If Sony would stop making Starship Trooper Sequel Movies (They are up to three now) they could have actually made these players cheaper! (Starship Troopers - BAD INVESTMENTS)

Sony, I love all you have done over the years, but in a time of $4 Gas, people are not looking to buy a $500 DVD Player.

If you are going to buy one, at least the the PS3 and that it can do more then just play a Disc, it's cheaper!

Also with BR Movies, there needs to be a standardization on pricing. Some are $35, some are $20 some are $14. Let's say $19.99 and that's it! DEAL?

"
Sony, I love all you have done over the years, but in a time of $4 Gas, people are not looking to buy a $500 DVD Player."

What are you talking about?? According to Fox...$4 Gas doesn't affect anything! It's normal! If you think $4 gas is an issue for concern then you're just a low class scum who needs to learn how to make more money! Right fox? Tell him!

Wow, great plan. When your products are overpriced it's always a good idea to come out with an even more expensive model. Consumers really go for that.

Sony, the S stand for stupid.

So this player STILL doesn't do internal decoding of DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio? Sony should just market the PS3 and stop wasting their time with set top Blu-Ray players. Set top Blu-Ray and DVD players players don't do a very good job with the important audio stuff like individual speaker volume and distance compensation anyways.

$500, what a steal!!!

I agree!! Let me check off the Christmas list for all my relatives with those "give away" prices!

hmm.. about the same price as my current dvd player..

if its marketed for audiophiles you better believe that $500 isnt that much.

I wouldn't expect someone to buy a blu-ray and hook it to the TV without some sorty of audio system.. PLUG THE HEADPHONE INTO THE AUDIO SYSTEM! DuUUUUU....

With that recession looming many ppl can prob only afford a BR player at these prices.

LOL Most Americans can barely afford to drive to work, much less a BR player.

That said, Betanews readers (or geeks in general) are typically not in that scenario so we often forget about that.

A tank of gas goes up in price by $25 (STILL BELOW European prices) and suddenly the American worker is starving and indigent?

Spoken like an insightful Euro. I would have expected a comment like that from prepubescent.

So tell us, have you guys figured out the concept of refrigeration yet?

When you make minimum wage, $25 is 4.5 hours of extra work. More accurately, my gas tank (16 gallons, 87 octane at $4.10 a gallon vs the $1.45 a gallon I paid when this whole issue started) increased by roughly $43 (from empty to full) which means that anyone making minimum wage needs to work an extra day every week or take on a second job to fill their tank.

http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm

No, I made the statement as an American that understands that his well paying IT job (and those like it) only accounts for about 2% of the rest of America.

For others, especially those in the low to middle income class $25 can mean the difference between milk and eggs, diapers, or driving to work. More accurately, $43 a tank could be the difference between gas and their mortgage ($186 a month averaged across the year).

That doesn't even begin to address the increased costs of products that you buy in stores like milk eggs, and diapers, or anything else brought on by increased shipping costs etc.

Don't be such an arrogant ass.

"Don't be such an arrogant ass. "

You're talking to foxfyre here...you know, the guy that believes he's superior to everybody on the planet, and he knows everything. If $40/week of extra expense doesn't scratch the surface of his bank account, everybody in America should be able to afford it also and not complain. Right Fox?

It's not like this gas price increase is affecting food or flight prices....and it's not like airlines are laying of thousands of people due to the increased gas expense. This increase in gas prices doesn't bother Fox...so there's no problem, right Fox?

"When you make minimum wage, $25 is 4.5 hours of extra work. More accurately, my gas tank (16 gallons, 87 octane at $4.10 a gallon vs the $1.45 a gallon I paid when this whole issue started) increased by roughly $43 (from empty to full) which means that anyone making minimum wage needs to work an extra day every week or take on a second job to fill their tank."

I didn't reallize that you were such a DUMB @ss!

Let's see, gas hasn't been $1.45 since ~2000, and you have been working almost 9 years and you are still making minimum wage.

Not only does that qualify you to comment in IT related issues, but it makes you an authority on the economy as well.

Not only that, but now we can extrapolate that and generalize that "MOST" Americans after 9 years at the same job is making minimum wage and must spend an extra day each week to pay for their gas alone.

