Sony price cut for Blu-ray player

[Bodhesatva]

steverhcp02 said:

HappySqurriel said:

Often bleeding edge electronics are sold at a much higher margin in order to recover R&D costs and encourage electronics retailers to maintain stock; the initial Blu-Ray players probably never cost more than $300 or $400 to manufacture and ship. On the other hand the PS3 was manufactured at a loss and there is practically no retailer level profit from selling a PS3.

One thing that has been reported is that HD-DVD still dominates the stand-alone player market and (practically) all Blu-Ray movies are sold on PS3 systems. The shift in price on Blu-Ray players is probably to move stand-alone units and to limit the ability for HD-DVD to recover.

Sony/Blu-Ray boosters may doubt HD-DVD's ability to recover but movie collectors and videophiles are far more likely to buy a stand-alone movie player than a game machine that also plays movies; these people also buy far more movies per person and are likely going to influence non-early adopters on which format to choose. If these people choose HD-DVD because of how much more affordable it was ($350 for stand alone compared to $1,000) it could be a very big blow to Blu-Ray.

Contradictory, IMO.

Why would someone looking to collect movies why would they choose only 3 major studios as opposed to 6 or 7? Im sorry but the only people still clinging to HD DVD are those who bought into it last summer before th ePS3 came out and BD steamrolled (relatively speaking) the marketshare and have too much pride to let it go, and the people who A) dont realize that HD DVD wont let them watch many of this summers and past summers best family/feature films. and B) Havent researched on their own and hopped at the price seeing "DVD" and "HD" and thinking its as standard as regular DVD.

Im not gonna get into a huge price debate because its obvious price does matter......but i also think quality and content matter as well...."videophiles" are not going to buy the lowest Tosh HD DVD player because if they were videophiles they wouldnt want an HD DVD player that doesnt output in 1080P so they would have to buy the $500 Tosh model which is exactly what the new BD player costs and they would then have to ask if its worth giving up Sony, BVHE, Disney, Fox, Lionsgate etc. for Universal.

The point is this new BD players has the SAME specs as Tosh's $500 player. If BDA were to release a gimped BD player that doesnt output in 1080p they could compete with Tosh's $300 model.....but these arent similar models so that negates the videophile group.

Then IMO, we will just have to wait until fall until families go to BB or CC and see the overwhleming disparity in titles and the difference of about $150 bucks in players and decide form there.

BTW, it appears BD + is nearing completeing as Fox has just announced new Titles for Japan this July, so once Fox and Disney come around this fall, not to meantion BD-J which is what Warner is waiting for......it could finally put an end to this thing.

 

 

 

 The general feeling I've seen is that HD-DVD still has one more real shot at this: if they can get their players marked down below 200 dollars considerably before Blu-ray can, then they could still win this. The goal here isn't to win the technophiles, who constitue a microscopic portion (less than 2 percent? less than 1?) of the overall market. The goal is to win over families, and families don't buy 500 dollar video players. That's why Blu-ray, despite its chest thumping about "beating" HD-DVD, still constitutes only .4 percent of the overall home movie market.