For the third time now in just a matter of weeks, a leaked catalog ad is showing the Xbox 360 Elite set for a price cut to $299 USD.
The latest ad, from Target and posted by Engadget, also shows a price drop on the 60GB Pro model that should lead the model to its ultimate demise.
Expected price cut date is August 30th.
In other news however, retailers in the UK will be soon raising the price of the Arcade Xbox 360 to GBP 159.99 beginning on September 1st due to the weakening USD.
Result for: rca
An Israeli company, High Definition Israel or HDi, has introduced couple of interesting Blu-ray players. In addition to playing Blu-ray movies, the players support MKV and DivX files as well as BitTorrent downloads.
HDi has two product families, Dune HD Center and Dune BD Prime, both with four models for different network connection and external hard drive setups. With Dune BD Prime you can choose between the base model, one with WiFi 802.11n, one with Gigabit ethernet, and one with two eSATA ports. In addition to the same upgrade options the more expensive Dune HD Centers feature a rack for internal SATA drives as well.
All of the players have BD Live support, 1GB of internal flash memory, BD/DVD/CD playback, three USB ports for external USB drives, support for NFS and Samba file sharing as well as support for IPTV and Internet radio.
HDi’s players have also extensive file support, including support for AVI, MKV (Matroska), M2TS, TS, MOV, MP4 and WMV files.
MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, XVID, WMV9, VC1 and H.264/AVC video codecs and AC3 (Dolby Digital), EAC3 (Dolby Digital+), DTS, MPEG 1/2/3, AAC, LPCM, WMA, WMAPro, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio audio codecs are supported as well. Dune BD Prime players are able to display both SSA/ASS and SRT subtitles.
The players feature HDMI and component outputs that are able to pass 1080p resolution video. Audio outputs include digital Toslink and RCA and analogue 7.1 RCA.
To make it even more impressive, all the HDi Blu-ray players also feature a BitTorrent client and a Gecko-based web browser.
[More]>>
Result for: rca
Sony’s marketing team has taken aim at Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console in a recent press release, branding the console as too expensive and hyping the PlayStation 3 (PS3) as the best offer for your money. Specifically, Sony targeted the Xbox 360 Arcade unit, which it valued as $199. The press release claims that to get all the features of a standard 80GB PS3 model (at $399) for the Xbox 360 Arcade, you would need to spend between $449 and $499.
Sony cites the price of a Wi-Fi adapter (at $100), hard drive ($100 - $150) and an Xbox Live Gold Membership at $50 per year. Adding these to the price of an Arcade model would indeed push your overall expenditure to over $400, but interestingly, the press release did not show comparisons to the Xbox 360 Pro with a 60GB hard drive ($299) or the Xbox 360 Elite with a 120GB hard drive ($399).
Adding a Wi-Fi adapter to an Xbox 360 will cost you either way, but such a purchase depends on whether you actually require Wi-Fi, or if your setup will allow easy cable connection. Additionally, the press release claims that you will lose living room space with the Xbox 360 console when you start to buy add-ons, thus you, “add clutter to the entertainment center.”
The HD DVD add-on might apply here, but that is now obsolete. The Wi-Fi add-on is very small and clips right on to the back of the Xbox 360 console. All other peripherals from controllers to cables are similar in both systems. The Wii did not escape criticism either, with the press release claiming, “the Wii’s lack of enhanced features comes at the expense of a comprehensive entertainment solution.”
[More]>>
