DVD player deal: $20k

Last I checked, I could give up ten lattés at Starbucks for a DVD player at my local Target or Wal-Mart. What was I thinking? I should give up coffee for the rest of my life and use the savings on the Meridian 800 that costs (*gulps*) a cool twenty-grand. For that kind of money, I should get DVD playback all around me like a hologram!

How does Meridian justify the cost and what does roughly half of the U.S. annual household income get you in a reference DVD player? Well, you can play both American ATSC and European PAL video. You've got CD and DVD-Audio playback as well. There's also some proprietary video processing and upconverting involved, which are handled by 25 unique processing chips.

Hmm....when you figure out the cost per chip, maybe it's not a bad deal? We'll pass, thanks, although we're always up for a review unit; we'll even leave a shoe as collateral, just like in grade school.