More news from the
DisplaySearch / NPD HDTV conference out in California, and this time it's from the Blu-ray Disc Association. Andy Parsons, the BDA's chairman, told attendees that Blu-ray
player and disc pricing were behaving the same way as when DVD was the hot new thing. Parsons noted that "there [wasn't] enough market volume to lower prices," adding that firms first have to "build awareness and demand for the technology" before
stickers can shrink. Granted, this opens the whole "chicken before the egg" debate, with pundits asserting that awareness and demand won't build until prices are low enough to be digested by the masses. Also of note, Andy suggested that consumers still wanted something "they could hold in their hands" when asked about the
threat of digital downloads, but then again, would you really expect to hear anything different?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kcmurphy88 @ Sep 17th 2008 7:08PM
It's getting to the point where we should just number the comments to save everyone time. Such as:
#1 -- HD DVD should have won.
#2 -- Price gouging!
#3 -- It took DVD years to come down in price!
#4 -- DVD for me!
#5 -- It's the quality, man, not the price!
#6 -- Just you wait until downloads happen
#7 -- Where's Nfinity now?
etc
dagamer34 @ Sep 17th 2008 7:26PM
Quit taking the fun out of it. =/
Achilles @ Sep 18th 2008 3:11AM
LMAO!! Where is Nfinity?? It's not the same w/o his propaganda and rhetoric.
Shape @ Sep 17th 2008 7:53PM
How about just plain old "Morons!"
andyg8180 @ Sep 17th 2008 8:18PM
Consumer sez to BDA we aint buyin anytime soon
Ed @ Sep 17th 2008 8:42PM
That's right Sony; Keep those prices high on your new format during an economic downturn and worldwide financial crisis.
Perhaps my sheer hatred of Sony wasn't enough to cause Blu-ray to fail, but Sony's (*ahem* 'BDA') own stupidity will probably do the trick.
Hooray!
WebDev511 @ Sep 18th 2008 12:13AM
+1
Where do I get the Blu-Ray LaserDisc Avatar? :p
SimbaDogg @ Sep 17th 2008 8:53PM
@kc murphy...i semi enjoyed your post, my favorite was the "where's nfinity now"
@ ed
quit it w/ the sony=bda shit. you just sound stupid, period. its almost as ignorant as saying "Mcdonalds is why america is fat".
But anyways, i'm hoping that the BDA has come to this conclusion after EXTENSIVE market research, not the "well, our players aren't selling that well now, so we're not gonna invest to make the tech cheaper so we can sell them cheaper in the near future" as said in the article, it really is one of those chicken n' the egg riddles.
Alex @ Sep 17th 2008 9:28PM
#1
Andy Sullivan @ Sep 17th 2008 9:43PM
Blu-Ray player and disc pricing were behaving the same way as when DVD was the hot new thing??? Not even a close comparison. DVD was usurping a much inferior format in video tape while Blu-Ray is simply a step up in PQ and SQ from DVD. Plus you need a HD capable display which many still do not have. The DVD player simply replaced the VCR as a piece of equipment.
Gus @ Sep 18th 2008 12:43AM
blu ray will never beat DVD, it will become the favorite for the dedicated home cinema enthusiast with maybe a reasonable market share, but J6 will never embrace it, the step up isn't big enough to justify any cost.
DEEZNUTZ @ Sep 18th 2008 9:45AM
There is a good chance that you are right.
I really don't care if BD never goes mainstream or beats out DVD. I just want to see my favorite movies released on BD in the best quality that the format allows. As a matter of fact, all I need is LOTR on BD and the format can then fail for all I care.
BUT, I still believe it's too early to call it. This holiday shopping season will set the pace for BD's success or failure, so they have to get it right.
Doc @ Sep 18th 2008 1:08AM
Is this really any surprise to any of us?
Sony has always been stubborn about price which in the end only hurts them.
del @ Sep 18th 2008 2:39AM
I've tried moving to blu-ray but after around 20+ Discs, it's just too damn expensive and i can't sustain it...so i'm back to DVD once more...anyway PS3 beautifully convert the DVDs to 1080p....
Eric @ Sep 18th 2008 10:59AM
Well, buying a blank Blu--ray disc as noted in an earlier piece is about as expensive as a disc with a movie on it! And the price of a blank dual-layer disc will get you a new release!
How clue-impaired are these manufacturers and BDA executives?
They will hand the HD video market to downloads in spite of people's willingness to pay for discs at reasonable prices. So you don't make obscene profits at first. What smart industry does?
Mr_Fizzlepop @ Sep 18th 2008 3:11PM
This is more based on the Disc manufacturers not having overstock in blank discs due to it still being a new format and all the studios only just months into full and steady orders.
They were talking about a shortage of BR discs just about 6 months ago when all the studios finally started backing BR so it will be a bit before the suppliers of discs get to where the blank ones will be cheaper.
I also agree with the next comment that HD DVD didn't saturate the market by offering low prices and the BDA sees this.
They know the players sales numbers and increases and it is keeping pace with DVD(beating it as I recall) so it isn't unrealistic to imagine them not willing to pull a "Toshiba" except in the case of Sony withe the PS3 which is also a game console that expects to make it's vast majority of profit from games sales to offset the player cost.
mntwister @ Sep 18th 2008 2:13PM
I think what they are saying is correct. Dvd's in the first couple years cost up to 30.00. Also, awareness is more important. Look at hd-dvd. If price is the BIG factor, then why didn't hd-dvd go huge with the mainstream? They sold players for as low at $99 but you didn't see millions of sales. Awareness first and it's coming big time this holiday season!
