While the economy is touch and go and people are having to cope with $4 gasoline and their home equity going “poof”, $400 “new and improved” video players ARE NOT APPEALING TO THE MASSES! Rocket science it is not!
The reason Blu-Ray quality may exceed HDTV is because HDTV channels often employ lossy compression data streams in order to squeeze more channels through a single satellite connection. Blu-Ray always delivers maximum quality.
BTW, Blu-Ray players feature support for HDMI cables, which carry both high res audio and video in the same cable. This eliminates the rat's nest of wires that we were all too familiar with in the DVD days.