Panasonic Prices BD50 Blu-ray Player

Panasonic recently announced its pricing for the BD50 Blu-ray player, and it will retail for a whopping $700. Now that’s definitely $300 more than what I’d pay for a Blu-ray player, considering the 40GB PS3 does all that and more, not to mention featuring upgradable firmware unlike these standalone Blu-ray players. The BD50 does support Final Standard Profile 2.0, and will be able to play AVCHD (H.264) video and display JPEG images stored on an SD card. Support for 24p and HDMI 1.3 are also available, but can Panasonic do something about the price?