Secaucus (NJ) - Panasonic today introduced the second generation of its DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player, which offers virtually the same feature as its predecessor, but sells for less than half of its price.

About one year after the introduction of Blu-ray, playback devices are beginning to move into the mass market. While the first generation of family room Blu-ray players - not considering the Playstation 3 - sold for at least $1000 MSRP, the second generation will be significantly cheaper. Panasonic today announced the DMP- BD10A for an MSRP of $600 - which is down $700 from the $1300 price tag of the predecessor DMP-BD10.

The feature set of the player remains virtually unchanged. The price reduction even comes with the addition of dts-HD and Dolby True HD capability, which was not supported by the old model. At the core of the player, there is still a 297 MHz 14 bit Video D/A converter with 4X oversampling and support for BD-J for interactive applications.

Bust despite the price drop, some first generation Blu-ray players are already selling for less than $500 across the Internet : At the time of this writing, Samsung’s BD-P1000 was available for around $460 from several online stores.