Philips BDP3000 Blu-ray Player Launches

We've already given the BDP3000 the briefest of mentions in our BD Live Blu-ray Player Preview but now that it has been 'properly' announced by Philips those of you who prefer reading the novel to the Cliff's Notes (or more likely Wikipedia, more recently) will doubtless appreciate some further info.

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As you may already know the BDP3000 - a BD Live-compatible Blu-ray player - is the little brother to the excellent BDP7300 but priced to compete better with the budget market inhabited by the likes of the Sharp BD-HP21H with its £169 (estimated) price tag. On the BD Live front it should be mentioned that there's no local storage, but a USB port is present for adding it should that be desired.

In addition to Blu-ray playback - with 24Hz support - the BDP3000 will upscale DVDs to 1080p and decode DivX video files. On the audio front one compromise is evident as though Dolby TrueHD decoding is supported the same cannot be said of DTS HD Master Audio. Whether those on a budget - and therefore more likely to be considering the BDP3000 - would have a sound system to warrant such codecs is debatable, so consider that merely an observation rather than a criticism.

It's a pretty short feature list, but at given the price point Phillips is aiming for and the consideration that most buyers will never want for any more capability it's hardly a bad one. Feel free to grab a BDP3000 of your own if you agree, as it's available now.