The battle over the next DVD standard format is apparently going in favor of the Blu Ray camp, as Panasonic recently announced the debut of a cheaper Blu Ray player.
Announced more than two years ago, the Blu Ray format is one of the two competing standards in the next-generation DVD war, which has the advantage of bringing more space compared to its rival, the HD DVD (50GB vs. 15GB).
The first Blu Ray players were introduced on the market about a year ago, but have not been met with enthusiasm mainly because of the high price of the stand alone player.
Sony, the main company behind the BR standard, has made huge efforts (financially speaking) to impose BR as the next DVD standard on the market, taking damages estimated at more than 2 billion dollars in the previous fiscal year (caused by the inception of the PlayStation 3 console, which is equipped with a Blu Ray player).
However, in an attempt to make the Blu Ray more attractive to users, Panasonic is now bringing a cheaper player on the market, which will be sold at only $600. Panasonic today announced the DMP- BD10A for an MSRP of $600 – which is down $700 from the $1300 price tag of the predecessor DMP-BD10.
DMP- BD10A has the same features as his “bigger brother”, but for a lower price brings a dts-HD and Dolby True HD capability, which should make it even more appealing to potential buyers.
According to TG Daily, at the core of the player, there is still a 297 MHz 14 bit Video D/A converter with 4X oversampling and support for BD-J for interactive applications.
Back in January, at the CES in Las Vegas, Sony had claimed supremacy over the installed base of Blu Ray players, generated mainly by PS3 owners, who were more than 1.8 million at that time. By comparison, Toshiba had only 175,000 HD DVD players sold. But the HD DVD camp emphasized their format’s high attach rates (which they annualize at 28 discs per player), while implying that most PS3 owners had yet to actually buy a single Blu-ray movie disc. Toshiba currently sells their HD DVD player for $499.
