Sony's $400 BDP-S350 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player now shipping
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 16th 2008 5:27PM
posted Jul 16th 2008 5:27PM
posted Jul 16th 2008 5:27PM
The number of televisions estimated that sit unused in closets.
The EPA estimates that nearly 100 million unused televisions are currently taking up precious, beautiful space. (source: EPA, July 2008)
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I think this announcement along with the previous announcement that the Chinese players are on their way is very good news. I expect $200 players this Christmas. There might even be Black Friday deals for as low as $180.
"news" AKA Paul, cut the affiliate link crap. Engadget, please ban this loser.
$180 BD players THIS year? With a weak US dollar and inflation picking up steam, that is one hell of a reach.
In two years we might just think that $400 will seam like a reasonable price for a blu-ray player. (one that's even profile 2.0 right out of the box no less)
Now if Sony could just manage to put out a PS3 that bitstreams TrueHD and DTS-MA, I might be interested.
I won't be impressed until there's a player that's cheaper than the PS3.
Well at $400 this is the same price as the ps3. Expect to see it discounted somewhere by September.
Bla bla bla.. $400 for an underpowered, overpriced piece of Sony fanboy nonsense. Ha HA stupid consumers are getting at their wits end with terrible choices. . . bla bla... no one will buy this and bluboys will cry as their precious format dies
...Written for Nfinity. So he can take the day off...
Not sure to mark you - for being a D-bag, or + for doing a danm fine impression of nfinity.
The problem is ... its true. Everyone whined about wanting the format war to end and they got what they wanted. Now, instead of $100 hi-def players everywhere, we have breaking news of another $400 unit. These prices are keeping the hi-def saturation at a limited 7% ... thats horrible.
Its pathetic to see these prices still 4X what HDDVD already had out almost a year ago ... Sony's response to price wars have been to offer rebates on the PS3 through the credit card services, etc.
Now they're offering rebate programs to temporarily lower disc prices over the holidays. They're not willing to lower the price bar because they know they can't raise it ... so they use these rebate programs to simply lure the lemmings to cliff edge.
Sony's standalone Blu-ray player MSRPs have gone from $1,000 to $600 to $400. They might not be dropping as fast as people would like, but they're coming down.
Still shocking that my Ps3 cost $400.... last year.... it's a great BD player that can update it's profile whenever. The only caveat being it's a big, shiny, ugly piece of gear.
A standalone should cost A LOT FREAKING LESS.
@ScareyJ "Now, instead of $100 hi-def players everywhere, we have breaking news of another $400 unit."
There is no rational reason to expect that had HD-DVD won the format war, we'd see $100 players now. The only reason HD-DVD players ever hit that price point was because they weren't selling at $200 or $300 and were getting outsold by blu-ray players that cost $200 or more.
"Its pathetic to see these prices still 4X what HDDVD already had out almost a year ago"
December 2007 was not "almost a year ago"- it was a 1 day promotion with Walmart or a Black Friday sale with Best Buy. June/July 2007, the HD-A2 was $350, and the HD-A20 was $450 while Blu-ray players had just hit the $500 price point in Sony's BDP-S300. Toshiba had a $100 rebate on some of their models (I think just the A2) and by the end of July, they had trimmed the price permanently of the HD-A2 down to $250.
I mention the A20 because it seems a bit unfair to me to compare a 1080i player with a 1080p player, and the A2 & A20 do not decode DTS-HD MA at all, whereas this Sony player does.
@nfinity
"LOL"? What's that supposed to mean? Did you run out of keyboard?
.
@ScareyJ, HD DVD players only sold for $100 to clear them out of the warehouses. The format had already lost by that point and everyone from retailers to Toshiba wanted to get rid of them as fast as possible. The MSRP for the A3 was $299. Slashing $200 off the price certainly wouldn't have happened if HD DVD had won the war. Instead we'd be talking about the abundance of $100 Blu Ray players and your opposite number in the Blu camp would probably be making the same vacuous argument.
I'm not seeing any other nationwide B&M retailers than Circuit City, and even then they're only shipping right now with no in-store availability.
what is it with Blu Ray, why is it STILL "wait for this" and "profile x.x. will come soon." It isn't like Profile 2.0 was just figured out this month, they still can't get a deck out with it READY after all this time?
As a PS3 owner, the less power thing is the only part that interests me. Having the PS3, plasma, and receiver on at the same time does make the power meter spin, but not enough for me to change anything.
You can keep your Profile 2.0. Totally useless function for an average Joe. But I must say bitstreaming DD-HD & DTS-HD is a huge gain from S300, which was my old blu ray player.
I am keeping my BDP-S2000ES!
You forgot AVCHD support!!!!!
Very important for using your new solid state camcorder and burning to BluRay or playing right from the flash memory.
I have had this player since last Friday and its a great player. It is fast and puts out a great picture and sound. It is small and attractive looking too. It is still a bit spendy at 399 but that is fine with me as I dont mind paying a bit to be an early adopter. No complaints here.
I read somewhere that its profile 2.0 ready but you need to add external memory (i.e. a USB memory stick) to actually enable it. Can someone confirm if this is what the box or the manual says?
Here's a direct link to the manual, in PDF format. Browse to your heart's content. I love the Internet!
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/BDPS350_US.pdf
Actually, here's a separate flyer that talks about the BD-Live update. It looks like it will require external storage in some cases.
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/BDPS350_flyer.pdf