Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player stealth price drop?
Considering that lower priced high definition players are pretty much exactly what we've been asking for, we're a little surprised by the stealthiness of this one. Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray player launched with a price of $999 but as some of our eagle-eyed commenters have pointed out, you can find it for considerably less. Several international reports have mentioned the US retail price of the unit as $800, although no change in the MSRP has been announced by Samsung. While it did show up for only $730 on Amazon.com yesterday, today the retail price displays as $799.99, with a list price of $899.99. Circuit City's website displays an on sale price of $899. Best Buy, Tweeter and Crutchfield don't appear to have gotten the memo and still show the original price. Whatever the reason for the price difference, the fact is you can get a player that --- probably -- plays 50GB Blu-ray discs for the same price as the high end Toshiba HD-XA1 (or not, it's currently going for $687 on Amazon) HD DVD player. With improved movie releases on the way and a quickly closing price gap, Blu-ray may be ready to take the lead from HD DVD sooner than any of us thought.
