Slashdot Mirror
Expect DVD Chip Price Wars
prostoalex writes "With more companies developing the chips for DVD players the price wars might ensue. According to this DigiTimes report, 'Boosted by rising shipments, the higher price of DVD player single-chips is likely to push up the average chip price to US$9.56 in the fourth quarter from US$8.58 in the first half. However, the increasing number of chip suppliers also implies that a new price war may soon develop'. The predictions of DVD chips sales slowing down add to the expectations for price wars."
No matter how cheap a $10 chip gets, it's not going to change the price for the consumer significantly - it's only $10...
Yes, it matters. It may create a domino effect to other DVD parts as well, thus creating a cheaper system in overall. It happens in all electronic products throughout history. It always starts with a measly drop of a key component.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
It had to happen eventually, the industry needs to get over it.
I don't have one because:
* Region coding - I object to it on principle, but there is also lack of information - for example, both Europe and Japan are region 2, but if I buy an NTSC disc from Japan, would it play on a European player? Also, does buying a code-free DVD player break the law where I live? I don't know, therefore I won't buy one
* Already have a laserdisc player - and a *lot* of laserdiscs. Sorry, but I'm not about to switch formats to gain, at most, a slight improvement. We're not talking HDTV here, we're talking primarily YUV component colourspace instead of PAL encoded composite colourspace.
* MPEG artifacts - analogue artifacts like dot crawl don't bother me much at all - they look natural now. Blocky digital artifacts bother me a lot, they jump out and scream, 'hello I am a compression artifact' at me, (not really, but you see what I mean).
* Sillyness - 'must watch' chapters on DVD, no, sorry, I'm not going to pay for that, forget it. 10 second copyright notice is possibly tollerable, but not adverts - no way.
* VHS is a lot better than it used to be - sorry, but it's true, in the early 80s, VHS was a terrible format, but modern machines are better than my 1970s U-Matic decks. It's not as good as laser, or DVD, but frankly, I don't cry my eyes out because I have to watch something on VHS.
* Watching fewer films now anyway - this is actually a major reason for not buying DVD. I am getting seriously bored of watching rubbish. The last film I saw at the cinema was Deep Impact - nothing has appealed to me since.
* Compressed audio - there was NO excuse for compressing the audio on DVD. I hate compressed audio, and don't want it. I want uncompressed, 2 or more channels of 48 Kbps 16-bit PCM, or nothing. It's bad enough that the cinemas are using these stupid compressed soundsystems, but don't let it invade the consumer market. Oh, you have. Another reason why I don't have a DVD player.
So, to sum up, I don't have a DVD player, and I don't want one.
FYI, the royalties for DVD proprietary standard are much more than all chipmakers' profits, or the end product makers' profits for that matter.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Seriously, I've given up grammer trolling, but...
Fry's. Not fries. as in Fry's Electroncis.
Don't feel bad, I ordered an old Compaq VRM from the U.K. because even after shipping it was like $30 cheaper than I could find in the U.S. I got this great email from the firm saying that "the goods have been shipped" and I was envisioning a little heroin bonus in the package.
I'm less than excited. My last DVD player cost me $90. Yes, $90, new. How much cheaper can they get? Are they going to replace the increasingly poor prizes crackerjack boxes have had to resort to?
4Literature - Read, write, and discuss your favor
Right now, the USA is probably the largest market for legal DVD players and discs.
There are two reasons for this: 1) the price of players have dropped dramatically--you can even now get 480p progressive scan DVD players for under US$200 nowadays; and 2) the price of DVD discs are still pretty reasonable (US$20 to US$30 for new releases, US$10 to US$15 for older releases).
Because the price of DVD discs are still reasonable, the incentive to pirate movies is still very low. DVD's very sharp picture quality is one reason why VCD's have never really taken off in the USA. Say what you want about the MPAA, but the fact that movie companies have pretty much followed Disney's sell-through policy for pre-recorded movies in the DVD market has actually discouraged movie piracy for the vast majority of computer users out there.
I think one factor that not that many people talk about is the fact that the latest generation of graphics cards can do hardware acceleration at a pretty high level (at least both hardware motion compensation and Inverse Discrete Cosine Tranform) for decoding MPEG-2 video streams from DVD movies.
ATI has been doing this since their Rage 128 chipset arrived around 1999; nVidia's GeForce4 MX and GeForce4 Ti also do this now, and Matrox's Parhelia board do it now, too.
In short, the market for seperate DVD decoding boards has pretty much vanished on the desktop and laptop computer market.
And what about chips that support DVD-Audio? Jesus, how long has that format been just around the corner? As for me, I'm not buying a DVD standalone until it can play MPEG-4 and doesn't cost me much. If the established chip manufacturers are raising prices, maybe this will open a window for Sigma to get their better chips into consumer players. Hate them if you like for falsely taking credit for Xvid (I accepted their appology), but you still have to admit that MPEG-4 in the living room would rule! It's worth waiting for, in my opinion.