State-of-the-Art Audio/Video Just Got Cheaper

This holiday season won't just be about better audio and video for less, it will be about better audio and video for waaaay less.

Thank the techno gods, with their wily ways of packing more gadget-y punch per black box inch, but the means to savor the absolute best in audio and video is now well within the means of even the entry-level TV junkie.

State-of-the-art, once $1,000-ish Blu-ray high definition disc players, like the Sony (SNE Quote) BDP-s350, fell below the $500 mark earlier this year. And today's tight economic times have forced street prices lower still.

Aggressive retailers like J&R Music World are selling similar Sonys at a mere $260, which is cheaper than the $278.54 from supposedly-cheapest-in-the-land Wal-Mart (WMT Quote). Target (TGT Quote) is also into cheap Bu-rays. Here's a very nice Philips: the BDP7200 for an equally absurd $250. And then there are entry-level decks from makers like Olevia (BRLCQ Quote), Memorex, Samsung and others. Just look a bit and you will find them.

But there is a catch: Sony and all the rest of the HD disc set face some hidden competition. Download video services like Netflix (NFLX Quote), Blockbuster (BBI Quote), Amazon (AMZN Quote) and CinemaNow (SNIC Quote) all offer a perfectly reasonable HD experience using a broadband connection. Catalogues and quality are rich. So much so, that an early pioneer of online HD content, Santa Clara- based Vudu, announced in November that it was upping the number of HD movies to roughly a whopping 1,200, basically putting an entire video store's full of all things HD at your digital fingertips. And, to boot, the company also announced a new compression standard, dubbed HDx, staking a claim that it was the best HD experience ever via download.