New DVD player vs Blu-ray

[admin_exported]

Having bought the Toshiba sd340 (?) a few years ago (and finding it tempremental even then), and a bush dvd recorder, these both seem to be on the way out.

the bush usually takes about 4+ presses of the eject button to open, and sometimes only responds to the remote control (or not at all) as well as freezing up. the tosh usually works, but the disc tray almost never slides back properly so it needs pushing in manually.

as a result i think it's time to chuck the bush (now have pvr for recording) and relegate (or bin) the toshiba.

the question is, do i buy another dvd player which upscales to 1080i* for about £80-100, cheat and use the xbox360 (picture to me seems as good as current toshiba - but then upscaling should make a difference right?), or future proof and buy either the ps3 or panasonic bd30 (?).

I guess the main question is: how soon do folks expect to see a price drop in well performing entry level blueray players? (this is a very open question i know)

I'm not that fussed in being in the first batch of friends to get technology so am quite happy to wait a while if it means cheaper/better performance when i do buy.

thanks for any advice.

*1080i as my projector wont do 1080p

 

[Trefor Patten]

You mean new DVD player vs blu-ray

 

[Anonymous]

I would expect to see some BIG BluRay deals (especially of 1.1 players - BD-Live's not THAT important to most grown-ups) in the run-up to Christmas.
Manufacturers of hardware (and software....) really need to move the format away from a luxury/early adopter product and into the mass market. DVD only took off significantly when it passed 'the permission to buy threshold'. That's the point at which you don't have to ask the wife if it's OK to grab one!
What's not happend yet is the entry of cheap Chinese/Korean BluRay players. Once they hit the market, then competition will certainly heat up!
That said, you can pick up a player for £250 fairly easily right now. My Sharp player is now c£299 and had a list price of over £400 when I bought it last October, so prices are falling....
You could always pick up the X-Box HD-DVD drive for £25 from Amazon and buy a shed-load of HD-DVDs on-line for £3-4 a pop, use that to upscale your DVDS and wait a year to go Blu by which time players may well be £100 or so!

 

[Anonymous]

Trefor Patten:You mean new DVD player vs blu-raythat and many other grammatical errors i have probably made.

 

[Anonymous]

Casca:I would expect to see some BIG BluRay deals (especially of 1.1 players - BD-Live's not THAT important to most grown-ups) in the run-up to Christmas.
Manufacturers of hardware (and software....) really need to move the format away from a luxury/early adopter product and into the mass market. DVD only took off significantly when it passed 'the permission to buy threshold'. That's the point at which you don't have to ask the wife if it's OK to grab one!
What's not happend yet is the entry of cheap Chinese/Korean BluRay players. Once they hit the market, then competition will certainly heat up!
That said, you can pick up a player for £250 fairly easily right now. My Sharp player is now c£299 and had a list price of over £400 when I bought it last October, so prices are falling....
You could always pick up the X-Box HD-DVD drive for £25 from Amazon and buy a shed-load of HD-DVDs on-line for £3-4 a pop, use that to upscale your DVDS and wait a year to go Blu by which time players may well be £100 or so!Thanks very much, the xbox hd-drive was very tempting, but i'm put off by the fact i may well end up with a bunch of discs i'll have to re-buy once the drive goes bang. I'm not the luckiest person with regard to technology (can usually guarantee something will break early on) the bush recorder is only about 2 years old and the toshiba less than 4! but maybe thats what i get for buying the budget models.