Not even four whole months ago, Best Buy was pushing its Insignia
NS-BRDVD Blu-ray player for
$349.99 with a $100 coupon book. Now, that same pamphlet of discounts comes bundled in a box stickered at just $229.99. We've reckoned here lately that once the $200 price point was met by a few manufacturers, BD units would start flying off shelves more briskly; we can't say $230 is close enough just yet, but it's sure good to see things moving in the
right direction.
[Thanks, Anthony]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TJ @ Sep 8th 2008 3:11PM
I'd bet my very low salary that this will be in the Black Friday ad for $199.99.
Big Wizz @ Sep 8th 2008 9:17AM
Insignia = Junk.
You couldn't pay me to take BB's "in-house" brand home.
SAMe @ Sep 8th 2008 9:42AM
Good to see. Lossless audio in 2 channel???....not good to see.
DrXym @ Sep 8th 2008 10:57AM
It was obvious prices would fall, and obvious it would happen as Christmas approaches. This is how it always happens. There will likely be at least one player that can be purchased for $200 retail this holiday and probably at least a couple brand name players occupying the $250-300 area. Next year we'll be seeing multiple players in the $100-150 range and plenty more in the $150-250 range.
XDragon @ Sep 8th 2008 11:29AM
So here it is:
Fanboys: the nay sayers can now shut up
Haters: ya the price went down but its a crap player
People, its life, you get what you pay for. If you want in sooner then later for cheap, you get a cheap player - but its a player and it does work.
Its a great start and maybe we'll see more interesting news in the next few months :)
squiggleslash @ Sep 8th 2008 2:53PM
It's not even a crap player. The complaints seem to focus on a lack of internal encoding for certain optional audio formats (who gives a crap? Seriously, if you want surround sound, you should be using a receiver), and lack of 2.0 support (a problem, but you get the impression Blu-ray's "Profile 2.0" was designed as a half-witted reading of HD DVD's online capabilities, online is certainly less important to Blu-ray than it was to HD DVD.)
It's a low cost BD player. If you don't have a player, but you have an HDTV, and you think Blu-ray has a future, go out and get it.
XDragon @ Sep 9th 2008 9:57AM
I personally wouldn't bother with this player; I'd still recommend a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player but if you're looking for a cheap way in, this player is good.
At the end of the day, either of the 2 formats during the format war would be in the exact same situation as Blu-Ray is in now except HD-DVD would be a bit cheaper for the lowest end player.
To be totally honest, yes Blu went 1.0, 1.1 and then 2.0 but even 1.0 will play every movie and most people don't even look at any bonus features/content or use any of the online abilities; I'm not one of those most people so I spent more to get the extra features.
I respect your stance against Blu but you really haven't given any good reasons for your opinion that Blu will fail. For me, I'd support the wining format after the format war regardless of who won because I want my HD movies on optical media. Blu 2.0 actually is equal or better technically in every aspect than HD-DVD even if they got there in a bad way. So I'm kind of glad that the format with the larger capacity and scratch proof coating won even though I wouldn't have stood behind either format while the war was on.
Jimmy @ Sep 8th 2008 11:30AM
Well, I would not purchase this product/brand myself but people looking for the cheapest product often will. This does show that predictions about $200 blu-ray players for xmas is spot-on. Further I suspect $179 now may be a real possibility over the holidays with possibly lower prices on Black Friday.
Woody @ Sep 8th 2008 11:35AM
Yeah it's junk, but the normal home owner who doesn't know anything about electronics will not know or care enough to not buy it anyways. It's still a good thing for us Blu Ray folk since it's helping get the units in the homes to begin with.
shawnmos @ Sep 8th 2008 11:44AM
Why was my comment deleted??? Amazon has the Sony BDP-300 for the same price and it now has Dolby TrueHD decoding with the latest firmware update.
burndive @ Sep 8th 2008 1:24PM
That's good to know, actually, but also worth pointing out that the BDP-S300 is a Profile 1.0 player.
The NS-BRDVD is Profile 1.1.
I for one am glad to see the beginning of the end of the $300 price point.
shawnmos @ Sep 8th 2008 4:29PM
This is true, but for those who don't care about Bonus View, the Sony has 5.1 analog outs which will allow people without an HDMI receiver to listen to high def audio like TrueHD and LPCM. The Insignia player only has 2.0 analog out. Plus I'm sure the build quality of the Sony is higher.
J.Goodwin @ Sep 8th 2008 11:59AM
It's too bad that there probably won't be any 2.0 players available at affordable prices this holiday. At some point, the studios are just going to drop 2.0 features. There's no point if 75% of your install base can't view them.
kibbles @ Sep 8th 2008 9:44PM
I'm on the site right now but the price has gone back up to $299, was this just a weekend thing?
XDragon @ Sep 9th 2008 2:53PM
Not it hasn't. Click on the picture in this post and it takes you right to it.
WebDev511 @ Sep 8th 2008 12:12PM
Profile 1.0 player for $229? The unsuspecting buyer should get a great picture from it when they plug the red/white to the audio and yellow video inputs of their 32" 720p westinghouse lcd.
squiggleslash @ Sep 8th 2008 2:04PM
http://reviews.cnet.com/video-players-and-recorders/insignia-ns-brdvd/4505-6463_7-33189493.html?tag=mncol;txt
It's Profile 1.1, not 1.0. The CNet review suggests no serious issues. There's a lack of onboard decoding for certain formats in anything but stereo, but that's the job of your surround sound receiver anyway. It outputs 1080p24 with no problems.
