EQC @ Jan 5th 2008 10:56PM

I agree! Now that BluRay is the only format around, prices will skyrocket! There's plenty of examples of similar things! Look at the way DVD player prices stayed high forever since they were the only format! Look at the prices of cars once they no longer had horses and carriages to compete with! Look at the price of knives and forks in the US since chopsticks never caught on!

I'll grant you that HD-DVD and BluRay did compete with each other. But they also hurt each other pricewise -- with the consumer confusion over 2 formats, fewer people bought either format. Therefore, fewer players were produced and the "economies of scale" didn't kick in very much. Cheap Chinese players haven't really appeared for either format yet (yes, there was that one HD-DVD player, but I believe it was determined that it had Toshiba guts).

The real competition will come when 20 manufacturers are making BluRay players. The best kind of competition comes when many manufacturers are making very similar, compatible products -- now when the consumer has to choose between two incompatible things. With DVD players, you can buy a $20 special, or if you really want you can probably still find a $1000 audio/videophile gold-plated wonder -- but they'll all play the same disks and plug into your TV. With cars, you can choose a cheap Kia or a pricey Ferrari, but you know that both will fit in your garage and drive down the same roads. With knives and forks, you can get disposable plastic crap all the way up to designer pricey stuff, but they'll all cut your food and fit in your mouth.

With one "format," consumers will be confident in it, and manufacturers will know it's time to invest in big-scale production. Some will aim for uber-cheap, some will aim for designer high-prices.

I see this playing out very similar as the DVD transition:

At first, DVD's and DVD players were more expensive than VHS. As DVD became more popular and more mass-produced, prices dropped. Soon, prices dropped enough, became cheaper than VHS, and VHS died. Try to find a VCR now -- if you're lucky, you'll find 1 or 2 models, and they'll both be over $100, compared to easy-to-find $30 DVD players.

The trouble, though, was that (if my observations are correct), DVD media prices have gone back up a little lately -- instead of new releases being around $15 like they often were 2-3 years ago, many come out at $20-25, with only a brief sale for $16-18. Even crappy movies ("I Know Who Killed Me") come out at prices I wouldn't want to pay for a major blockbuster.

So, my conclusion is that BluRay's useful competition was never really HD-DVD. It's DVD that'll drive BluRay prices down as BluRay tries to kill off DVD. BluRay will get cheaper and cheaper, become super cheap for a little while as a killing blow to DVD. Basically, BluRay players in 2 years or so will probably hit the $30-40 range, and movies will be easily found for $10-15. When DVD finally disappears, BluRay players will stay cheap, but the media will be consistently in the $15-30 range.

Of course, this would all be contingent on DVD actually dying out, and downloadable media not becoming the "real" format of choice too soon.

The story would be similar if HD-DVD became the format of choice...