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Blu-ray Player Prices Hit 2008 Highs
An anonymous reader writes "HD DVD is almost gone and Blu-ray prices are already on their way up. TG Daily went through average retail prices of some of the popular Blu-ray players and found that you should expect to pay at least $400 for an entry-level Blu-ray player, while you could get a player for less than $330 in February. It really should not be a surprise for all of us, but it is interesting to see how quickly retail adjusted to the new situation and increased prices."
Umm PS3 is already $399... if it drops $100 then wouldn't it be $299?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Potential competition from HD-DVD helped keep prices low to attract consumers. HD-DVD has lost so there is less incentive to keep the prices low. Once there are more manufacturers producing Blu-ray players then prices will start to drop again.
Market forces at work
ACK NAK RST
Monopoly? Last I heard, virtually every major CE manufacturer with the exception of Toshiba was competing for the blu ray money in your pocket. Even Toshiba has a 50% stake in a company producing blu ray drives so I'm sure they come out of their period of mourning soon enough.
Prices will drop through competition and economies of scale.
The joke being that almost all the Blu-ray players on the market right now are obsolete. BD Live has been part of the spec since November, but pretty much nothing supports it, and most Blu-ray players can't even be upgraded to support it. The PS3 is about the only safe bet right now.
Oh, and the other joke is that BD Live just brings Blu-ray up to (nearly) the same level as HD DVD. Yes, at the time WHV threw its weight behind Blu-ray, Blu-ray was both more expensive than HD DVD, and less powerful (capacity excepting.)
Great decision Hollywood. You went for the format that's out of most people's price range, that's unlikely to be in people's price range for a while, and which had less features (and thus less clear advantages over DVD) than HD DVD. In practice, I suspect you've doomed HD media to a niche, while the vast majority stick with DVD for movies they want to own, and PPV and the various download services for content they want to see in HD.
I still find the decision incomprehensible.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yeah, because we all know this evil DVD monopoly drove DVD player
This time its different because the blu-ray consortium is not giving licenses to tom-dick-harry shop in china to make cheap players. So unlike the DVD, this time around we wont be seeing cheap DVD players. I still remember that it was some Chinese brand (apex?) which broke the $100 barrier for DVD-players and became the largest selling dvd player right behind Sony. With tighter licensing restrictions, thats not going to happen this time around with Blu-ray payers
It's not like the US doesn't already ignore NAFTA when it doesn't work to their advantage (see Canadian softwood lumber).
Did you actually use those more "powerful" features?
You mean like PiP? Sure did, the _300_ commentary was pretty sweet (once I got a disc that wouldn't freeze), and the 1st season of Star Trek is all about the PiP..
Networking? _Transformers_ had downloadable images, presumably _Be Kind Rewind_ would have been great with this feature (user-contributed sweded videos)...