$229 doesn't sound bad. If I thought Blu-ray wasn't a third rate, backward, seriously flawed "standard" with no chance of success, I'd actually run out and buy this baby. If you're one of those who have been waiting for a low cost Blu-ray player and you think I'm wrong about Blu-ray's long term chances (or just don't care), go out and get it.
imonit @ Sep 8th 2008 4:06PM
@Squiggle
Why do you have to disagree with you about Blu's future in order to pick up a BD player? I'm sure you weren't convinced about HD DVDs long term success when you bought into it. I'm not 100% sold on Blu going mainstream but unless you can tell me how else to get 1080p content with lossless audio (legally), then a purchase would make sense to many.
Valicore @ Sep 8th 2008 6:37PM
I love my 720p Westinghouse 32 incher :P I got it dirt cheap last year and it makes an awesome computer monitor :P
Mike @ Sep 8th 2008 7:13PM
@IMONIT
Last year you could get HD DVD for $100 or $150 with 5 or 7 free movies and sometimes 9 and some you got to pick from a decent selection of movies. Even if you only like 3 of your free movies that is a big chunck of the price of the package.
If BD had $200 and 5 free movies then more might be tempted.
Oh and HD DVD was finished... we weren't waiting for 1.1 and 2.0
DEEZNUTZ @ Sep 8th 2008 9:14PM
@ Mike,
"Oh and HD DVD was finished..."
In hindsight, yup, you can say that again.
squiggleslash @ Sep 8th 2008 9:59PM
imonit: There's a difference between not being convinced of a format's success and being fairly convinced it's going to flop. I wasn't sure about HD DVD, but Blu-ray I'm absolutely convinced doesn't stand a chance - it's just not significantly better than DVD, it has disadvantages over DVD, and downloads are coming around the corner.
If I thought BD was going to succeed (and I was happy about BD+ and other crap) I'd probably go down to Best Buy this evening to get one. Obviously I don't, and I'm definitely not comfortable about investing in the format. Others feel differently, and this is definitely a good player to invest in - it's not so absurdly expensive that if BD fails it will, in itself, be a supreme waste of money, and from what I can figure out the worst that can be said about it is that it doesn't do 1080p60 terribly well (1080i60, fine, 1080p24, excellent, but for some reason the review says upconversions to 1080p60 end up with moire patterns, etc.)
I invested in HD DVD because there was a 50/50 shot that it would get the backing of Hollywood, and if it did it stood a chance of long term success. Clean DRM. Mandatory managed copy. Downloads. Essentially it was all set up to be the heart of the future online downloads system, not a rival to it. Blu-ray just doesn't have that, it's a high-definition version of DVD with an unreliable (BD+) DRM scheme. It's not compelling enough to beat DVD, and it's not set to become a standard in the future. And, just to be clear, if Blu-ray were to drop BD+, and be updated to incorporate the technologies that made HD DVD suitable as a future standard, then I'd back it. I never backed HD DVD over Blu-ray. I backed HD DVD, and rejected Blu-ray. If both had been true equals, I'd have backed both.
mntwister @ Sep 9th 2008 12:55AM
Mike, yes you could buy a hd-dvd player, I saw them for $99 and they came with 7 free discs. But number 1 there was a format war, number 2 Toshiba was fighting against Sony mostly with their player prices, they made nothing on them. The price of those players were un-natural in the audio/video world, if you have been a stereo or audio buff like some of us you know they would njever have been that price without a format war, plus this was near the very end in desparate times for Toshiba with the blu-ray format winning every single week in sales of the entire year of 2007. So let's not compare desparation of a knock-off format with something that was brand new and more expensive to produce. Electronics have never gone down that fast in price in such a short time, it was Toshiba willing to lose millions of dollars (over 500 million from what I have read). True, the deal was fantastic, but as it turned out, you can't buy a single new release now, so where is the great value you got late last year nowadays? Sitting on the shelf with the same movies and none can be added.
Yes hd-dvd was profile 2.0 (so to speak) from the start. Blu-ray was not yet ready and I certainly see Sony's decision to go to market to compete with their technology with a lower profile instead of giving in and giving Toshiba several years jump-start. It happened with the Xbox and Sony was not going to let it happen this time, and I don';t blame them. You hd-dvd fans (and I don't hate hd-dvd like some people did) keep bringing up these profiles, when you only had about a couple dozen (if that) titles with internet features and most of them were either awful or very stupid, I know because my friend showed me some of them. So let's not go overboard on 2.0, it's no big deal, most people want to view the movies in high def, not go onto the internet, and for them 1.0 or 1.1 players are just fine. I would be willing to bet that some of these people who keep jabboring that Blu-ray players are late with 2.0 never even used the internet features on their hd-dvd's, it's just another way to cut down the blu-ray format.
What will you guys say when all players are 2.0 and players are available at $99? I can't wait to see what's next!
Mike @ Sep 9th 2008 12:49PM
mntwister,
Well there is still a format war.. it is just now BD vs DVD vs VOD and I guess some argue downloads. Everyone says "but toshiba was selling below cost"... well when ps3 came out it was loosing more per sell then the A2 or A20 did...so both took hits to get players in the homes. I took bck my $99 HD DVD player and my movies so lost no money... just lost value in had HD DVD stayed it would have been a year (maybe more) that i got to enjoy HD movies before BD is affordable.
You are right I might use BD internet 1 time every 3 or 4 months.. but if the format is going to offer a feature i don't want to have to buy a 2nd BD player. When it's posted BD 2.0 for $99... I will want to know where at so I can go buy it.
I hope we see a $120 ish player this season...maybe I would even go $140 if had free movies...just depends on how many and selection.
Ken @ Sep 8th 2008 1:21PM
The real news is you get the player for $100 when you buy a 'matching' Insignia TV. Even if its a lame BD player, $100 for a BD deck is hard to pass up, and when you are using it on a cheap TV and HT system, its probably just fine.