Some of the recent Blu-ray player models will fall to less than US$200 in the next six to eight weeks, according to TVPredictions. Next generation players and the industry’s ability to catch up with demand will drive down prices for current players.

Phillip Swann, the president of TVPredictions.com predicted prices as low as $149-179 on the coming months. For example, the Sony BDP-S300 is now selling at Amazon for $229. Since that model came out, Sony has introduced the BDP-S350 which retails for US$399.

Retailers have been forced to keep prices high due to short supply. Mr. Swann explained why: "Blu-ray manufacturers were caught by surprise last spring by HD DVD’s sudden departure from the format war and were not ready to ramp up production. Consequently, with the exception of the Play Station 3, which has a Blu-ray player inside, Blu-ray sales have been disappointing following the format’s victory over HD DVD."

iPO notes that in some cases, current Blu-ray players have Ethernet ports for updates, uncompressed sound, HDMI 1.3 and 1080p output. However, they may limited to the Profile 1.0 specification which doesn’t provide interactive functions that some want and others don’t care about.

When weighing a Blu-ray player purchase, especially one of the current or older models with rapidly dropping prices, one should look carefully at the manufacturer’s specifications to determine whether the features are desirable and compatible with the current home theater system. Companies always like to tout features that may not be exploitable in order to justify higher prices. As a result, some of these $149 players that Mr. Swann pointed to could be a real bargain. However, they could also lock the users out of a forward-looking feature they forgot to look into.