NAD's $1,500 T 587 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray deck shipping in December
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 3rd 2008 10:05PM
posted Nov 3rd 2008 10:05PM
[Image courtesy of HomeTheaterMag]
posted Nov 3rd 2008 10:05PM
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Did someone forget to tell them with the current economic climate,asking prices like this for a BD player is ludicrous!
Yet another expensive BD player.
But it's worth it, just to be able to tell your friends you have Blu NADs.
Current Blu-ray pricing vs DVD:
Cheap: BD: $250. DVD $25.
Good: BD $400-1,000 DVD $40-100
High-end: BD: $1,500+ DVD $150
Anyone see a pattern here?
Amazon has the BD-P1500 for about $207 with a free copy of The Hulk.
Amazon also has the S350 for $254. If you buy 4 warner movies from a list, you get $100 back. That equals about $225 for the player + 4 free movies.
Best Buy has an insignia player for $200 (just as crappy as your $25 DVD player).
Walmart has the S300 for $200.
So, the low end price on a blu-ray player is $200, not $250. And the S350 is a fine Blu-ray player at $225. The top end Oppo DVD players are over $200. Just looking at amazon, I found a couple DVD players over $1k.
So basically, you had inaccurate pricing on every level.
I was talking about recommended prices. Of course retail prices are slightly lower, especially with close outs of obsolete models. You can get a DVD player for well under $25 if you shop around too - though there's less price pressure there partially because $25 is already cheap, and partially because there's no such thing as an "obsolete" DVD player (well, maybe some 1997 model that only supports single layer discs - but I doubt there are many of those being sold as new right now.)
The cheapeast player at best buy is $27, the cheapest at Walmart is $30. Neither is upscaling.
The cheapest upscalers are $38 at Wal-mart and $50 at Best Buy. These are the 2 big CE stores, and they both have blu-ray players at $200.
There is also no such thing as an obsolete Blu-Ray player. They will all play the movies (minded, they may need an update for a Fox distributed movie on release day). Yes, you can get features from 1.1 and 2.0, but you can also get Progressive Scan or Upscalling features on DVD players, two features that the vast majority would agree are more important than Bonus View and online whatever.
Yes, there's a floor at Best Buy as to how cheap they'll sell anything (though try a store like Walgreens or CVS for dirt cheap DVD players, or Big Lots for a closed out sub-$20 unit.) And what does upscaling have to do with the price of tea in china? A low end DVD player is a low end DVD player. Since when do those upscale? The fact they don't is what makes them low end!
An obsolete Blu-ray player is a Profile 1.0 or 1.1 system, one that is physically incapable of playing many of the advertised features of new discs. There is no DVD equivalent. There are no retailers trying to offload stocks of obsolete DVD players, but there are many trying to get rid of obsolete Blu-ray players.
In any case, it seems you've missed the entire point. Prices of BD players are approximately TEN TIMES AS LARGE as prices of DVD players, comparing category with category. Saying "How dare you! I can find a closed out, obsolete, no-name Blu-ray player that costs less than $250" doesn't in any way shape or form undermine that, especially when $200 is about as low as you can go.
Even if you were able to fiddle the figures so they're "ONLY" FIVE TIMES AS LARGE, is that REALLY an argument you want to be making?
Yes, 5x or 10x makes a huge difference. And I'm sure the market for Blu-Ray players is people who go to CVS to buy a DVD player. I'm sure tons of new HDTV owners run over from Best Buy or Wal-Mart and pick up the $25 player from CVS. The market is niche to HDTV owners at the moment. They are mainly competing against those upconverting players for market share. They should really only be competing for those that have a 42" or larger TV. A good upconverter is about $100. An entry level blu-ray player is $200 that will be better than that good upconverter. Players are finally getting into a reasonable price. Next year, it will finally be in that price range (Or probably black friday sine I've heard of $150 players). The pricing problem right now is not with the players, but with the discs. There should only be a $2-3 premium for blu-ray discs in my book.
If you want to call the 1.0 and 1.1 players obsolete in your mind, go ahead, but you have to realize that you're in the minority. Several polls have shown people care most about the movie. My car is not obsolete because it doesn't have bluetooth to sync my phone. My computer is not obsolete because I set it back to Windows XP from Vista.
You know who can afford this? Wolfman (he has nads).
Great reference to one of my favorite movies as a child...M-M-M-M-Monster Squad!
Good times.
So that makes one high-end player (Goldmund) and one mid-fi player. Most specialty audio brands still won't touch Blu-ray.
Honest question: Are the loading times any faster on this than a $300-$400 player?
Can someone inform on why it has composite outs?
A composite output will let you access menus, including enabling/disabling HDMI settings (something you'd have to guess at if you were exclusively using an HDMI cable to access the menus).
That's for J6P, he wouldn't have a clue what HDMI was and his CRT doesn't have HDMI anyway.
People - not everything needs to be priced for Best Buy. NAD sells CD players that cost several hundred dollars. NAD receivers that do just PCM 7.1 through HDMI sells for $2000+. NAD is very good. I am currently visiting my brother and he has 2 channel NAD amp, pre-amp, etc. Excellent quality sound. So, not every player has to be priced for the normal people. Also, NAD is not even the high end brand. They are still cheaper than Meridian, Arcam, etc.
Thank you.
I don't get the obsession with cheap crap on this blog. It seems almost everyone here wants cheap, mindless consumer junk. Seriously, do you guys have any fun, or do you just try to find the cheapest item for the least money and pretend you are special because of that?
Once you use nice things, you start to realize how bad most of the stuff we are exposed to in daily life is - or at least how much better it could be. I never thought I would own a $1500 CD player, but I do now and I am not only delighted to use it...but to see it every day. Nobody is going to wake up in the morning and say, "Wow, I own a Samsung BD-P1500!"
On the flip side, spending a grip of cash on a device that will probably need to be replaced in 3-5 years might not be the best...but life is short, and if your pockets are deep, why not have something nice, now?
That said, I'd love to see the backplate of this NAD device. If it turns out to be just another expensive rebadged Funai or similar, then all talk and justification of its price will fly straight out of the window.
@Ken, very well said. I feel the same way. You see that all the time on here. People think a Ferrari should cost $14k because that's what they got their Kia for. Not everyone wants the cheapest product on the market.
It's not about that at all, you have completely missed the point, arguments revolving around price are always in relation to the format becoming main stream or not. Every format has different levels of quality and pricing, but the arguments here revolve around the majority of purchasers and not the minority as this story reflects.
Personally, I am the same, I only buy reasonably high end gear, not the most expensive but good quality none the less, but I will still argue the point that BR as a format is still to expensive at this stage for main stream adoption.
Hah, please let me know if anyone actually buys this Blu-Ray deck. Some of the super-rich might want to buy it, just to show how much money they have, but even they might think twice about paying $1500 for this.