Decide what to buy: the Reevoo.com blog

With demise of HD-DVD finally complete yesterday, French company Sigmatek’s announcement of a new ‘budget’ Blu-ray player is timely.

One advantage HD-DVD always had that discs and players were both cheaper than the Blu-ray equivalent. In the end content, not price, seems to have been deciding factor in this format war, with Warner’s abandonment of the format widely cited as the main turning point.

The demise of HD-DVD shouldn’t stop Blu-ray prices coming down down - competition and cost-cutting should do that - but it does mean that manufacturers now have one less incentive to sell Blu-ray equipment at low or no profit. So it will be interesting to see if this player is followed by a rash of cheaper players or not.

This player apparently benefits from a new cheaper laser manufactured by Sony and Nichia.

The specs on Simatek’s SBR-1000:

* Output Resolution: 1080p (24/60) / 720p
* HDMI Version: 1.3
* Audio Decoding: Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD, DTS, MP3
* Media Support: BD-Rom/DVD/VCD/CD/CD-R/DVD+R (RW)
* Video Output: HDMI/Component/Composite
* Audio Output: Coaxial

The price? £185, making it the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market when it appears in April. Of course, you can probably get a HD-DVD player for a fiver now.

(Via: Gizmodo)

Blog posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 1:52 pm under Televisions. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.