I wonder, since at 20 mpg you are driving an average of 33 miles each day for a minimum wage job, just what the hell are you doing? Could you not find a McDonald's any closer? Or ride a bus? If you are making so little, and are so smart, you might want to use a bit more of your intelligence to find a job offering such seniority a little closer to where you live and one closer to public transportation instead of using all of your income to impress your posse.

But I will have to remember that "MOST" Americans makes (50 weeks x 40 hours x$5.85) $11,700 gross before taxes!

Construct your absolutely absurd case for your other idiot homies. Oh, and with a yearly GROSS income of less than $12K after working for 9 years at minimum wage, just what is your mortgage???? No wonder there is a mortgage crisis! And how many kids do you have?

Let's see, with a 30 year mortgage (unless you QUALIFIED for a 15 year mortgage! LOL!!!), you would pay a TOTAL of $68040 over the life of the loan - combined interest and principal! So your house was purchased at say approximately $20K in 2000???

Where do you come up with this crap?

With your lack of job skills, insight and intelligence that you exhibit, you have a few more things to worry about rather than gas prices! Not only might you want to consider keeping it in your pants rather than exercising your RIGHT to have more kids as you whine about the responsibilities and the cost of diapers as well as buying more black beans instead of eggs as a source of high quality fiber and protein, you might want to consider moving a bit closer to that career minimum wage plum of a job you have, dumb @ss.

Hmmmm.

If you are having such a problem paying for the fundamental requirements to survive, why in the F#$% are you considering buying a Blu-Ray anything????????????????????????????????

And if your priorities are so misplaced that in such a situation you are looking at buying a Blu-Ray player, I don't have ANY sympathy for you! In this case your misplaced values and sense of priorities are responsible for your situation, and you deserve such a problem!

Especially when just ONE Blu-Ray movie would save you enough to make up that differential in the price of gas!

I know, I know, its an injustice to expect you to settle for watching upscaled DVDs on you large screen HD monitor that you purchased on your minimum wage career.

Oh the humanity. Oh the stupidity!

ROFLMAO!

Uh...Fox? Did I say I'm buying a BR player? Did I even say I'm having problems paying for gas? I don't think so...matter of fact, my situation is quite fine, thank you. Unlike yourself however, I don't believe all of America is as lucky as myself to be able to afford an extra $200/month when most people literally live paycheck to paycheck. Those are people that ALREADY were not spending money on movies and other wastefull entertainment BEFORE this 700% price increase of OIL...which affects EVERYTHING from gas to food prices to jobs to inflation...but you knew that already didn't you?

Oh! So what we have embodied in YOUR passionate outcry of humanitarian pathos is the obvious observation that life is not fair and that disease and hunger and natural disasters and pestilence and ignorance exists and that obviously THOSE people not quite as affluent and intelligent and capable as YOURSELF are suffering before "this 700% increase in OIL" because folks ignored our reliance on FOREIGN oil and from 1984 until 1999 chose to fiddle instead of adapt as they reveled in the false sense of security that oil prices had returned to the false panacea of the $20 range instead of actually adjusting their lifestyle to minimize the impact and reliance upon it. And now we watch as idiot politicians scramble to kiss special interest posteriors as they choose to use resource intensive (water and especially - wait for it! - you guessed it! petroleum based fertilizer!) foodstuffs for the inefficient production of "anything BUT green" (LOL!) fuel and who refuse to allow increases in refining as they simultaneously argue against increased production from domestic sources.

Gee whiz...you mean you aren't using the used vegetable oil from the fries at your minimum wage job to power your bio-diesel vehicle???

Its nice to read of the pathos of another college age student who has discovered the existence of suffering in the world - of course, not HIM! - and who whines so loudly that OTHERS are not doing something to remediate the situation.

Let's just hope we can spare him the additional trauma and hope he never reads Uncle Tom's Cabin or a PETA brochure.

"What we knew already" is that your amazed and pathetic (in the literal meaning of the term) whine is profound for a 14 year old who has just discovered that suffering and equity does not exist in the world. Congrats. But if you don't like it and are still amazed, get off your @ss and actually do something rather than just sitting in your home and voting for the "Theys" to do something - as in you pathetic "When are THEY going to do something to solve the world's problems?" when YOU yourself, with your victim mentality and consumer lifestyle are a fundamental part of the problem.

