Sony reveals details on new Blu-ray players

So with the exception of 1080p/60p support these players aren't offering anything that HD-DVD players don't currently offer (referring to the A30 and A35 and I am talking strictly about hardware capabilities) yet they still command the ridiculous price-tag. I for one am far from impressed. Where is the cheap Blu-Ray hardware that we were supposed to see this year? I thought all of the Blu-Ray fans said that things were going to get cheaper after the format war ended?

Well, I guess that is some consolation. I'm glad someone is finally offering a (fairly) affordable player with built in DTS-MA decoding, and output via analog. I could have used this before my tx-sr605 upgrade, but it barely cost me more than $500 for BD-P1400 and receiver so I guess I'm even. I'll say what everyone is thinking though, which is what the #Q$%@# took so long, and why are they STILL so expensive?

Still, the cheapest Blu-Ray player is more expensive and has fewer features than the HD-A35 (before their demise and currently). If these models come into the Christmas season at $200-300 respectively, along with a couple of other company offerings, I will be happy. Otherwise, BR Profile 1.0 is fine with me.

Maybe they should go towards the console model and lose money on the players to gain entry into households. They HAVE to be making some profit on the !Q#$% media since almost every good movie is $25-$35 retail. Amazon ftw.

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I thought all of the Blu-Ray fans said that things were going to get cheaper after the format war ended?

It's been a little over a week. Give it time. They will come down in price.

Actually, they have been expensive since their release, so technically "its been over 2 years." HD-DVD players came from $500 to $300 for the top model ($225 on amazon now, but I'll leave that one out since it is a moot point now), and $300 to $130-170 (depending on time) for lower end models. Blu-Ray players started out at $1000, some still are (Sony ES, Denon is $1000+), PlayStation 3, which I don't even know if it should count, is still $400 with no price cuts ahead, and there ARE no low end models with features to speak of. The Sony 300 has no HD audio decoding or pass through, and nothing out today even has the "final" BD profile 2.0. Whew.

Point is, the Blu-Ray players out today are admittedly works-in-progress, and to still be charging as much as they are is not right. I know Blu-Ray "won" the format war, but it definitely wasn't because of function, features, price, or value. Forgive me if I am a bit sour, but we've been told to "wait a while" for quite a while. And now I have a buggy Samsung with spotty performance and limited upgrade future. Not exactly what I would call stellar performance.

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Point is, the Blu-Ray players out today are admittedly works-in-progress, and to still be charging as much as they are is not right. I know Blu-Ray "won" the format war, but it definitely wasn't because of function, features, price, or value.

My A-35 is not a work in progress and does everything that this BD player will do months ago. The price on these players is ridicolous and further reinforces my contention a major part of Sony's game plan is to raise the cost of home entertainment to the consumer on a permanant basis. I don't know if it is going to work in this recessionary economy, but it will be interesting.

If the upcoming Oppo players (and others) are priced lower then the Sonys and are within reasonable reach of the general public, then this whole situation could change overnight. At 4 or 5 hundred bucks a unit though, these Sonys are out of reach of a lot of people.

If you'll notice in my post, I whole heartedly agree with you. The HD-A35 is a solid performer with advanced features at a great price. I stated "Blu-Ray" players are works-in-progress, not HD-DVD players.

Also, if you have a post of an Oppo BD player coming out soon, I am sure to soil myself.

There was a link to the upcoming Oppo players on this forum a week or so ago, but I'm not sure of which thread. Perhaps the person who posted it (Jimi?) can bring it up again.

Well done sony its HD-DVD at twice the price. I'm keeping out of Blu Ray untill you make your HD-DVD technology at HD-DVD prices.

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Both models also feature an external port for local storage, so users can add optional flash-based memory.

What type of port is this exactly? Is it a standard port or a Sony proprietary port that you have to buy Sony memory to fit in it?

