Those who were waiting for the holiday shopping season to buy Blu-ray were apparently not alone. According to the NPD Group (and Video Business), Blu-ray hardware sales tripled the week of Thanksgiving.

Of course, it helped that both Sony and Samsung dropped player prices. The average price for that week was below the $200 mark. Apparently that was enough to drive people to purchase about 147,000 players—and that figure doesn’t even account for PlayStation 3 units that were sold.

DisplaySearch says that 911,000 machines will ship during this last quarter of 2008, making for a grand total of 2.2 million units this year. They expect those numbers to jump 76 percent next year.

During the Black Friday frenzy, the cheapest player we saw was the Magnavox NB500MG9, which was available at Walmart for $128.

Despite a decent turnout for Blu-ray, NPD says that people spent a lot less on electronics during the Black Friday rush. A recent report says that spending fell 8.4 percent, for a total of $2.03 billion. Sales of standard-def players were also down; however, retailers still moved over 450,000 units.

Rachel Cericola - Contributing Writer

Over the past 15 years, Rachel Cericola has covered entertainment, web and technology trends. Check her out at www.rachelcericola.com.