Sony! We all lost in the format wars!

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Can someone help me with what upconvert means? I am in the market for BR and looking for the best options.

#7 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upconversion

It means it will convert the video from a standard DVD to make it look pretty on your fancy HDTV. This typically involves some proprietary hardware depending on the manufacturer.

nice, great for my blu ray movies

Definitely upgradable but it works great out of the box. I picked up a refurb of this model from Sonystyle for $250 about 4 months ago (currently $269- http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&productId=8198552921665094053&langId=-1 )

I also signed up for Sony's credit card and got the $100 credit to drop the price to $150:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644489281

MidnightBox (www.midnightbox.com) has a re-certified Samsung BD-P1400 1080p Blu-Ray DVD Player for $249. fyi

it is true, these need to come down.

I predict $250 at years end

NEC and Panasonic has developed a new decipher processor on a 45nm scale. These new blue-ray processors will cause a price drop possibly before the end of the year. Sony, Samsung, etc are now in the process of dumping the existing line of blue-ray players. I think you will see players around 100 to 150 .

The studios want and need to sell blue ray DVD's and the hold back, cost of the players.


Quote: NEC Chip Will Shrink Blu-ray Players' Size, Costs
By Brian X. Chen August 04, 2008 | 3:28:05 PMCategories: Chips, Media Players
Blu-ray players are getting big in terms of popularity -- and fortunately, they're going to get smaller in size thanks to a new chip.

NEC Electronics on Monday announced that it has fitted the major functions of Blu-ray -- including analog-to-digital conversion, HDMI output, and sound encoding/decoding -- onto one chip called the EMMA 3PF. The chip, to begin shipping September, will significantly reduce the amount of physical space required to run Blu-ray, and it will cut overall costs of Blu-ray devices as well.

The new chip also features a multicore CPU (in nerd speak, a 64-bit 655DMIPS VR5500 CPU application processor) that will improve Blu-ray players' startup and operation speeds.

This kind of makes me regret that I just bought a PlayStation 3, which is hogging an entire shelf on my TV stand. Any interested buyers?

#15 Increases the amount of scan lines. 480 scan lines to 1080 scan lines. The resolution is a little better but not near as good as HD.(high definition) So if i put a DVD (480 lines) into the blue-ray player it will up convert the 480 to 1080 to take full advantage of your HDTV screen size. If this didn't happen the 480 picture would be cropped on the top and bottom and both sides. Just like your computer screen. Different pictures on your computer are different sizes because of the relosution. 480, 800,1200 etc.

I know exactly what it is and how it works.

Like I said, it's a tax on the stupid.

There's absolutely no reason to spend extra money on a device which does what nearly every fixed-resolution TV on the market (LCD, plasma, DLP, LCoS, etc) already does out of the box.

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Wait long enough and the price of everything will go down....but you'll never buy anything waiting for the next big price drop.

Sure a normal DVD player will upconvert DVD's but it still won't PLAY BR movies.....there's your reason to get one. I'm not saying to buy BR movies, but you have rental BR movies, friends BR movies....how are you going to watch those?

It's $300....just get one and be done with it.

#17, not all of them do it out of the box well. But, I still agree with your original statement.

Sure, if you get some crappy LCD TV from Sharp, it will have a horrible deinterlacer, and an upconverting DVD player will at least make your DVDs be watchable (although it won't help much with 480i inputs from other sources), but whoever buys such pieces of crap without asking about the deinterlacers are certified as "stupid" in my book. Thus, "tax on the stupid" is correct.

My rule of thumb:
Don't buy a tv or projector that doesn't list a Faroudja-brand deinterlacer, unless you have seen reviews that say the deinterlacer is comparable to a Faroudja.