Okay, tell me if I am missing something here. Prior to the warner announcement you could pick up the Samsung BDP-1400 for around $270 at Amazon.com and some brick and mortar stores (ie Best Buy), the same was true for the Sony S300. Also since last June the BDA ran the promotion with the 5 free movies with the purchase of each player. Since the warner announcement the cheapest entry line Blu-Ray players (All V1.0 spec BTW) have shot back up to around $350 and curiously at the end of January the BDA decided to discontinue the 5 free movie promotion with the player even though they had been running the promotion since last June and had extended it at least a couple of times since then. Furthermore Sony boasted late last year that the cost of the Blu-Ray diodes had dropped significantly. So, is it just me or does something not add up here. Be patient, some say, the fact of the matter is that Blu-Ray has a relatively narrow window of opportunity to really make a push into the home entertainment industry and if they don't make a solid effort at making their format more affordable for the general public then Blu-Ray will suffer the same fate as HD-DVD within the next couple of years, at a significantly higher loss to the customer I might add.

StevePro (and others)...

Here's the LINK to the OPPO thread I created last week.

-JIMI (the Voodoo Child)

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What type of port is this exactly? Is it a standard port or a Sony proprietary port that you have to buy Sony memory to fit in it?

I bet you anything that it's one of those MemoryStick Duo's...

Jester i agree with part of your comment.

Honestly i dont believe prices to stay this way, and i dont think they'll change much. but they better do something... you cut prices or come up with a good promo, you can lura alot of people out there. i mean, even the spidey deal is gone. lol

I for one, have been doing pretty well financially... but refuse to buy any blu discs, without free credit card rewards. so thats down to like -one a month.

We will not see a significant drop in price until the holidays or when shelf space becomes an issue for the next models. Also have you noticed the absence of PS3 commercials since the demise of HD?

I'm not buying one of those touch iPods for my kids until they're under $300! I mean that too.

WOW, 400.00 and 500.00 like we didn't know that was'nt going to be the answer. SONY will kill themselves, and everyone who laughed at HD DVD, will have a sore ass after they kick themselves many times over.

Why is the picture of the player sideways?

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at military base exchanges

Finally a reason to go to Iraq.

[Post edited by Movielover316 on Feb 26, 2008]

It would be funny if Toshiba came out with an actual working BD player. How ironic would that be. And I was hearing the consumer decided the format war which it did not. HD -DVD players for all I heard work as it should where I heard nothing but problems with BD players and discs. BD won because Sony bought everyone out.

Blu-ray will not die if prices won't go down, it will just not surpass SD DVD sales at all.

Sony, just drop the prices so you can sell your "half obsolete" players, because you will be selling cheap, most of the people who buy them most likely will not be into special features...or at least so that I can watch Ratatouille in 1080p!

Oh Jester you better think before you type, you may be called overly obsessive with those comments LOL.

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SONY will kill themselves, and everyone who laughed at HD DVD, will have a sore ass after they kick themselves many times over.

Sony will milk this dry right until the end, its their first win in what 40 years. Hey, what happened to all the charts boasting Blu-ray?

About the PS3 my kid just bought one and had to replace it twice within a week for over-heating problems. He's on his 3rd one now and bought a cooling pad for it. I just found it funny, using a console for a stand alone player could lead to problems, he encountered his sooner than later, at least it was still under warranty.

66 I don't want to be called a sore fanboy looser, who is overly obsessive about being a HD DVD supporter. But like I said before, thats SONY for ya. They test market their products on their loyal customers. Like they did'nt know that the PS3 would overheat. They must pay their bean counters a whole boat load of ching!!!

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About the PS3 my kid just bought one and had to replace it twice within a week for over-heating problems. He's on his 3rd one now and bought a cooling pad for it. I just found it funny, using a console for a stand alone player could lead to problems,

Either extremely bad luck with faulty units, or he shouldn't have stuffed his PS3 into the empty HD-A1 box without proper venting!

In all seriousness, it seems very few users have had issues with using their PS3s as Blu-ray players. The AVSForum has a dedicated thread on using the PS3 for Blu-ray playback and has 14,669 posts in it! And out of those, I couldn't find a single post about the problem you described.

You went through 15,000 posts?

I'm pretty sure there are threads (even on AVS forums) about PS3 hardware issues. I remember someone posting at least one here.

Like I mentioned in another thread, I did a quick search online on PS3's issues and it seems the 40GB versions are having the most issues. Also people are saying the 60GB version is the best one to get but it has been discontinued.

