A DVD player for just £9 at ASDA

Asda is to offer the player, which costs less than a DVD blockbuster film, as it steps up the pressure on traditional electrical stores.

The arrival of the £9 DVD player demonstrates how supermarkets are shaking up the high street.

Asda, which is part of the American Wal-mart empire, has launched a major move into home electricals, as have Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Around 80,000 of the Durabrand 1005 machines will hit the supermarket's stores.

The development is indicative of savage price cuts on gadgets, where prices are now so low that they can be thrown away and replaced.

One recent study found that the price of some gadgets have fallen by 74per cent in a decade so making them both affordable and essential to the lives of millions.

Mobile phones, MP3 players such as the iPod, DVD players, lap-top computers and flat panel TVs are now considered must-haves, rather than luxuries.

As recently as four years ago, DVD players were relatively rare.

The bulky boxes would cost more than £250, while most homes still had VHS tape players.

Now they are being sold for less than £10 alongside baked beans and loaves of bread.

The Asda £9 DVD player is also indicative of a shift in manufacturing to the Far East, where wages and other business costs are a fraction of those in the UK

The machine is made at a factory in China.

Asda insisted that working conditions and pay rates at the factory have been audited four times in the past year to ensure that ethical standards are in place.

Last week, the supermarket began offering a suit, made in Bangladesh, for just £19.

The compact Durabrand DVD player works as a portable entertainment system.

It also plays CDs and MP3 tracks, while it is so small that users can take it away and plug it into TV sets in holiday cottages or foreign hotels.

The internet bank Egg calculates that the price of audi-visual items has come down by a staggering 74 per cent, while the figure for general electrical goods is 27.2 per cent lower.

It estimates that Britons will spend £13 billion this year on electrical goods, with an average of some £273 per person.

It argues this has double the buying power it would have done in 1996.

Such is the pace of change that devices, such as mobile phones, are constantly being replaced by newer versions with extra "bells and whistles".

Consequently, the prices of the first wave of new gadgets, be they MP3 players such as the iPod or flat panel TVs, can fall very sharply as upgraded versions are launched.

This is currently being seen with the HD-Ready TVs, where one category of 720 line sets are now being replaced by new devices with 1080 lines and even greater clarity.

The low prices also supports the notion that today's high-spec gadget is not expected to last.

The policy of "built-in obsolence" means it is effectively disposable after a year or so.

Some mobile phone manufacturers are even offering cheap devices which are designed to be thrown away after a fixed period of calls or use.

Asda's Peter Pritchard said: "This is such a jaw-droppingly low price that customers might struggle to believe it, but we really are selling a DVD player for under a tenner."

  "This is truly unbeatable value and puts our competitors in the shade – our message to customers is why pay more, when you don't have to."