Walmart Gets $298 Funai Blu-ray Player

[Ian]

Funai's budget priced Blu-ray player has reportedly showed up at Walmart stores. Sold under the Magnavox brand, these players are priced at only $298. Here's a thread about them at blu-ray.com:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=48943

The first generation of Blu-ray Disc (BD) players manufactured by Funai are now (early May 2008) starting to work their way to retailers. The Magnavox branded BD player has recently been seen at some Walmarts and it would now seem to be appropriate to start a new thread to collect reports from forum members that purchase any of these new Funai manufactured BD players. Funai is a Japanese company with manufacturing factories in China. They are the largest manufacturer of DVD players (making over one half of all DVD players sold in North America).

Some pics:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p ... ostcount=2

That is one fugly looking player.

[Ian]

There's also a thread at AVSForum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1026390

More pics:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost ... stcount=51

[vinnie97]

ugly as fuq indeed. Good match for those Vizio budget sets. :p

[dolphinius_rex]

Are they profile 1.1 compliant? I would expect so based on the BDA's rules... assuming they're being followed!

[Ian]

yep, they support profile 1.1.

[vinnie97]

Are they profile 1.1 compliant? I would expect so based on the BDA's rules... assuming they're being followed!

Samsung already broke that rule with the BD-UP5000. Where are thou, 1.1, even 5 months later?

[dolphinius_rex]

Are they profile 1.1 compliant? I would expect so based on the BDA's rules... assuming they're being followed!

Samsung already broke that rule with the BD-UP5000. Where are thou, 1.1, even 5 months later?

Yeah.... pretty crappy I know. That should have been a kick ass player for a lot of people, but Samsung dropped the ball

[Ian]

According to Video Business, it will be at most Walmart stores by Memorial Day. I'm guessing it will be an ad item that week.

http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp? ... c=topstory

AVS Forum bloggers report seeing the player on shelves at various Wal-Mart outlets now, but the model should be more widely spread throughout the chain by May 24-26, according to sources.

This same player also will be sold at Best Buy under the chain’s in-house Insignia brand beginning mid- to late-July, priced at $347.99. Typically, Insignia products are among the more inexpensively priced at Best Buy.

[Wesociety]

This player will do great things for the Blu-ray format as a whole, helping to spur additional adoption and perhaps forcing other manufacturers to drop their pricing.

Some people just aren't willing to pay $399 for a Blu-ray player (PS3). A Bonus View player at $298 might be attractive to those same people who aren't willing to fork out $399. In addition, as already stated, the price of this player will probably go down even further at year end, during the holiday season.

[vinnie97]

Are they profile 1.1 compliant? I would expect so based on the BDA's rules... assuming they're being followed!

Samsung already broke that rule with the BD-UP5000. Where are thou, 1.1, even 5 months later?

Yeah.... pretty crappy I know. That should have been a kick ass player for a lot of people, but Samsung dropped the ball

It still *can* be...if only they would pick up the ball they dropped...unless what they actually dropped was a bar of soap.

[Grain]

FutureShop Has the LG 200 and Samsung 5000 on sale for $399 this week. They run that sale once a month, I'm amazed they have any left, considering they still want $500 for a Samsung 1400, profile 1.0.