I still would not shell out any significant money for either. WHen blue ray players are $100 or less I may buy one, and I have always been an early adopter and tech product guy.

The handwriting is on the wall as far as downloadable content "on demand." Both of these will be like DAT in a couple years.

I wonder how many people like are like me and used to collect a whole bunch of DVD's only to find they watched it two times tops. I rarely BUY movies anymore. And when the day comes that I can just download a high def copy of any movie ever made for just a few bucks, the point of buying any at all becomes moot.

 

Cheapest BluRay player that Crutchfield sells is, I think, $399. And it's out of stock - the next cheapest is $449. The Apple TV is $229 for the 40GB version, $329 for the 160GB version. Granted iTunes isn't an ideal alternative to physical media (you can only rent HD movies at this time, for instance, and high-def movies will eat up storage space quickly) but I think it's, ultimately, the future of media distribution. We have no intention of purchasing any of the new format players.

 

My PS3 is a fine BR player. There's a Sony in your future...

 

Problem I've heard about the HD download services so far is that they end up doing very high compression on the movies in addition to the fact that they're 720P instead of 1080P. While the average person will be fine with that, true home theater buffs won't tolerate macroblocking and lower resolution. My PS3 works really well as a blu-ray player and netflix rents out the discs for no additional cost.

 

playsystion be ftw. Plus with a he and expandability the ps3 can become an on demand downloader too.

 

Thats why you get a PS3, best bang for the buck out there