OTHER TECH

It sounded silly. Pursue the audiophile myth that more expensive gear will weigh more. It was well past time to put that audiophile myth to rest. After all: A heavy iPod is better than a lightweight one? A 5-pound cellphone?

Look, a BD player is just another computer running software. Building the player with an 8-pound chassis and charging more is bogus, right?

Wrong! Surprising as it was, after plotting cost versus weight across the board from every major manufacturer, in every single case the more expensive players weighed more. Comparing models from a single manufacturer, there are difference in electronics - a chip here, a chip there. But feature-wise, nothing blaringly obvious explained why one should weigh so much more than another.

More features, such as multiple outputs - actual hardware - certainly will add weight. But check out the chart. It seem a basic player hovers around 9 pounds, give or take. But, add a few hundred dollars to the price tag, and without much justification, the weight jumps up to over 20 lbs. What gives (or more specifically, what's giving the scale a hernia?).

Are consumers still convinced that a player must weigh a lot if it's got a bigger price tag? On the flip side, does a heavier player mean better quality? The specs on the players are all quite similar. The main differences in the specs are just their weights.

In the old days, there was a reason for it. It's an old audiophile myth - mainly left over from turntable days - that heavier is better (heavy turntables are more stable, etc). Thus, the assumption is that build quality must be better, provide less vibration and and prevent all sorts of other techno-babble. This persisted through the CD era: An old CD player is heavy mainly because they bolt on two 4-pound end pieces.

In today's iPod era, though, you'd think we'd be all done with that. But as you can see, expensive Blu-ray players weigh more. Apparently, thin is out, heavy is in (if you can afford it).

Check out the next page for chart and graph proof that, the heavier the player, the more heavy your wallet need be.