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Archive for the 'DVD' Tag

Vizio Blu-ray player shows up in Walmart for $178

August 10th, 2009, 4:19 pm by

Vizio's first Blu-ray DVD player shows up in Walmart stores.Vizio’s long-awaited sub-$200 Blu-ray player is beginning to show up at Walmart stores nationwide — the Huntington Beach store added the high-definition DVD player to shelves last night, according to a sales clerk.

Irvine’s Vizio first announced its entry into Blu-ray players in January during the Consumer Electronics Show. The timing in stores is well off the initial April 2009 launch date, but hey, at least the price is $22 cheaper. 

The VBR100 Blu-ray player, which is listed as “coming soon” for $199.99 on Vizio’s Web site, has HDMI output and plays BD-Live content (so you can chat with friends watching the same movie). It also plays DVDs, CDs, MP3s and JPEG images. There’s no built-in memory card reader but on the back, there’s a USB port, which can read JPEGs, MP3s and BD Live storage. Nothing fancy, but it is thinner than some of the competitor boxes on the same shelves.

Vizio's first Blu-ray disc player shows up in Walmart stores.

Vizio's straightforward Blu-ray disc player is nothing fancy, but it's smaller, thinner than some competitor's.Now, I didn’t rush to the store to buy one, but I did stop by a local store to verify Walmart had them in stock (two left, by the way).  Photos are from my hunt.

The guys over at FormatWarCentral.com did. Here’s the link to their unboxing of the VBR100 (as spotted on EngadgetHD.com): LINK.

The new Vizio Blu-ray player isn’t the only one Walmart offers in the sub-$200 market. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing $100 Blu-ray players at Christmas. Here’s a list from Walmart’s Web site:

Blu-ray player Price Store
Magnavox Blu-ray Disc Player, NB530MGX $129 Walmart
Sylvania Blu-ray Disc Player (NB500SL9) $177 Walmart
Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray Player, BD-1500/XAA $198 Walmart
Sharp AQUOS 1080p HD Blu-ray Disc Player, BD-HP21U $199 Walmart

Earlier Vizio news:


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Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • • • • | 1 Comment »

Blu-ray DVD players drop below $300, even $200

October 14th, 2008, 7:28 pm by

Wow, I just noticed that Blu-ray DVD players have really been dropping in price.

What sparked my search was news that Sherwood America, based in Cerritos, just introduced its first Blu-ray DVD player for $299.95. The  BDP-500 is pictured below (photo courtesy of Sherwood):

Sherwood’s model has 1080p video playback and lossless audio from both Dolby and DTS. It also plays regular DVDs by upscaling their quality so video appears high-def. The $299 price is MSRP, by the way, so when the player is actually available next month, chances are the ‘street price’ will be less. 

Blu-ray is the remaining high-def DVD technology, having won the VHS-vs.-Beta-like war against HD DVD format earlier this year. Maybe that’s why prices have finally come down from the intial $1,000.

Over at Amazon, there are quite a few Blu-ray players for under $300, including the Sony BDP-S350 for $278, the Samsung BD-P1500 for $225, Sony BDP-S300 for $249 and, well, pretty much every player is under $300.

The cheapest at Buy.com is $217, the Samsung BD-P1500, with free shipping.

But the best deal I could find on the Web was at a site I’ve never shopped at, the Consumer Depot, selling the Sony BDP-S300 for $169 (what, no remote?) 

Of course, these players should get even cheaper because it’s technology and, well, you know, technology prices always fall. Plus, I’m sure there will be a ton of deals for the holidays.  Besides, the movies aren’t that cheap at around $20 each so the boxes should be getting cheaper.

Hopefully this all means that Sony will soon be dropping the price of its $399 PlayStation 3, which has a built-in Blu-ray drive. 

Do I hear $100?

More deal-related posts:

Posted in: Video & TV • • • • • | 4 Comments »

Disabling Windows Autoplay

May 27th, 2008, 7:03 am by

Attention all fans of Stump the PC Club: I’ve added a feature to have this column e-mailed to your computer weekly. The e-mail is easy to read and print out! Sign up HERE.

Also, we need more questions! E-mail us at thegadgetress@ocregister.com and please include “Help Me” in the subject line and please include your computer’s operating system and amount of memory.

And one last thing: The PC Club meets this Sunday, June 1, at Chapman College. Visit the club’s site for more details.

North Orange County Computer Club Q&ANow, back to this week’s question:

Question: I have a Dell tower computer, Canon scanner and printer. I bought a Western Digital MyBook 320-GB backup hard drive a year ago, and it has worked flawlessly. However, a few months ago (being a bit paranoid) I decided to keep its USB cable unplugged until I want to backup some files. My problem is each time I plug in the backup’s USB cable, my scanner is activated. This is not only annoying, it can also interfere with the backup process.

NOCCC: What I consider the abuse of the Windows Autoplay feature is the source of your annoyance.

A quote from MSDN Magazine: “The typical user scenario is this: a CD is inserted into the CD drive, the setup program runs automatically, and the user simply follows the on-screen instructions generated by the setup software. Without this mechanism, the user needs to find and open the My Computer folder, find the CD drive, double-click the icon, find the right program to run, and launch it. For novice users, all of these steps are far from obvious and can contribute to the perceived complexity of the PC.”

The above quote applied to Autoplay version one. Version two of Autoplay was expanded to include USB hard drives, flash drives, cameras, and other devices.

Read the rest of this entry »

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