Memorex announces $269 Blu-ray player

The move to mainstream Blu-ray continues with the latest low-cost player announcement. Memorex, best known for its blank media (and its "Is it live or Memorex?" commercials from the analog days), has introduced the $269 MVBD-2510 Blu-ray Disc Player, which will be available starting in November and in plenty of time for holiday gift season.

The MVBD-2510's specs are the usual ones you'd expect from a "budget" Blu-ray player, including upconversion of standard DVDs, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio support, and so on. While the unit supports Blu-ray Profile 1.1, which allows for "BonusView" picture-in-picture features during Blu-ray playback (for director's commentary and the like), it does not support Profile 2.0 (or BD-Live), the latest spec that uses built-in networking connectivity to let you obtain bonus features online. (If you're willing to pay more for BD-Live support, you might want to check out Panasonic's forthcoming DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55 players.)

With the MVBD-2510, Memorex currently has one of the cheapest new Blu-ray players on the market, though who knows how long that will last as more second-tier manufacturers join the club. The odds are pretty good we'll be seeing some sub-$200 prices for new players come Black Friday. Is that low enough to get you finally to buy into Blu-ray?