This price increase is disturbing for BluRay if it continues. I imagine many people are like me, we own an HDDVD player (realistically, now a nice upconverter). We are watching for two things before jumping into BluRay. (1) Does it look like it can seriously challenge DVD? and (2) When will the prices come down?
We don't know the answer to the DVD challenge question yet (and won't for a while), but the price question seems to have been answered in the wrong direction. Hopefully this is a temporary thing and manufacturers/stores will reconsider what this will do to their potential market. It doesn't matter if this is "a return to suggested retail prices" as someone mentioned previously. The consumer is paying more than they used to for the same merchandise, a pricing move that is detested across the board by consumers. And for the consumers that don't know what prices used to be on BluRay players, if they were in for sticker shock on BluRay prices before, where will they be now?
BluRay certainly hasn't won the war. Only the first minor skirmish with HDDVD. Now that the real war is on the horizon, BluRay almost seems to be backing away from it. Grabbing what short term profit they can, but possibly at the expense of their greater goal.
Time will tell.
