For those people with an HDTV that can exploit a Blu-ray player, picking the right time to go Blu-ray is critical, and it might pay to wait just a bit, according to MarketWatch on Friday.

The two year war between Blu-ray and HD DVD is over, but some in the industry don’t think this is the best time to jump in, nor do they think there will be a stampede by consumers to buy the stand alone movie players.

"Is there going to be a massive wave of purchases? I don’t think so," said Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research at DisplaySearch. "People are pretty happy with DVD."

The decision by the DVD developers to go with MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1 has made for a very good picture, one that many people, even those with HDTVs, can live with today. That is, unless they have the money and are anxious to jump in to the HD disc format.

While HD DVD players were selling for US$100 to $150 in the past few months, most Blu-ray players are in the US$300 to $400 range. Prices dipped below $300 just before Christmas but have gone back up.

Those rapidly dropping Blu-ray prices were designed to keep the gap narrow enough that HD DVD couldn’t get too far ahead. Now that the war is over, manufacturers are caught between recovering some of those losses and promoting their new winner. Most agree that prices will come down, but just how fast, only the manufacturers know.

The trigger point for the consumer seems to be about US$200. "Once DVD players got below $200, sales really started to pick up," Phillip Swann of TVPredictions has said. On the other hand, Josh Martin, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group thinks that prices will linger slightly higher for awile. "Manufacturers want to prevent the price erosion that happened with DVD," he said.

In the long term, prices will go down, as they always do with consumer electronics. "I guarantee you prices will drop and consumers will benefit," said Gary Yocoubian of Myer Emco, a retail chain in the Washington area.

So it could well be that some money will be recouped by the manufacturers riding on the back of those who jump in too early after the dust has settled. There’s no doubt, however, that later in the year, we’ll see $200 Blu-ray players. Buyers should watch, though, to make sure those less expensive players have the high quality sound outputs, 1080p/24/60 output, Ethernet access, and BD 1.1 profile that their higher priced predecessors have had.