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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
Another difference from Betamax is that an HD-DVD player can play today's most popular format without trouble - the DVD. It can also act as an upscaling DVD player, so in fact you'll get better quality than a standard DVD player.
There was a Digg link where everyone laughed at play.com rebranding an HD-DVD player as an Upscaling DVD Player with HD Capabilities. I disagree with the laugh track - I think that's a clever step to take, and it's also completely true.
Cheers,
Ian
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
Another consideration is that by the time BD players come down in price in a year or two, they are likely to be multiformat players, integrating HD-DVD playback. The technology is already available (http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/09/05/lgs-bh200-hd-dvd-blu-ray-combo-player-set-for--october/), and since there will be a significant market comprised of people that don't want to repurchase their HD-DVD collection, it only makes sense that either this multi-format system will become standard, or be a very low cost option. So all these people taking advantage of cheap HD-DVD players/movies now can also take advantage of low priced Blu-Ray a couple years down the line with almost no down side.
Despite Samsung canceling its next gen combo player (http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006597.html), I think that this is a near term decision - when the market picks up for current model combo players, there will be financial incentive to meet that demand with new products.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
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.
Such a ridiculous premium is put on technology costs by the "first on my block" factor, and so much value is ignored by the "fear of obsolescence" that great economies can be had by doing the opposite - jumping on technologies as they start to age.
Everybody who buys computers knows there's a "sweet spot" in price/performance that's about in the middle of the pack. If 1TB drives are just available, and you can still get 80GB drives but no smaller (not new), the the lowest $/GB is going to be around the 500GB size.
Well, the sweet spot for consumer entertainment boxes has tended to be near the trailing edge for over a decade now, not the middle. Unlike computer parts, there's very little Moore's Law involved.
I got a DVD player when they hit $300, and watched about 20 movies on it by the time they'd dropped below $100. So those 20 movies cost me $5 each to rent, and $10 each to own the player that early; I bought too soon.
Better results came from buying a LaserDisc AFTER the DVD had been announced and LD's dropped like a stone. I got it for a couple of hundred, watched several dozen movies on it before they were being sold from the stores, bought 20 discs for $5 each, and am still watching them one-by-one (and it's barely less good than DVD). In addition, it's now a conversation piece, a historical curio.
People still buy technology with the wrong, wrong mindset that it is a capital asset, that it will last a long time like a house, or at least a good car. It's not. It won't last that long anymore; not just the gadget, the ENTIRE FORMAT. My tapes lasted 20 years, DVD came and went in about 10, Blu-Ray is widely expected to be obsoleted by (often downloaded) AVI files in less than 10.
So treat it as an operating-money decision instead. Figure out the number of movies you watch in a year - if you're out of the dating years, have a family, generally Have A Life, it's probably less than 30, may be under 20. Then figure a five-year lifespan for a format these days, and that's the number of discs you'll play: maybe 100-150. Paying $600 for a player is $4-$6 per disc. Add then rental, and are you sure you don't just want to go to the theatre?
Frankly I don't give a damn whether I can see some actors face in all it's blemished detail, what I do care about is the likes of Planet Earth, Galapagos and so forth in HD.
Fact is, picking up a firesale HD-DVD player + Planet Earth, Galapagos and so on in HD-DVD as well as a few films that do actually suit HD well such as 300 and Transformers I've been able to get the content I actually want to see in HD early. I'd never buy an HD player for the likes of the Bourne series, simply because I already think Matt Damon is an idiot and I don't particularly care about watching a high definition idiot in my room, I'm quite content with people like him remaining standard definition, and in not watching that sort of thing in HD I don't feel like I've lost out on anything whatsoever.
I guess to put it another way, some films you watch for the fantastic visuals, others you watch for the story. The story based films really don't make much difference whether they'd HD or standard def. but you'd never watch something like Planet Earth for the story, whilst it's interesting the main pull to it is the fantastic visuals that make you realise how amazing our planet actually is so I had a choice. Do I wait god knows how long for a Bluray player to come down to £50 - maybe 2years or more? or do I just buy an HD-DVD player addon for my 360 for £50 and enjoy the content I actually care about seeing in HD right now. To me it's really a no brainer, as has been mentioned previously on Slashdot, it's not as if the 360's HD-DVD drive can't be used on a computer to rip the content to disc and burn to a Bluray disc sometime down the road anyway when the prices for burning Bluray discs becomes reasonable.
Some people look at me funny when I say I bought an HD-DVD player and a few films, but I struggle to find myself as being the joke when I've paid £90 for the same player + content they're paying over £300 for. I'm still possibly going to buy Bluray down the line, I just aint going to pay anything over £100 for it. It's all too easy for some people to overlook common sense and logical action due to over the top brand loyalty. I understand there may be some people who do want to see their favourite actors in all their high definition glory rather than enjoy the storyline but I'm not one of those and plenty of others aren't - for those of us who only watch story based discs for the story then even 700mb XviD (i.e. not quite as good as DVD quality even) is plenty good enough.
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.
The catalog isn't that tiny, there's some real gems such as most of the major Kubrick films and the Blade Runner collection (which I ordered right after Christmas for $25. Wow. Most awesome DVD set I've ever had, until then it was the Criterion "Brazil" set but the Blade Runner DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray thing blows that away), and, on the other end of the scale, the only high-definition release thus far of the Matrix series. It's worth checking both Amazon.com and Amazon.de as the European releases covered a slightly different collection of movies to those in the US, due to differing distribution rights; and HD DVD is region free so this really is worth doing.
Yes, there are plenty of movies not available on HD DVD. But the catalog isn't "tiny", people were buying DVD players back when the available DVDs were nothing like as plentiful as HD DVD is today.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
> And why are people flocking to buy this decade's Betamax? Simple, they did the math.
What? The summary does a good job of describing why HD-DVD is a good buy, although they have to make up facts to do it, such as pricing a DVD player at $60. However, I think it is more likely that most of the people buying HD-DVD players don't know that it is dead. Never attribute to average people doing math that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
...The other reason to buy a HD-DVD drive.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
This isn't anything to do with saving face on a lost cause, it's saving money on movies that you can buy right now. Don't forget, that HD player will still play regular DVDs, so for someone who doesn't have those "GOTTA GET SOME OF THAT" early adopter genes, a choice of 500 cheap titles for a $75 player is a better deal than 700 full price titles for a $320 player.