Andre Yoskowitz
25 Oct 2009 17:40
According to VideoBusiness, Blu-ray Disc set-top players continue to drop in price, and one analyst expects to see at least one $50 USD player on Black Friday.
Last year was dominated by off-brand, cheaper players such as those by Sylvania or Memorex but name brand, Internet-enabled players, most with video streaming from Netflix are becoming to be standard at under $200 USD.
Says Abt Electronics owner Jon Abt: “We are doing better than we initially expected, which is due to the price drops. The price drops were expected, but we didn’t think it would be this deep this quickly. BD Live players [most of which offer streaming movie services] are now available in sub-$200 models.”
Abt also says the company is selling 50 percent more BD units year-on-year.
More notably, NPD Group says 14 percent of all Blu-ray set-top sales this year are for sub-$200 models whereas last year that number was under 1 percent.
A few of the more feature-packed players available right now for under $200 are the Panasonic DMP-BD60 ($150), the Samsung BD-P1600 ($180) and the LG BD370 ($160), all of which offer Netflix, Amazon VOD, CinemaNow or Pandora.
“We’ve seen very strong growth in Blu-ray players this year. It has been a bright spot in a very gloomy industry landscape,” said Ross Rubin, NPD director of industry analysis. “Nearly all other electronics device categories have been down, such as digital cameras and MP3 players.”
As for Black Friday deals on BD players? Rubin says he can see a $50 USD BD player.
“It’s conceivable we could see a $49 Blu-ray player on Black Friday, but I think we’ll see more $99 deals. Anything is possible.”