Slashdot Mirror
HD-DVD and the Early Adopter Premium
Hodejo1 writes "The early adopter premium is the difference between the cost of buying the latest greatest techno-toy today and the cost of buying an equal or better unit a couple of years later for much less. That Blu-ray unit you buy today for $300 will cost $80 two years from now. The premium is the $220 you pay to get the starter Blu-ray unit now as opposed to waiting. The same applied for HD-DVD until the axe finally fell and this is where it gets interesting. MP3 Newswire has been tracking post-mortem HD-DVD sales on eBay and surprisingly found that there are many takers. And why are people flocking to buy this decade's Betamax? Simple, they did the math. The demise of HD-DVD format creates "an option where the consumer can get his high-def player NOW without paying the $220 early adopter premium. That savings pays for the player and more. New sealed boxes of the Toshiba HD-A3, which shipped last fall for $300, are now drawing on average about $75 on eBay, where plummeting HD-DVD movie prices are averaging between $6 and $10. "Take a consumer with a 42" plasma set who needs to replace a broken standard definition DVD player. He can a) replace it with another standard definition DVD for about $60. b) He can buy a Blu-Ray player for between $300-$1000. c) He can buy an HD-DVD unit for under $80 and then buy ten $10 or sixteen $6 HD-DVD videos for a total of $180". What really drives this is Blu-ray's skimpy catalog, which will take a couple of years to pump up. Rather than blow the $220 on the early adopter premium just to have access to a limited number of movies the post mortem HD-DVD buyers can enjoy cheap Hi-Def players, cheap Hi-Def videos, and pay less. These users can shift to Blu-ray when players are less expensive and the catalog is robust. Actually, the early adopter premium is more like $320. With the win, Blu-ray manufacturers have raised prices."
aacs has been cracked, while BD+ hasn't so everything on 'hd-dvd' can be backed up to a computer, then sold on e-bay or whatever. you can even burn the backed up hd-dvd to a bd-r, if you're willing to pay $600 for a bd-writer...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Article says BluRay manufacturers have raised prices. This is not true. The link tracks average sale price, no manufacturer's recommended price.
Yes, average sale price has gone up after Christmas sales ended.
Also, if BluRay's catalog is skimpy, what does that make the HD-DVD catalog, which is smaller?
It'd be great if the HD-DVD fans took a clue from Toshiba and stopped trying to push a dead format. They're not doing anyone any favors.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The Toshibas are excellent upconverting players...I need another dvd for the basement HDTV, so I plan on picking up another rather than shelling out for a standard upconverting player.
Dave
The articles itself was interesting and looks spot on, however this embellished comment on the article is inaccurate. Amazon lists over 500 HD-DVD titles and over 700 Blu-Ray titles. It seems someone is grasping at anything to save face on a lost cause.
With a large volume of HD content available for the dead format and the player/movie prices heavily cut to move inventory it should be no surprise they are selling. Thats the point of the massive price cuts, to clear out the inventory of the dead format.
Is this bad news for Blu-Ray? Hardly, once the inventory for this dead format is depleted it will be a Blu-Ray market until a viable alternative is developed. I doubt we'll get any meaningful agreement between hardware manufacturers, software developers, content producers, and telecom providers that will enable a meaningful replacement for Blu-Ray any time soon.
I also bought into HD-DVD (bought the $180 xbox 360 add-on drive when it first came out). That $180 got me the ability to watch movies in high-def, access to HD-DVD discs that were generally much cheaper than their blu-ray counterparts, and access to many great exclusives (like the Battlestar Galactica HD-DVD boxset) not available on blu-ray. And it's not like any of that stuff I've already bought is going to turn into a pumpkin now that HD-DVD is dead. It also gives me access to some great clearance deals on discs now. No regrets
I also bought a blu-ray player (PS3 after the first price drop for $500). Gives me access to blu-ray discs and exclusives, a good gaming system with potential, full hardware backwards compatibility for my PS2/PS1 games (it's the original 60GB American model). And it's easily upgradable. No regrets.
I'm sick of hearing about the "dangers" of early adoption. IMHO, it's almost always worth it (as long as you don't go crazy with the top-of-the line stuff). Early adoption can buy you years of fun ahead of everyone else and rarely becomes truly worthless even if your chosen format "loses."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Stop twisting the dead turd, HD-DVD is gone.
OR, unless your HD-DVD player breaks (which is possible, but I have 3 "true" DVD players around the house, one of which is about 10 years old, and none have ever broken), why even bother converting? Just keep playing the HD-DVD's.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
There is nothing family orientated about a trip to the local picture show. Every single time I goto the theater I am annoyed or offended.
The ultimate combination for the casual TV viewer is a modern antenna mounted on your house plus Netflix for the remainder of your desired special programming
I want to be retired when I grow up.
Save your HD-DVD player! Some loser, twenty years from now, may want it!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Nobody is going to be building combo players. It just doesn't make sense to add to the cost of a player for a format where there will be no new software.
