Blu-ray Tries To Pull Fast One In Ongoing Price Wars, Releases $199 Blu-ray Player...For Your PC

We've been waiting for a mind-blowing announcement from the Blu-ray camp regarding Black Friday price cuts or something of that nature ever since the $99 Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player, but we didn't expect this. Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions have announced a $199 Blu-ray player, the DH-401S. The unexpected part of this announcement is that the cheap Blu-ray is actually an internal drive for your PC that plays back Blu-ray discs, DVD's and CD's.

This definitely seems to be an indirect attempt at a price cut to compete with the growing market share HD DVD is basically buying on account of their awesome pricing deals of late. Marketing manager Christine Hsing stated "consumers now have an affordable way to view the brilliant picture quality Blu-ray technology offers right on their personal computers" and the "BD-ROM can serve as a playback device to their HD TVs by connecting an HDMI cable from the PC to the TV. This would save consumers hundreds of dollars on the purchase of a standalone Blu-ray player solely for that purpose". We all know that Blu-ray can't compete with HD DVD on price this year, but this is a rather subtle and innovative attempt at making seem otherwise in the minds of consumers.

Just hook up the DH-401S via an HDMI cable to your HDTV and voila. Blu-ray can now compete with HD DVD on price, which is important since price forms the basis for the entire format war.

Update: Digitimes has listed the price of the Blu-ray at $186 US.

Via Gearlog

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