Experts and analysts have always agreed that when Blu-ray players legitimately reached the $199 pricepoint the format would go mainstream. It’s not exactly working out that way.

$200 Blu-ray players are a dime a dozen this holiday season, but according to ABI Research only 8 percent of holiday buyers were considering upgrading to the format. This comes as quite a surprise considering half of American homes have gone HD and its old rival, HD DVD, is all but dead. We’ll have to see in January, when the smoke clears, if this is due to the recession or the public’s general hesitance to pick up another movie viewing format.

Toshiba has announced it will be shipping their 500GB laptop drive in December, in time for the holiday season. The 500GB drive has a similar feature set to other drives. It’s 9.5mm, features a 2.5-inch 3Gbps SATA interface, 1.4 watt idle power draw and a 5,400rpm spin. It does lack full-disk hardware encryption, however. Toshiba has offered no word on the price.

Sony has announced a PS3 bundle for the holidays. It includes the newly minted 160GB Playstation 3. It also includes a copy of the hit game "Drake’s Fortune." The bundles will start going on sale next week and will retail for approximately $499.

Sony’s UK boss has announced that their $399.99 80GB PlayStation 3 will avoid a price cut unti late 2009. Ray Maguire spoke at the Gamer 3.0 conference this week in London and denounced rumors of a price drop, saying that he "has a business to run" and shareholders to please. Maguire noted that the console would not be receiving a price drop this holiday season, stating that next year would be a safe bet for the reduction. Analysts indicate that this could be due to this being the first holiday season with Blu-Ray at the forefront of DVD technology.