Roundup: Three Blu-ray players for less than $300
CNET compares three Blu-ray players that cost less than $300, finding that although you'll have to give up some premium features for that price, the players still do fine for basic Blu-ray playback.
During the 2008 holiday season, we found plenty of affordable Blu-ray players to recommend under $300. Fast-forward a couple months, and we're surprised to find that many of those players are either discontinued (Panasonic DMP-BD35) or are no longer discounted.
You can still get a few Blu-ray players for a bargain, but you'll have to give up some features to get under the $300 mark. None of these players have multichannel analog-audio outputs and they also lack onboard decoding for DTS-HD Master Audio. That being said, most people won't have any complaints with the Blu-ray image quality of these players and the top two players are Profile 2.0 compatible. If you can wait a few more months before you make the jump to Blu, it might be worth seeing how much Samsung and LG price their new Blu-ray players, but these are some of the better bargains available right now.
Read our full comparison of budget Blu-ray players.
Related content: Best Blu-ray players.