Drooling over the extensive line of upcoming DVD players from Panasonic has become something of a CES ritual. For several years now, the company has consistently set standards for value at every sub-$1000 price point, adding the latest performance features onto its internally-developed ‘chroma bug-free’ MPEG decoder. This year’s minimal showcase, however, signaled a clear sea change in the company’s focus from performance to price in the face of fierce competition from sub-$100 players manufactured in China and Korea.

“We are shrinking our DVD product line,” confirmed Panasonic DVD National Marketing Manager Alberto Reggiani. The $99 DVD-S35 shown here is a single-disk player stripped to the bare essentials – no Faroudja DCDi (an early cost-cutting casualty), no DVD-Audio, no internal scaling of non-anamorphic content. For $129, you can step up to the DVD-S55 (not displayed at the show), which restores DVD-Audio, Digital Re-Master (digital audio up-sampling), and an adjustment to tailor video output for different monitor types. All players in the lineup will play DVD Video, DVD-RAM, CD, CD-R/RW, JPEG, MP3, and Windows Media Audio; step-up models will also support HighMAT, a joint Panasonic-Microsoft technology for sharing digital media between PCs and consumer electronic products.

At this time, Panasonic has no replacement on deck for its wildly popular RP-82 player, which has already sold out its entire production run (there will be no more). The top of the line player will be this $149 DVD-F85 (the only other full-sized stand-alone player shown at CES), which is essentially a 5-disc changer version of the DVD-S55. Like the DVD-S55, the RP-82 has a bare-bones sibling, the $125 DVD-F65 changer – and that, in total, is the 2003 Panasonic player line for now. Reggiani claims that additional player and DVD recorder models are in the planning stages with features to be determined by spring, but the company’s change in direction is clear. That isolated holdover from the glory days, the RP91, will hover like Banquo’s ghost until March, when it will cease production.

Unfortunately, Panasonic was not alone in scaling its DVD players down to fighting weight for an increasingly price-conscious market. Over in the Pioneer booth, the prices quoted by reps were significantly below even those listed in the company’s press releases. Not a promising trend for finding quality for under $1,000 – look to see increasing stratification in price between bottom-end players and those with higher performance features. []