It's about time this was announced! For all of you who thought that selling a standalone Blu-ray player for a thousand smackeroo's was a bit much in the United States, worry not. Sony has announced a new model will be released early this summer -- costing a mere $599 (relatively speaking). Dubbed the BDP-S300, the unit has all the same functions of the older models but is a lot smaller -- about the size of modern day DVD players. That's pretty swanky if you're trying to make a really fancy "theater room" or whatever.Along with this announcement, Sony has reiterated how well Blu-ray is doing as far as high definition movie formats are concerned, outselling the competiton 3:1 this year. With that in mind, Sony estimated that Blu-ray players will drop beneath $500 by this year's holiday season. That's really good, since by then there might be a more concrete end to the format war. Maybe not. But I know that I can't watch DVD's anymore. The difference is pretty substantial, no matter the format.
