Samsung Drops Blu-ray Player Price

In the first example of an official manufacturer's price reduction for next-gen hardware, Samsung today announced a post-Christmas price drop on its BD-P1000 first-gen Blu-ray player, effectively immediately.

Originally released this past June for a cool grand, Samsung has slashed the deck's price by $100, with the unit now listing with an MSRP of $899, according to the manufacturer.

As any MSRP discount means an even lower wholesale cost for retailers, a quick perusal of online sites saw even more competitive prices for the BD-P1000. Both BestBuy.com and CircuitCity.com are now selling the player for $799, while Amazon dropped its price a whopping $330, to a comparitively affordable list of $569.

That now makes the BD-P1000, with discount, the cheapest Blu-ray stand-alone player on the market, edged out only by Sony's 20GB PlayStation 3 game console, which includes a Blu-ray drive and currently lists for $500.

Vitally important for the next-gen format wars, Samsung's move also helps to close the price gap between Blu-ray and HD DVD -- at least with such steep online discounts -- nearing the $500 list price for Toshiba's cheapest HD DVD player option, the HD-A1.

Such aggressive pricing can only help the high-defintion formats, as one of the primary deterrents in attracting consumers to a new technology is price. So we hope to see more discounts on hardware throughout 2007. Stay tuned.