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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."
Not that this is a bad thing - it will help to correct the imbalances in the US economy far more than bleating about NAFTA or whatever other nonsense is coming out of your politicians at the moment...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This is an utterly foolish move by manufacturers and retailers, because it presumes that HD-DVD was the *only* obstacle to widespread adoption. In fact, Blu-Ray may have won the battle vs. HD-DVD, but it is far from winning the war. Digital download is becoming increasingly popular, and many consumers are just fine with their current DVD's.
Some advice to the Blu-Ray camp: You still haven't convinced us to buy, and raising prices ain't gonna help things.
Calling Sony's victory with Blu-Ray over HD-DVD a "monopoly" is like saying Sirius' proposed merger with XMSR is a monopoly.
No sir, I don't buy it. With as many entertainment and content distribution options completing in the Audio and Visual domains... no one company can ever establish a monopoly. The only thing that can happen is the companies become entrenched with technology that isn't adopted, supported, or interoperated with and that leads to business failure.
And yes, Sony bought the format war with hundreds of millions of potentially well-spend bribes, but their is no way for them to bribe there way to some kind of vertically-integrated "entertainment" monopoly. It would cost too much. I am not worried, unless they make a play at merging with Comcast or something.
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Please. Do you consider DVDs to be a monopoly? How about CDs? A standard format is not a "monopoly", not unless the format is proprietary.
Here's what's going on: both Blu Ray and HD-DVD players were being sold at a minimal profit — a loss, even — because both sides were trying to grab market share. End of format war, end of need to grab market share.
The problem has been that everybody with any brains has been waiting for the format war to end before plunking down their hard-earned cash. When consumers don't buy, sales are low, and when sales are low, there are no economies of scale. No economies of scale means high manufacturing costs, and thus high retail costs — unless the product is being sold at a loss.
So of course prices go up. But that's a short term thing. Right now, every consumer electronics company on the planet is gearing up to manufacture Blu Ray players by the million. When you manufacture something on that scale (especially electronics, where the fundamental technology is subject to Moore's Law) prices crash.
In a year or two, Blu Ray players will be as cheap as DVD players are now.
The obvious move is to get a PS3 then. It is a decent media centre as well, and everyone who buys one can have the added pleasure of humiliating me at Warhawk, since I am the worst player on God's green earth.
Sometimes I wonder if the anti-PS3 crowd are simply those people who publicly predicted its failure and are now desperate not to be proven wrong. e.g. the "I'd rather have trousers full of rabid ferrets than buy a PS3!!!" meme.
I bought a PS3 out of curiosity with Blu Ray, and after watching 2001 and A Clockwork Orange in HD (would buy Eyes Wide Shut for the nudie bits, but wife objects), I'd say it was well worth it if you're a film buff.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
I did. Heroes season 1, 300, and Beowulf all have some pretty sweet PiP. My blu-ray player is a drive in an HTPC so I'm pretty safe profile update-wise, but I'm just sayin' that the interactivity/extras that HDDVD is capable of now crushes what's out there for blu-ray at the moment.
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But, how is that different from "Super collector's bonus editions" of DVDs? Same movie, but more outtakes and commentary? It's par for the course for DVDs that came out early in DVD's lifecycle to have a re-release with more "features." If you care enough for the features, you plunk down the change. If you just want the movie, you're already set.
Okay, but what makes you think the BR consortium is going to suddenly start dishing out licences to the Chinese knockoff shops? I don't know what they charge, but even if they do loosen their exclusivity, I don't see the price of a licence being practical for cheap manufacturing to make a difference. They're really that paranoid about losing control.
This format (I'm not going to call it a standard) is much more tightly controlled than DVD or the CD.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Bravo sir, bravo.
You have, in one posting both lambasted the wastefulness of our society and managed to take a jab at the download model. So which is it? The HD wars left me a bit blase regarding the upgrade. Coincidentally, my old DVD player works as well. Thus, I will most likely avoid purchasing a BD player. I am aware that there is a perfectly viable market for BD, I won't debate it. Your arguments though seem to be based on the presumption that BD is more "futureproof". This, I would argue is irrelevant. It seems plausable that consumers would opt for a disc-less system, given a viable source for HD content and a HT player with a few TB of storage. I may very well be off the rocker on this, but most of the arguments against it also applied to Mp3s not so long ago.
I suppose my point is that yes, DVD still works. The HD content on television isn't overly compelling. If I have a burning desire to watch a movie in HD, I download it. So far, Planet Earth is the sole HD movie that imo was worth watching in HD. I'll wait to buy until they're either far less expensive or the features and content unavailable in DVD, are compelling enough. If at that time, there is no alternative then yes... I will eat my hat and purchase a BD.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Definitely*. Try producing a DVD player in the US without paying a lot of money to the DVD copy control association and agreeing to implement their DRM. It won't take you long to hear from their lawyers. It only a few days for ME to hear from them back when I hosted some open source DVD stuff on my web server.
* I'm assuming you're talking about commercial, consumer video DVD stuff here since that's what the whole thread is about.