Pricewatch – Our most recent watchlist of Blu-ray players reveals dramatic price drops just in time for the Christmas shopping season. Average U.S. retail prices for most mainstream Blu-ray players have dropped at least 20% over the past 45 days and if you are patient, you may find a name-brand player for just a few bucks more than you would pay for a high-end upscaling DVD player. With movie prices dropping as well, it appears that Blu-ray is positioned to gain much more traction than it has right now. Is it too late?

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The term “mainstream” can be stretched quite a bit and “affordability” may be something entirely different to you than it does to me. But until a few months ago, it is safe to say that Blu-ray players were neither mainstream nor were they affordable for most consumers. That has changed within the past 45 days as mid-level Blu-ray player prices began showing steep average retail price declines across the board.

With the $200 mark in sight - some players have actually crossed the mark at certain online stores already - the description of mainstream players does seem so out of place anymore and prices may be low enough to be interesting and affordable for many more shoppers.

Here are the price curves for four popular Blu-ray players:




What is interesting about these declines is that they all happened at about the same time and the percentage decline is about the same. But before you get too excited about these long-awaited price drops, keep in mind that this is the outgoing Blu-ray player generation that does not support new Blu-ray features such as BonusView. However, some retailers are listing Blu-ray players such as Sony’s BDP-S300 for less than $200 and you may be able to live without BonusView in exchange for the lower price.

Players with BonusView support typically start above $350.

Here is the corresponding detailed average U.S. retail price list for the four players from February 1 to October 15 of this year.  All prices are courtesy of Pricegrabber.com.





We have looked through additional Blu-ray player listings at Pricegrabber.com’s listings, selected those that are currently available at many U.S. retail and etail locations and listed them as well as their average retail prices in a slideshow. So if you are interested in purchasing a Blu-ray player and are interested in what price tags you should expect, click through our slideshow.

We are still unsure whether this price drop really matters. There is no denying that the DVD is still going strong and movie download services are gaining traction. I have noticed at my local Best Buy that some Blu-ray movies are now selling for $15-$25, which helps make the technology much more interesting, but is it too late? I’d like to hear your feedback whether Blu-ray still makes sense or if you skip the whole investment in another optical disc library and jump to movie downloads right away.

Leave me a comment below.

i don't care about the price of the players

Oct 17, 2008 00:38     

their prices aren't that high. they are dropping much faster than dvd did. i'm mworried about the insanely high cost of blu-ray movies. I enjoyed Baby Mama. tina fey is so hot. but when i can buy the dvd for $15 instead of a $30 blu-ray which is just going to show me her wrinkles, i'll take the lowered price dvd
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