Funai announces NB500 Blu-ray player bound for North America
By Steven Kim 
posted Jan 7th 2008 6:10AM
posted Jan 7th 2008 6:10AM
If you're waiting for the manufacturers of value priced gear to enter the Blu-ray arena, your day is coming. Funai, the company associated with brands Sylvania, Emerson and Magnavox officially announced that it will begin production of its NB500 series of players in Q1 2008 with the intent to bring them to the North American market during Q2. The NB500 will be a Profile 1.1 number, with HDMI 1.3a, DeepColor, a "high-bit-rate audio stream out," CEC and output of SD card video footage. The press release is calling for a retail price under $300, but with the recent price cuts seen in the market, we're thinking that Funai will have to come in at substantially less than that figure to stand out.
It just keeps getting better and better for blu-ray.
Yeap, Funai for $300. Peachy!
@Nfinity
A bit bitter are we? lol. Since you seem to be the ultimate fanboy moron, I'm sure you own at least 3 HD-DVD paperweights. How's it feel to have wasted all that money? Get out your life jacket, the ship is sinking fast....
LOL, Funai is junk.
Less than $300 Nfinity, and that's MSRP.
Ah, love the smell of "burning down in flames" HD DVD fanboys in the morning...
Funny, I didn't see you guys go after Venturer, the chinese maker, when they anounced cheap HD DVD players ? :) lmao
More to come for Blu Ray.
... coming soon to a Wal-Mart/K-Mart near you!
This is good, helps drive the prices down.
I think it was very obvious that some chinese manufacturers would appear soon enough. Whether they're any good or not is open to debate. But it's clear Blu Ray prices are heading south all of the time.
Dumb. Why should this be of any interest? We already had the opportunity in 2007 to go buy a Blu-ray player from a leading manufacturer for under $300. Both Cost and Amazon were offering one from Samsung and Best Buy offering a Sony. This is why the wife bought me a second player.