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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."
by not buying the now overpriced gear...
Meanwhile, there are rumors that once the PS3's start rolling out with 45nm CPUs and GPUs that they will drop $100 in price.
$400 for an entry-level player, or $400 for the PS3?
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I would have thought the Blu-Ray group would have liked faster adoption after the demise of HD-DVD but it seems by keeping prices high they might end up slowing themselves down. What would be even more ironic is if the Blu-Ray group collapses themselves in a few years due to lack of demand. That would be a good laugh.
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
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If people continue to purchase DVD players (which are easily under $100), the Blu-ray player prices may drop after a few months. For many people, the quality of DVDs are just fine and they don't have the massive television displays to support them anyway. The cynic in me thinks we're seeing a price hike so stores get the cash from all the early adopters who bought HD-DVD and now feel obligated to buy a Blu-ray player.
I'm not really surprised but this, but not because HD-DVD is dead.
/.), what percentage of TV owners even OWN an HDTV that could benefit from a next-gen format?
Blu-Ray recently add the "Profile 1.1" and "Profile 2.0" specs to their list (and yes, to all you HD-DVD supporters playing at home, Profile 2.0 does FINALLY bring Blu-Ray to feature parity with HD-DVD). Also, as we've been reminded time and again (especially by posters on
Once the specs have settled a little, and as HDTV adoption increases, I'd expect to see economies of scale kick in (as opposed to the price war going on between the BD camp and the HD-DVD camp).
Something else to keep in mind though, is that the PS3 is probably going to be leading the charge in the price war for the next few years.
If $400 is the average price for a BD player, then the $400 PS3, as a current "Profile 1.1" and guaranteed future "Profile 2.0" player (according to Sony's press release from last years E3), makes it a steal as the best priced (and more "future-proof") unit. On the other hand, so long as the PS3 is competing with the XBox 360, they can not keep the price that much higher than their competitor, and they MUST include the Blu-Ray Drive, since PS3 games are shipped on BDs.
It'll be interesting to follow the market as a whole as the PS3 ages into its life cycle, the price drops, and HDTV adoption increases.
(I know at least 5 people in the past week that have finally decided to look into HDTVs that didn't know anything about it. Yes this is anecdotal evidence, but its more people than I have personally seen looking at getting an HDTV at a given time.)
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This monopoly is so much better for the consumer.
Yeah, because we all know this evil DVD monopoly drove DVD player
prices to insane heights...
Seriously, this is basic supply and demand at work (more would-'ve-bought HD-DVD
buyers now go for BluRay) and will certainly improve over a probably rather short time.
this probably wont happen, but:
What if by declaring hd-dvd dead it causes hd-dvd to become more popular than blu-ray?
By this I mean, the prices of drives are dropping because they are getting rid of them. The movies, too. At the same time, blu-ray is going up.
Will a lot of people even know that hd-dvd is dead? They will just see how cheap it is.
If this were timed right, hd-dvd could hit a critical mass very quickly. Yes they'd lose a bunch of money on the current supplies, but that's going to happen anyway. If at the right time they could resurect it and keep the prices way below blu-ray they could make a comeback. In the mean time they don't really have to waste money on advertising etc.
Myself, I would buy an hd-dvd burner and media right now if the prices were really low, just for storage purposes. They should continue to sell them for pcs for storage purposes.
Just a crazy idea. And what a coup it would be...
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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.
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...
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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.
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
If your statement is true, and I'm going to assume it is, this means we also won't see a huge blu-ray adoption. The VHS to DVD format adoption is easily the fastest I've ever seen. Faster than LPs to tape, faster than tape to CD. in fact, I remember buying my first CD player in about 1989. CDs had been mainstream since what, 82, but seven years later a good player was still $300? It took a long time for the CD to completely take over the market, mostly because the players were expensive.
If the studios are smart, and I think they are, the prices of blu-ray players will only be high for the next 6 months or so. After that, the studios will subsidize their production. The only way people are going to buy ANOTHER new copy of that old movie they love is if the player is cheap. The best way for the studios to make money is to get those players in the hands of the end users.
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Though declared "Dead", the body is still warm. And you'd think that HD-DVD would be the natural successor to the DVD drives for PC's because they share the same filesystem, and HD-DVD drives are completely backwards compatible with CD and DVD formats. While Blu-Ray players can be made compatible with those formats, not all players are. At least some BR players on the market couldn't read standard CD's, for instance. Since Microsoft's Xbox 360 uses an HD-DVD drive, you might be able to get them to push the standard for PC drives.
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It's not like the US doesn't already ignore NAFTA when it doesn't work to their advantage (see Canadian softwood lumber).
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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.
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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.
I'm not sure what you're implying by the "anti-PS3 crowd"? That only die-hard PS3 fans are technically savvy enough to want an HD player? Or is it just a troll remark? The market is made up of a lot of different people on ALL sides of the console front; some for gaming, some for the overall capabilities of a console and, with the war being over, a BD player first and a game console second.
Most of my time is still playing PC games but I also have an Xbox and have no interest in a PS3 even for the BluRay. I have a lot of interest in BluRay but not through a PS3 or the "new" pricing scheme that they've seemed to now drop on consumers for stand-alone players. I'll bid my time and hopefully Microsoft releases a BD player at some point in the upcoming months as has been the rumor.