Toshiba Corp. on Thursday announced its first ever Blu-ray disc player. The BDX2000 device will be available in November for $249 and will offer rather basic functionality. A noteworthy thing is the lack of HD DVD support, the high-definition video format that lost the war against Blu-ray only one and a half years ago.

"From listening to our consumers we know they demand access to full high definition content. With the introduction of our BDX2000 we are offering consumers what they want with a breath-taking HD viewing experience to meet the needs of today's home theater,” said Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing of digital A/V group at Toshiba.

Toshiba BDX2000 is a rather typical mainstream Blu-ray disc profile 2.0 player that supports AVCHD playback, BonusView (picture in picture), BD-Live, SD card slot (it has no built-in memory), enhanced audio formats Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA, Ethernet port, Regza-Link (HDMI-CEC) and so on. The device will not support integrated Wi-Fi to wirelessly connect the Internet or SpursEngine processor to enable high-quality upscaling of DVDs.

Toshiba’s first Blu-ray player is hardly a high-end one and its $249 price-point, which is likely to go down shortly after the release, is a proof of it. Perhaps, later on the firm will launch a high-end player with its eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) technology, built-in memory and Wi-Fi, but at present the firm only wants to address the mainstream market.

By the end of the year Toshiba will also release its first notebooks with Blu-ray disc optical disc drive.

Tags: Toshiba, Blu-ray, HD DVD, SpursEngine