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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
superklye @ May 22nd 2008 10:02AM
So, if this WAS in the DMP-BD50, we could expect it to be "cheaper" at an MSRP of "only" $599 (like it was originally speculated/rumored to be) rather than the current $699?
WOOOO!! CHEAP BD PLAYERS FOR ALL!
Jeff N. @ May 22nd 2008 12:07PM
I'm with DRXYM, he is right. The prices start high in new products and as things progress, ie they sell more units, find ways to make parts cheaper... the prices fall
and come more affordable. Happened with CD players in the 1980's. Happened with the first Hi-Fi VHS VCRs. Recently with regular DVD players in the late '90s which were quite pricey to start with and of course HDTV's which if you just go back a mear 3 years from now were quite a bit more money. Toshiba lost millions subsidizing each HD-DVD player and to what end?
By the fall of 2009 you see quite a few 2.0 profile Blu-ray players that are affordable.
DrXym @ May 22nd 2008 12:47PM
I remember the first plasmas I saw in a store were £10,000 - POUNDS. That was for an 32" SD plasma screen. Now you can get a 46" HD plasma for less than a 1/10th of that. My first DVD player (a 2nd gen Pioneer) cost £550.
Prices always come down over time. It appears that most of the complaining about price is coming from HD DVD whiners who appear to think that CEs should subsidize their players to the tune of hundreds of dollars just because Toshiba did.
superklye @ May 22nd 2008 12:54PM
Hey, by all means, continue to pay the exhoribant prices they're demanding for hardware that isn't worth that much. I was an HD DVD supporter, yes, but I bought both my 360 addons for $200/ea and my A2 for $500 the day it came out...a year and a half ago almost. I have no problem paying a price for something I feel is worth it.
But when the PS3 does everything and more than what the BD50 does (as well as offers better upconversion if the past Panny's performance is any indication and I see no reason why it wouldn't be) for $300 less, umm...well, you do the math.
Or don't. And keep defending the ridiculously and artificially-kept high prices. I don't really care.
And save me your tired rhetoric about how DVD took forever to get below $500. This isn't DVD, this isn't 10 years and Blu-ray doesn't have the luxury of time that DVD had in order to get in and make a dent in the home video/theater market, let alone take it over. Well over 2 years after its launch, players are still coming out at prices barely below where they were at launch. That's ridiculous, regardless of what side you were on before the war ended.
superklye @ May 22nd 2008 12:55PM
sigh... that should've been "exorbitant"
Mr. E @ May 22nd 2008 1:21PM
I never understand why people want to treat the Blu-ray introduction pricing cycle as some kind of special case. If someone feels that prices are "exorbitant" now, then just wait. No one is being forced to buy anything. For some people, getting 1080p with lossless audio in a standalone player right now is worth a few hundred dollars over the price of a DVD player. For the rest, prices overall are going to decline quite a bit over the next few years. This is no different than it has ever been.
Oh, and you may want to check again if you think that Blu-ray player prices are "barely below where they were at launch". If you take the average cost of all the available players, I'm willing to bet that it's at 50% or below what the original cost was. I still remember those launch players that were above $1,000.
For disclosure: I bought a $399 PS3 late last year, and will only consider a standalone player in the future when full-featured ones reach $200 or under. That's just me--everyone has their own comfort zone.
superklye @ May 22nd 2008 1:28PM
@Mr. E
A few hundred more than an SD DVD player would be the $250-300 range. $700 is more than "a few hundred."
And how is $699 not much less than $999? $999 was pretty much the standard price for quite a while at Best Buy and other places. $699 is still pretty close to launch prices.
Mr. E @ May 22nd 2008 2:32PM
Come on, of course I wasn't making my comparison with the Chinese $49 player at Wal-Mart. Blu-ray delivers a quantum leap in video and audio performance, so a consumer who is currently trying to decide whether Blu-ray delivers value *should* be comparing prices against the DVD players that provide the best performance right now, like an upscaling Oppo (think $170-$400 range). That's really the only way to gauge whether the extra expense for Blu-ray is worth it. Heck, if someone is satisfied with a $49 special DVD player, they're probably going to want to wait for a $49 Blu-ray player too. That's going to take awhile.
In any case, I'm not really interested in playing semantic games. The point is that prices are declining. Whether they are doing so fast enough for "us" is irrelevant. People will buy when they reach their comfort zone, wherever that is.
DrXym @ May 22nd 2008 3:15PM
superklye there are already players below $350 if you want them and bound to be plenty more as the holiday season heats up. You are not forced to spend a pile on a standalone if you don't want to. And I assume that those who do, do so of their own free will.