I believe this is the cheapest you can get a Blu-ray player, or pretty close to the cheapest: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-P1...7?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1177296270&sr=8-1 The Samsung player for ~$490 with free shipping. I think it is one of the lower-rated Blu-ray players (if not the lowest), so keep that in mind. You might be better off paying the extra ~$100 for a PS3, or wait until some new models come out. If I'm not mistaken, Sony has (or had) some $500-$600 models planned for the summer. edit: Someone like count_dough-ku may be able to expand or correct me on these things. I haven't really followed the formats all too well in the last 6 months or so, especially the price drops for the players as well as their quality.
Sony's Gen 2 Blu-ray player is supposed to have a list price of $599. That means you should be able to get it for under 500 bucks online. And I'm gonna assume it'll be a better player than the Gen 1 model. So if a sub-$500 price is key, go for that one in a couple months. Right now the best overall player is probably the PS3, in terms of bang for the buck. It reportedly has better video quality than the Gen 1 Samsung which is the only cheaper player currently available. Although it doesn't have analog inputs, so you better have an HDMI capable receiver if you wanna take advantage of PCM audio.
yea thats right now the cheapest, it does have problems tho, make sure you update the firmware as soon as you get the BD player I got lucky a week ago and bought a brand new 60GB PS3 at ebay for $450
I got a 2nd 20GB PS3 for $438 on eBay a few months back. What problems are you referring to? It's been flawless playing Blu-ray movies since I got it.
I heard, or read, some bluray movies wouldn't play, some of them skipped, all kinds of stuff on this player...I think there are some reviews at amazon, you can read about it
I heard that Speed wouldn't play on the Samsung player, but I have that movie and it works fine on the PS3. I've never had a movie not play on the PS3.