The New York Times covers a super-hi-def DVD player that costs $20,000. When the Times asks the co-founder of the company that makes it why the heck anybody would want to spend that much money on a DVD player, the chucklehead responded, "In a sense, you should ask, 'What do you get for so little?'"
Now if you're a smart gamer, you'll put this one on your holiday wish list to exploit the psychological weapon known as the contrast principle. According to Cialdini's classic The Psychology of Influence, "There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things presented one after another. If the second item is fairly different from the first we will tend to see it as more different than it really is."
Stick this DVD player next to the Xbox 360 on your holiday wish list and the Xbox 360 will look like chump change. Heck, the Xbox 360 is only half of the sales tax you'd pay on this high-end DVD player assuming a 5% tax rate.
Have any of you got first-hand experience watching a DVD played by a device like this versus a device like the 360? Is it really that much better?
