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Phillips and Lite-On announce $199 PC Blu-ray player
While standalone Blu-ray and HD DVD players have had significant price reductions in recent months, optical units for the PC have remained relatively high. Particularly on the Blu-ray front, the cost of PC units has been very high, significantly higher than comparable HD DVD units.
Now, that's starting to shift. Yesterday, Phillips and Lite-On announced the availability of the PLDS DH-4O1S. It won't burn anything and of course it will not accept HD DVD discs, but it will play back CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray media – all for only $199, a relatively low figure for Blu-ray to date. Standalone units are still the better choice for general consumers, but at least now more HD PC hardware is becoming available without bleeding the bank.
When DVD drives first began emerging into PCs, it was around the time they started dipping below the $200 price point that they really began taking off. If this price trend between HD DVD and Blu-ray continues, 2008 may be promising for both standards.
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User Comments (2)
Post a comment| buttus on November 14, 2007 2:05 PM | That's a pretty darned good price for this media. However. LG has a combo drive (the GGC-H20L_ for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD for approximately $60-90 more. I believe I am amongst the masses that refuse to commit to one High Def standard or the other for fear that we make the wrong choice and end up with a discontinued and rather expensive investment.
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| 9Nails on November 17, 2007 2:21 PM | I agree with buttus, why pigeon-hole yourself into a single HD format when there are two incompatible formats with different levels of support from movie studios? What's worse, is not being able to burn media in a Blu-Ray drive! Blu-ray screams it's potential for large storage with the 50 Gig discs, but this drive lacks that feature. Lets face it, spending $200 for the privilege to buy more expensive BR movies just for watching on your PC is a bit steep.
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