Exactly!
It may well be that the Toshiba HD players have the best upscalers in them, but all that implies is that the upscalers in the HD displays are crap (which would not be surprising, given that the display manufacturers want you to buy HD everything, so why make an effort at having your old DVDs look good on the display?).
So, if a DVD HD player makes a good DVD upscaler, and you can buy it dirt cheap, why the heck not!
The blueray player price rise someone mentioned here could really shoot Sony in the foot. Hi def downloads over bittorrent are already possible now.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
You'll be singing a different tune when they spent that money just once and can continue to enjoy new releases while you spent that money once AND have to spend the additional money again when you find that you can't buy anything new that will play on your player. And you'll have to either dispose of the thing or figure out how to make it all fit in your TV stand or whatever you use. You're out a fair bit more money in the end than those who couldn't wait and jumped the gun before the war was over.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Of course, the smart thing would be that ISPs distribute the content themselves, so it does not really cost them in terms of external bandwith. That's exactly what the major ISPs here plan to do with IPTV.
Real life is overrated.
So what? I'm so fed up with people complaining about this. We're so damned spoiled with this "instant gratification" society.
If you're about to sit and watch a two-hour movie, then WTF is the big deal about having to wait a whole, additional minute for the unit to get ready? Turn it on, go and get a beer out of the refrigerator, then come back. If you're so worried about having to wait 1 minute to watch a 120 minute movie, then I would have to argue that the problem lies not with the player but with the impatience of the watcher.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Somebody must have hit you with the stupid stick. The post you were replying to was referring to COMBO players, not being able to get obsolete devices. Did you ever see a 5.25"/3.5" floppy disk combo drive? No? Well, there's your analogy.
Speaking of being hit with the stupid stick, the 5.25" and 3.5" floppies used completely different form factors, which makes them a poor analogy for HD-DVD and Rlu-Ray, which share pretty much the exact same form factor. It would be a wee bit difficult to produce a "combo" floppy drive economically, though as I recall there actually were a few combo 5.25"/3.5" floppy drives made, with two separate slots, two separate read heads and I believe two separate drive motors. They were produced as a space saving solution for PCs without many drive bays.
There are already "combo" HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drives, and many of the components within them are shared between the two platforms. My understanding is it's just the lenses which have to be duplicated between the two platforms, because of the depth and optical characteristics of the plastic used on Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD (Blu-Ray uses a much thinner, harder plastic). That and the licensing fees . . .
I doubt we'll see any more "combo" players released simply because HD-DVD isn't being supported by its parent - or by the content providers - anymore. That'll suppress demand to the point where there just aren't the economies of scale in place to make manufacturing such devices economical. Had both formats continued to persist in the marketplace though, I think we would have seen combo drives become the norm, with any price premium being slowly quashed over time by increased economies of scale and advancing designs.
My A3 takes nearly 30 seconds to boot. Fairly annoying, but I've had decent DVD players that took nearly that long.
And yes, it's useful. 30 seconds to boot vs. 2 hours to watch a movie on average; you do the math. Turn the player on, grab something to drink, then take a movie off the shelf. By then, the thing's on and you're ready to sit down and feel your ass grow.
Regular DVDs look fantastic on it, yes. I would recommend that people not turn on the black and rgb enhancement, though; those features seem to boost ringing artifacts.
Just got Spartacus and 2001 on HD DVD for my birthday. They look and sound unbelievably fantastic.
I know it's the only choice for the future, but don't believe the Blu-Ray hype. Yes, it'll have greater storage capacity; no, it's not that big of a deal. There are only so many bits required to do good 1080p h.264. I know people are acting like, oh wow, look, now that HD DVD is dead, Blu-Ray players will be cheaper and movies will look even better! From what I've seen and been hearing, that's not even close to happening yet.
This WILL bite studios and manufacturers in the ass, mark my words, unless they act quickly and decisively (which means taking a loss.) Doesn't help, either, that Disney's latest catalog "from the vault" release, 101 Dalmatians, is being pushed as a DVD release. All I'm seeing pushed as Blu-Ray releases in mass media are the movies most people would rent, rather than own, anyway. Right now, it's smelling like a massive failtrain, and unless things give in the future, we'll be doomed to a few more years of movies released in 480p.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Because we've been spoilt by DVDs and VHSs. My DVD player takes about 10-15 seconds to boot (15 being the time it takes to read XviD files, something I consider a "bonus" feature and am willing to allow more leeway) - and VHSs took under 10 seconds to engage. If technology's going forward, shouldn't things be getting FASTER? For anyone who's upset, I'm betting that it's because they're noticing a negative trend - if we accept a minute boot up time, how long will it be before we're waiting 5 minutes for SuperHDdisc++ to load?
;)
Having said that, the early adopters should have known what they were in for. Given that they weren't willing to wait 12 months, they should at least wait 1.2 minutes