[Post edited by Falcon01 on Feb 27, 2008]

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You went though 15,000 posts?

Yes I did. I searched every single damn one of them for the key words "over heating" and "overheating". Being a rather lazy person, I used the "Search this Thread" feature of course.

And BTW, according to everything I've read on that thread the new 40GB models are the quietest, coolest running, and have had less problems than the early runs of the original models. There were a few complaints about audio dropouts on some games that were addressed by one of the firmware updates. That and apart from HDMI handshake issues were what I would consider the only "common" complaint.

I'm not suggesting that no one has never had any hardware issues (hardware of any brand in existence has had defective units and issues), but am saying that they seem to have been relatively rare so far. If 10% of users had overheating issues leading to "bricking", there would be 100's of thousands of users complaining online about it.

[Post edited by Skyhawk on Feb 27, 2008]

Talking about PS3 fanboys...

I have to say that even cnet.com said the best Blu-Ray player was the PS3, but I'm thinking their main decision was based on the fact that it is the only one out today that is upgradeable to BD Profile 2.0. I'm going to state now that I do not have a PS3 and specifically chose not to buy one, instead I got a BD-P1400 (one more component!), and am fairly pleased.

I did hear on the formerly nextgen.biz currently Game Theory podcast that the PS3 is the least malfunctioning console (something like 3.5% failure rate). We won't discuss the XBOX 360. Anyways, I just wanted to state I am not a fanboy, I freaking hate Sony, but I do agree that you just had phenomenal bad luck with 2 failures in a row and that most PS3s are solid. The biggest thing keeping me from the console for BD playback was lack of DTS-MA decoding/bitstream output. I would also like to pose a question regarding this: if anyone knows, is there a way to update the PS3's software to decode DTS-MA, or is there a proprietary chip involved that could only be added through hardware?

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Talking about PS3 fanboys...

A “fanboy” – not exactly. But I do think for $399, the PS3 represents about the best bang for the buck in any CE product ever made. With its upgradeability combined with the power of the Cell microprocessor, it will be interesting to see what it’s capable of into the future. The HTPC I wanted to build would have cost nearly 10 times this amount, and wouldn’t have given me much benefit over the PS3.

It’s kept me busy too. I’ve only converted about 10% of my CDs to lossless FLAC format and want to add another two terabytes of storage to hold all our video material in uncompressed original DV-AVI format. Then there are all the photographs to organize. They look so sweet through the PS3 on the 1080p big screen.

I’m a little disappointed I didn’t go for the 80GB model now, because I’d love to hear my SACD disks through my receiver's DACs. Currently I use a DVD player to play them, and it only uses its internal DAC with the analog audio outs. Having the 80GB model would have definitely helped cut down the number of cables behind my racks too!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The PS3 also plays Blu-ray disks!

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The biggest thing keeping me from the console for BD playback was lack of DTS-MA decoding/bitstream output. I would also like to pose a question regarding this: if anyone knows, is there a way to update the PS3's software to decode DTS-MA

Apparently Sony is working on it with DTS and will supply the DTS HD Master Audio decoding with a future update. I wouldn't be surprised if they had it already but want to wait until the Panasonic BD-50 is released, since I think it will be the first SA player to offer internal decoding and they don't want to screw their third-party CE Blu-ray companies at this point by beating them to the punch. Anyway by that time they'll probably be more movies featuring the codec to make it more worth it.

Oh well, meanwhile the DTS 1.5Mbps core sounds at least better than the half bitrate commonly found on standard DVDs. I am looking forward to the update though.

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Okay, tell me if I am missing something here. Prior to the warner announcement you could pick up the Samsung BDP-1400 for around $270 at Amazon.com and some brick and mortar stores (ie Best Buy), the same was true for the Sony S300. Also since last June the BDA ran the promotion with the 5 free movies with the purchase of each player. Since the warner announcement the cheapest entry line Blu-Ray players (All V1.0 spec BTW) have shot back up to around $350 and curiously at the end of January the BDA decided to discontinue the 5 free movie promotion with the player even though they had been running the promotion since last June and had extended it at least a couple of times since then. Furthermore Sony boasted late last year that the cost of the Blu-Ray diodes had dropped significantly. So, is it just me or does something not add up here. Be patient, some say, the fact of the matter is that Blu-Ray has a relatively narrow window of opportunity to really make a push into the home entertainment industry and if they don't make a solid effort at making their format more affordable for the general public then Blu-Ray will suffer the same fate as HD-DVD within the next couple of years, at a significantly higher loss to the customer I might add.