DEEZNUTZ @ Sep 18th 2008 4:13PM
Agreed. Consumer awareness is key, lets hope BD steps it up this holiday, cause I do believe they have only one shot at going mainstream, and this holiday season will determine BD's fate. Otherwise, it's niche market FTL.
Don @ Sep 19th 2008 10:56AM
Because when the HD players were $99, it was widely known that HD DVD was on the way out. Why would people jump up and grab all the HD DVD players when they won't be able to get HD DVD's to watch in them? Even if it's a great deal... people not knowing whether or not they'd even be able to use their player in the next 6 months discouraged a lot of sales
max @ Sep 18th 2008 11:59PM
As a movie fan, I found no problem sustaining buying blurays... if you are a smart shopper you can usually get your movies for 20-24 dollars, which isn't much more than dvd...
don't really see the problem to be honest. SHOP AROUND price match at best buy, purchase from amazon (really cheap) look for sales in the weekly ads... BE SMART PEOPLE
As for digital downloads... I've tried a lot of the services and their free trials.... Honestly, the quality of video and sound just don't match what i get on disc... plus the downloading sucks... and to top it all off, with all this talk of capping my comcast internet... I say digital downloads is a joke...
Besides having the disc, on the shelf with my other 140 blurays and 1200 dvds, just gives you a feeling that a file on a hard drive doesn't do.... the feeling that you're a broke son of a bitch with a badass collection of movies!
squiggleslash @ Sep 18th 2008 10:39AM
The problem with the "smart shoppers can get Blu-ray releases for $25, which is the same as DVD" argument is that smart shoppers can get most regular DVD releases for $5-10. My technique was generally to walk into Blockbuster and Hollywood video approximately one-to-two months after the movies I want had been released and pick three of them up for $25. Of course, if you just want the one movie, you can also wait for the people who do the above, and then resell the discs on Amazon Marketplace.
At this point, downloads are still in their infancy. That doesn't mean the technology isn't becoming increasingly viable as new models are tested and better forms of transferring the data are used. If I were to point my finger at a single thing that's the hold-up right now, it's the relatively high cost of "good enough" storage, which makes building a sub-$100 network box that supports HD difficult.
That probably requires explanation, so here goes. The issue with HD is you need to transfer around 2G of data per hour of content, at 720p24 using H.264. For 1080p, double that. For high quality 1080p24 "as-few-artifacts-as-HD-DVD-and-Blu-ray" triple it.
Now, there's no practical way to do this other than buffering the movie. A set-top box that supports HD in any useful form needs to have at least 4-8Gb of storage (for 720p24), and double that for 1080p. And right now that's expensive. For Flash, you're looking at around $25-50 for 8Gb of Flash. For magnetic drives, the costs per gig are better than Flash but there's generally a minimum cost of around $40, you have to beef up the power for that, and the life time is considerably shorter.
If I had to guess, I'd say the following things need to converge to make downloads seriously take off. And here's the thing, all of these are coming:
1. It needs to be possible to buy 8-16Gb of storage for under $10. I think Flash will drop to those kinds of prices within about a year.
2. Open standards need to be set. Several "components" of such a standard exist, and these are being fleshed out. In the mean time, it does seriously look as if Adobe's Flash Video is turning into a defacto standard combining DRM and H.264 into one simple package. DVD 2.0 is the other major thing that's coming along.
3. The prices of the rest of the technologies need to drop too.
Now, imagine this. Your next DVD (or Blu-ray player) also has an Ethernet port. It conforms to a set of standards for accessing online movie libraries. You can subscribe to various services with various different pricing schemes. Every movie is available in HD or 480p, and you can choose to watch it streamed live if you have the bandwidth, or queue it up to be transferred to your player's box.
A DVD player capable of doing all of this should be available for under $100 within a year.
Buy the player. Watch your SD DVDs. Watch anything in HD by subscribing to Netflix and queuing downloads, which take less time to arrive than the "DVDs by mail" thing.
It's beyond compelling. Simply because the offerings aren't perfect now doesn't mean they're not going to be.
Mr_Fizzlepop @ Sep 19th 2008 3:14AM
Well, once you counted used discs... and you did, you lost.
Blu-rays start at about 4.98 on Amazon.
The average price I saw was about 8 bucks a disc for used, and that included Spiderman 3, Invincible, Superbad, and Saw IV just to name a decent variety(All the named with Under 9 bucks).
So I guess your Great DVD deal of 3 for 25 bucks or so is already not a great deal since the "New, shiny and expensive" Blu-rays can be had for the same price.
Ok, with shipping, but for some of those that shipping won't be more than the taxes in your state.
BluFan @ Sep 30th 2008 3:49PM
I think it's funny how the BDA is saying that player prices won't be going down any time soon, but not two days later, even cheaper players were coming onto the market. The market will dictate how much players ultimately cost and I'm pretty confident we'll see $200 players for the holiday shopping season. I've actually been working with Warner Home Video on some BR projects and they expect to see lower priced players by the end of the year.