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Get a Sony Blu-ray player for $199.96 shipped

Finally, a Blu-ray player for less than $200, with no rebates required!

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida

If you were smart enough not to spend $500-plus on a Blu-ray player during the last year or so, your patience just paid off: Circuit City has the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player for $199.96 shipped (plus sales tax in most states). It's new, not a refurb, with no rebates required.

As you'll see in the video, CNET had mostly good things to say about the BDP-S300, though the complete review dings it for slow load times (true of most Blu-ray players) and lack of Dolby TrueHD decoding (which has been remedied via a firmware update). Although CNET readers rated it 3 stars out of 5, Circuit City buyers gave it 4.2 out of 5.

As the holidays draw nearer, we'll probably start to see a lot more Blu-ray players dip below the $200 mark (where they should have been a year ago). Is this price low enough for you to pull the trigger?