not on the website, but at my local walmart a BD player was $278-ish. Forget the brand, but the fact it's under $300 is a major achievement. Means players ~$100 could be out by christmas. :)
The first generation of Blu-ray Disc (BD) players manufactured by Funai are now (early May 2008) starting to work their way to retailers. The Magnavox branded BD player has recently been seen at some Walmarts and it would now seem to be appropriate to start a new thread to collect reports from forum members that purchase any of these new Funai manufactured BD players. Funai is a Japanese company with manufacturing factories in China. They are the largest manufacturer of DVD players (making over one half of all DVD players sold in North America). They are an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for the following familiar national brand names and in-house brands for such retailers as Best Buy and Circuit City:
- Magnavox NB500MG9 (Status: starting to show up at Walmarts for $298 or $288)
- Sylvania NB500SL9 (Status: multiple e'tailers, e.g, Amazon, are taking pre-orders)
- Emerson (Status: ?)
- Insignia (Status: now starting to arrive at Best Buy stores)
- Pye (Status: ? at Circuit City)
The Magnavox branded BD player has recently been seen at some Walmarts and it would now seem to be appropriate to start a new thread to collect reports from forum members that purchase any of these new Funai manufactured BD players
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You may be in for a long wait for that thread here.
Netflix is now marketing a box to download your videos directly to your TV. The box costs a one-time charge of $99 and there is no additional charges to your existing Netflix account to use it. This kind of thing will kill optical disks completely:
Here's the big question: are you downloading HD quality videos onto this box. I also thought that hard drives and downloads would kill optical discs, until I realized I get about 8 HD movies on my DVR and it doesn't hold anymore. I'd like more than 8 HD movies before I have to erase another. If Blu-Ray can drop in price to nearly DVD prices eventually, I think optical discs have a long future.
"This kind of thing will kill optical disks completely:"
I don't think so.
My understanding is that the Roku box has some memory, but not that much (no hard drive). It is for streaming. So far there is no HD, although they say there may be some in the future. (Also keep in mind that all HD is not delivered equally, as a comparison of DirecTV vs. BluRay would attest.)
I think this box will be great for folks who currently enjoy the "Netflix download and watch on your PC" offering. It will be a convenient way to get that same content onto their TV screens.