In the high-definition wars, Sony has been pegged as the ultimate Ebenezer Scrooge. Not only did the company's Blu-ray format destroy the cost-conscious HD-DVD format, but for a long while, Sony tried to keep the MSRP of Blu-ray players above $300. But is the perception of inflated Blu-ray player pricing really fair to begin with?

The Wall Street Journal has put together some interesting data that might have you rethinking Blu-ray's price model since its inception. When DVD players first launched over a decade ago, early adopters paid around $840. Compare that with the $800 initial price point of Blu-ray players in 2006. Here's how the rest of the price comparison breaks down through the years following each respective format's launch:

• Year 1: DVD ($571), Blu-ray ($497)
• Year 2: DVD ($467), Blu-ray ($388)
• Year 3: DVD: ($345), Blu-ray ($322)
• Black Friday: ($248), Blu-ray ($221)

Keep in mind that there's an 8-year difference between the two formats, and none of those numbers take into account inflation. In short, Blu-ray player pricing has fallen faster than DVDs, and certainly faster than most people expected.

"There's no season in the DVD saga that saw players come down like this," says Rick Doherty, an analyst at Envisioning Group, a market research firm.

We've already seen the first USB 3.0-based motherboards and hard drives emerge, and thanks to Buffalo, we now have the first USB 3.0-based Blu-ray burner, the BR-X126U3.

The 12X external Blu-ray burner comes capable of writing data on both single and dual-layer disks. And while traditional external burners have usually been far less appealing than internal drives in terms of performance, that shouldn't be the case with a USB 3.0 interface.

To take advantage of the SuperSpeed spec, end-users will either need a compatible motherboard or one of the PCI-E cards that are starting to fill store shelves. For those who don't plan on upgrading in the immediate future but are in need of an external drive, Buffalo says its "fastest blu-ray burner ever" will still work just fine on a USB 2.0 port, it just won't be as fast. and chug along at 7X instead of 12X.

The new drive is expected to land in Japan by the end of December for around $450. No word yet on when it will make its way to the States or for how much.