1. Prior to the Warner announcement we had Christmas, and that's the only reason why certain Blu-ray players were sold for as low as $299.99. More aggressive pricing on those Blu-ray players were incentives for holiday shoppers, but historically speaking prices always tend to go up a little after the holiday season.

2. CE companies are not in the business of losing money. Why do you think no other major CE company wanted to join Toshiba in making HD DVD players? It's because no one else wanted to lose millions upon millions of dollars in producing them. Toshiba priced every other CE manufacturer out of that market segment, and in the process themselves lost many millions of dollars selling those players below cost. $98 HD-A2 anyone?

3. The current $400/$500 price range for most Blu-ray players is about right considering the technology hasn't even been on the market for 2 years yet. Just look at DVD players when they first came to the market. It took a good two and a half to three years before they were selling below the $300 range. As time goes on, we'll see both player and software prices decrease exponentially, but that will happen gradually and not overnight. People will either have to be patient and wait until prices drop eventually, or make a sacrifice and plunk down some hard-earned cash to enjoy phenomenal HD content now. Just remember, there is always a choice.

Good post gvortex.

By the way, I remember a few months back there were complaints that some of these "PS3 coolers" in fact DID THE OPPOSITE! Users were shocked that a 'cooler' actually cause the unit to overheat, due to lack of ventilation, since some of the PS3 'openings' were covered by parts of the 'cooler'.

I own the 60GB PS3 (the original main model), use no added 'cooler', and the unit is completely open in its surroundings (other than the bottom, which sits on a stand right near my main setup). Yes, the unit gets hot, but the internal fans keep it cool. Have had no problems (yet), and I still recommend the PS3 for all of it's capabilities.

-JIMI (the Voodoo Child)

[Post edited by Love Hendrix! on Feb 27, 2008]

Yes Jimi, I would have to agree with you about those PS3 intercoolers. They're not only totally inefficient in the further cooling of the unit itself, they also add a lot more noise. I know I few people who tried them for a little while to see if it would make a difference, but they all ended up returning them. Anyone's best bet would be to keep it away from closed quarters and let the unit breathe as much as possible.

OK, most of us agree, and it's widely known, that the PS3 is the most reliable blu-ray player. However, it's called Playstation, not Blu-raystation for a reason.

Machines will always fail, everything fails. However, mentioning those failures doesn't mean that the whole console is bad, and I've never attacked the PS3 regarding those so called 'failures', and I never will, because the same thing might happen to any other electrical equipment.

What we all HD DVD "fanboys" argue is that, blu-ray players are expensive and unreliable (and you in reality, have nothing against this claim...but let's not argue about it) and the best one is a gaming console. Yes, I used the PS2 to play movies, but that was when I didn't have an HDTV or a HTS, and really, the picture didn't look as good.

If I buy a PS3 it will be because of the blu-ray player, not because there are any games that I'm into (or that many games at all, I'm way more into movies). Because again, is all about the movies...

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We all know Blu-Ray "won" the format war, but it definitely wasn't because of function, features, price, or value.

It was the Retailers and the Studios that made the decision for all of us, it could have gone either way until WB decision.

Maybe Toshiba got out before all of the CH players got out and flood the market. Aren't they capable of playing HD DVD?

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If I buy a PS3 it will be because of the blu-ray player, not because there are any games that I'm into (or that many games at all, I'm way more into movies). Because again, is all about the movies...

That's so cool mvckalel, I'm hope you enjoy your PS3! If you need any help to set it up for your media server or have any other questions, I'm sure either Tony or I might be able to help you.

Why the flash drive? I mean wouldn't it be cheaper for sony to have it installed (in the one that includes it) than have it separate?

I guess they want to save $ making it. It is that simple. But I agree, it sends a wrong signal not to include what is need to support the latest specification especially when you look at what flash memory cost these days.

[Post edited by Henning on Jul 22, 2008]