Blu-ray player prices spike - wow, who could have seen that one coming?

I had put myself on a self-imposed exile of sorts on writing about high-def DVDs , but a post over at Tom's Hardware got me all riled up, so I'm lifting the ban. Turns out that since January 1 (right before the pre-CES announcement that Warner Brothers was leaving HD DVD), prices for every standalone Blu-ray player have spiked.

In fact, the only Blu-ray-capable player to drop in price, was not shockingly, LG's BH200, which also plays HD DVDs. Based on data from shopping engine PriceGrabber.com, the average price for the BH200 was $999 on January 1, and has gradually fallen to $666 as of March 12 (it hit a low of $607 on February 10) -- a 33-percent drop.

Among the other standalone players:

• Sony's BDP-S300 rose 31% ($307 to $403)
• Panasonic's DMP-BD30K rose 20% ($401 to $480)
• Samsung's BD-P1400 rose 18% ($318 to $374)
• Sharp's BD-HP20U rose 14% ($386 to $440)

(Note: The prices above are from PriceGrabber.com data -- the prices you'll see in the review pages linked to above on ZDNet may well vary, though the trends appear to be the same.)

The only good news of any of this is that it makes it very easy for Blu-ray player shoppers to pick a player. At $399, there is simply no reason to buy anything other than a Sony PS3. It's only $25 more than the least expensive standalone player, it's the only player on the market that will be Blu-ray Profile 2-compatible (which means it has built-in Ethernet), and oh yeah, it can even play games.

As long as I've broken my rule, if you missed it, some other interesting Blu-ray news hit yesterday. Despite loads of rumors over the past week, Microsoft said it is not in talks with Sony of the Blu-ray association to integrate a player into the Xbox 360. Hard to imagine this isn't simply negotiating posturing, but it does suggest that a deal isn't nearly as close as many have suspected.