Consumer electronics vendor Onkyo announced that they will release their first Blu-ray player later this year, according to Pocket-lint. Onkyo had been one of the few CE vendors to support HD DVD, but they dropped their HD DVD support in February – shortly before Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD completely.
Onkyo’s move into Blu-ray could be interesting. They shook up the AV receiver market by introducing receivers with fairly low prices yet a lot of features, causing competitors to slash prices and revise their lineups to retain market share. (Coincidentally I ordered an Onkyo TX-SA606 receiver to replace my suddenly dead Pioneer unit just yesterday.) If they follow the same with with their Blu-ray players, it could shake up the market. Onkyo pledges full support for Blu-ray’s audio and video capabilities, which would seem to indicate they’re player will be Profile 2.0 / BD-Live capable.
