No. Somebody made this up / misinterpreted what happened.

Around Christmas the BDP-S300 was around $299 on Amazon and is now $316. At Best Buy, it was on special for $299 around Christmas and then went to $399 with 5 free discs of the customer's choice (not counting the 5 by mail). The $399 with 5 free discs was true before the Warner change and is true now. If people go into a Best Buy which has these in stock, that is the deal. Some might spin that as a $100 price increase, but $399 is the regular price and instead of a $100 off sale, they are now doing a 5 free extra discs sale (which some would prefer, since the discs are mostly over $20 at Best Buy).  According to the Best Buy add I looked at for this week, every Blu-ray player (except the PS3 and combos) has a deal for 5 free discs of the customers choice on the spot, plus the 5 by mail in rebate.

One of the Samsung players had some pre-Christmas specials which ended on the 24th. They did not go up with the Warner announcement, then went up with the special pre-Christmas sale going away, which also happens with some other products.

If people want to blame somebody for taking a deal away, they could blame Toshiba for having HD-A3s at $199 at Best Buy and now has the same players at $299, even after the Warner announcement. They were also giving away 10 free discs on Amazon at the time of the Warner announcement, but now only give away 7 free discs. That one is a little harder to spin as unfair business practices though, so people probably won't.

--Darin

You do realise that the MSRP has stayed the same and it is the retailers price that has gone up?

Does anyone actually buy these overpriced HD players?

The drive to lower prices has effectively gone but not yet. WB will still be churning out HDDVD up till May so this would not be a good move from the Blu Ray camp.

I suspect the they have won a battle and probably the war but I cannot help thinking all this has done is let DVD Upscalers claim victory with digital distrubtion bringing up the rear guard.

The two formats was actually driving up early adoption, it was the movies houses themselves taking sides that was causing the problems. If they had all been dual format from the off we would not of had a war. Although as we know this was never going to happen because it was the DRM and the fear of piracy not the consumer that was at most of the movies moguls hearts.

Warner Brothers claim to have helped drive down prices and they did but not anymore. They will now have the opposite effect but I am sure the details of the decision will seep out and the consumer will not be its driving factor rather some rather nice incentives.

Need a cheep and good Blu-ray player then get a PS3 no standalone player should really cost any more than a PS3 anyway sepecially since it does games as well.!

The PS3 is actually really good - the Other brands have to compete with the PS3- which has to compete with the Xbox360 and Nintendo as well as a games machine also.
Other brands would be stupid to put up manufacturer prices since they simply will loose sales to Sonys PS3.
I think you are seeing a temporary and perhaps local price fluctuation (no change where i am ) - Xmas sales have ended perhaps.

You do realise the $100 off was a sale right?...