Krell introduces their $15,000 Blu-ray player

[zachd73]

Originally Posted by Grand Bob

Well it is a nice unit, no doubt about that. I would imagine that much of the stratospheric price has to do with the cutting edge technology invested in it. The only problem is that it has a way of finding itself in mass-produced stuff quickly. For example, the Silicon Graphix video processing technology that had been incorporated into their $30,000+ professional gear appeared very quickly in $300 consumer units. Those of us who bought the first CD and DVD players (and yes, BD players) in the $1000 range ended up buying better units at a fraction of the cost a year or two later. Of course there is always the pride of ownership of a Krell - and the fact that there are people who have enough money so that the $15,000 cost would be a minor/non-issue. But I might be at least a little disappointed if I bought the unit, and next year Oppo (or Sony or whoever) comes out with a high-quality BD player with a similar signal processing suite - that also records - for $500.

That's the funny thing.. I look at electronics on Craigslist all the time.. funny when you see some guys hard up for cash (most likely) wanting to sell a high end home theater amp that he paid $5k for for $2500 a few years later.. but it won't even decode the formats that a $300 HT amp will. Would anyone even pay $500 for a high end amp that couldn't do lossless HD audio formats!?

With speakers or 2 channel audio.. sure buy krell or whatever, but for a BD player seems foolish. BD players are starting to pack in more value added features like hard drive and access to more online streaming... so a few years from now this high end Krell will be as obsolete as any other BD player except that any other player cost $300-$500 and the Krell cost $15K. Whoops!

I could see an extremely rich person buying this though. I heard about an A/V installer who made his living working for one man who owned an island. He flies out to the island a few times a year to install or upgrade the A/V system which is basically installed in a castle/fortress. Ponder that kind of money and then a 15K BDP isn't so bad right

I still agree though, Krell BD player = bad purchase decision! I'd buy a 5K turntable, some 5K speakers, a 3K projector, a 1k screen, and pocket the remaining thousand