Sorry, beg to differ. How many high-end manufacturers have entered the business of DVD player? Very few. ................
In a way your are right. About 10 years ago, companies such as Meridian, Lexicon and others were able to sell $25,000 units as they had proprietary knowledge of video processing, and audio decoding. But a couple of companies in the Silicon valley such as Cirrus Logic, and Anchor Bay have brought these technologies down to an art and easily available. Today if these companies try to hawk their technologies at those prices, they will be quite naive and have very few takers.
There will always be two sets of people. The mainline who are ready to spend a reasonable amount, and those for whom price is no concern. That is why manufacturers pamper both groups.
If you look at displays there are not too many differences except in terms of prices differences because of size, In the area of audio, yes manufacturers continue to have reference units (flagship) that will be ten times the cost of their mainline unit. But if you look at HT, manufacturers are moving away from these concepts and are bringing more and more technology and features to their mainline products. Till a few years ago, Hitachi was strutting around as the high end display manufacturer. But today companies such as Samsung, Pioneer and others are thrashing them in the market with better players that sell at half the cost. Hitachi has been forced to bring down their prices and compete in the same plane.
In a way the HT market is comparable to the PC market. It is so competitive and so easy in terms of technology availability that prices will continue to fall and technology will continue to be enhanced.
In AVRs the difference, at least in the US, is completely different. Mainline units are simple and can be installed by the buyer without too much hassle. Then there are the custom installers that integrate the AVR to home systems. These are much more complicated in terms of wiring, controls etc. But if you look at the features and specifications, they will not be too different from mainline products in the same price range. Even if you look at the Elite brand of Pioneer, their prices and features are comparable to the mainline brand.
Mediocre sound? Frankly you must listen to a Oppo 983, a CA Azur 540D or similar players from Yamaha and Denon first. Let me give you two examples. I have a large number of DVDs that I use as reference source. Two of them are my favourites - The Hunted and The Incredibles. Released in 2003, The Hunted has superb performances by Tommy Lee Jones, and Benicio Del Toro. The Incredibles, of course, is a great animation movie and winner of two Academy awards. It is also one of the best animation ever brought out by Pixar. The Hunted has superb sound tracks, while The Incredibles is excellent for the video.
I once saw The Hunted using an Yamaha 1500 DVD Player, and the Yamaha 2600 AVR. There are a couple of scenes that are always etched in my mind. In one scene, Aaron (Benicio Del Toro) is chasing a couple of hunters in the forests of Oregon. He runs rapidly around the confused hunters and taunts them with whispers. The way the Yamaha combination projected the sound of Aaron running around (leaves rustling, and Aaron's breathing) and whispering to the hunters made you feel you were in the forest. In another scene there is a gun shot when I could clearly hear the birds flying away from the trees
above my head. I have used the same DVD on numerous other occasions including in an HT system costing around $600K using Classe equipment. They just could not create that sound.
In The Incredibles, there is a scene where the kid Dash is being chased by the villains at super high speed. The filming of this scene as Dash runs through the wood is superb where the camera focuses on Dash at the same time tries to keep the surrounding vegetation in focus as they whiz by on the sides. I saw this movie in a HT system that had a Runco projector attached to equipment worth around $400K, It had all the bells and whistles of a high end HT room. Just six months ago, I saw the same movie in a showroom that had a projector made by some company called Vivitek connected to a Pioneer 400 DVD Player. The images were so clear and vivid that I would say the difference between this and the Runco system would hardly be 5%.
Because of the speed of technical obsolescence in HT, I would any day buy a player that I can use for two years and throw away than worry about copper plating, clocks, etc. Again the perceivable difference between a $500 DVD Player and a $5000 one will be 10-15%, and it certainly does not justify the high cost difference.
Cheers