So...what have YOU done to simply reduce the energy consumption in Your home - a category which constitutes 60% of the energy use in the country - and do you have a garden which should be able to effectively supply a significant amount of your nutritional needs in order to reduce your parasitic consumer impact? And why do I suspect you still have a long ways to go in becoming responsible for your OWN behavioral lifestyle before you point your fingers at others and demand that THEY do something that you have not become responsible for in your own life?

...Just another amazed creature who has woken up from the coma of his own self-indulgent sense of entitlement to discover that inequity exists in the world! Waaaaaaaa....

You're sadly mistaken if you think I bothered to read through your worthless rant. But...at least we know what kind of people vote for McCain...I guess we know who to vote for if this is the elitist mentality we want to run this country!

ROFLMAO! Look! I can string letters together to pretend I'm rolling on the floor laughing...can I be just like you now??:)

What a fool.

So this idiot thinks I am a supporter of McCain?

Sorry, I am fiscal conservative/libertarian, not a liberal light.

And I would be surprised if you bothered to read anything as you have already demonstrated that you don't bother to think.

After all, why should facts complicate your emotionally loaded world view dominated by pathos and suffering and inequity? But its nice to know that YOU care while the rest of us are just so unfeeling and uncaring. I will pass that on to the "They" of your proverbial "They should so something" whine.

But let's return to listen to an idiot who has interpreted a thread about the introduction of yet another overpriced Sony Blu-Ray PLAYER into some whine about the plight of minimum wage workers and their over dependence upon oil.

Aren't the whiny liberals who have suddenly discovered the inequity of the world cute to watch? I am surprised they haven't suggested that the answer be that the rich (meaning "anyone but them") should buy all of the "poor" a Blu-Ray player (and a HD monitor to view them on) to ease the trauma of only possessing the skills to have a minimum wage job after 12 years of free education.

What are the odds that this world weary and 'oh so caring' guy, who can't even be bothered to lend a hand to such a poor guy by sharing a ride to work with him, is between 18-24 years old?

We must have lost him with the complicated math that exploded his absurd manufactured example.

Thanks for your insightful analysis of Sony's introduction of an overpriced Blu-Ray player into the market...as if that had anything to do with your whiny @ssed assessment at all.

Its always nice to read such insightful observations of someone who confuses elective entertainment purchases with the needs of a career minimum wage employee who cannot relocate due to the prospects of losing seniority ans the tether of a 30 year mortgage on his house for which he could Not have qualified for a real mortgage!

But thank you for the heartbreaking vignette of manufactured nonsensical pathos! LOL!

You haven't exploded anything except your ego. The oil crisis started in 2001 shortly after 9/11 and it's become worse since.

Believe what you want, I don't care. I'll keep believing the facts, while you stroke off.

;-D

YEA FOR BLUE RAY.. The BDP-S550A will have a headphone jack in the front..

in the 80s Sony RULED the market.. Today well NO

What?
You mean those arent included yet in current bluray players?
Thats just ridiculous.

Their 'profile 2' players, that constitute the original 'complete' feature set they intended to launch from BR's inception, won't formally be available until this fall. ;-)

And you're right, 6 years later and we are still waiting. It is a bit ridiculous!

What was the name again...?

Ah, yes... DVD-Audio. Huge success.

I thought Sony wanted SACD.

Regardless.... MEH! :P Although they might have the market target right this time - audiophiles do tend to get conned into paying too much (see: Monster cables).

The cables have to look as stylish as the rest of the home theater system.

If the sound is better people will start purchasing the discs..the CD is from when, 1980 or something.. its pretty old in comparsion to most computer tech.

The problem is that ive not seen any cheap lets say $200-300 cd-players that takes CD/DVD-Audio/SACD..

Make a decent player from Pioneer/Yamaha/Sony add bluray-audio to the above mentioned formats and start selling some $250 players.. and the HiFi formats should take off... the problem is when players cost $1000+ then there will never be a mass adoption of the format.

"If the sound is better people will start purchasing the discs"

High end audio seems to be just a niche market. Look at iPod sales vs any high end audio format, maybe even more than all three combined (CD, DVD-A and SACD).

"I know", said the Sony exec...

"If we can't sell them a whiz bang high def player for $400 and an even more comprehensive gaming platform for $500, let's WOW 'em with another player only model for $500!

It will be impossible for them to resist listening to explosions and canned laugh tracks in incredible detail on a model that weighs less!!"

Yup, now if they only offered them in green...