Awesome, Johnny, thanks. I'm up for getting a Blu Ray soon. I hear it's kind of the frontrunner and most major stores will soon only be selling them (instead of the HD DVD,) though I have no idea how valid that is.
The format war is over, HD-DVD is dead, no one makes players any more. Blu-Ray won. $229 for a Sony is quite a good deal. Amazon says "while supplies last." I think that means that the model is being discontinued. Prior to that, Samsung was known to have the cheapest player at about $275. The industry says that prices won't be dropping much soon. I think there will be some good deals for Xmas, but that's just a guess. They were pricing Blu-Ray lower, to compete with HD-DVD, so they weren't making much, even selling at cost, to win the format war.
Any Blu-Ray player will play SD DVDs, and upscale them to 1080p, or whatever your display uses. They will play -R, +R, -RW, and +RW DVDs too. If you want a player that plays SACDs, or DVD-As, you'll have to pay more money. Currently, there are no Blu-Ray recorders available in the US, but they have them in Europe and Japan. If and when they make it to the US, they will be pricey, like 1k+.
I will buy a Blu-Ray player when I can afford one. There is a small company that makes reference quality DVD players for cheap, well cheap for their performance. This company is
www.oppodigital.com. I am getting one of their DVD players. They are coming out with a Blu-Ray player sometime this winter. It is expected to cost $600-$700, but perform like players costing 5-10 times as much. I'd like to wait for one of them, hopefully to come down in price a bit.