Sony's Glasgow wants Blu-ray prices to come down
by Darren Murph 
posted Nov 20th 2008 at 9:36PM
While Sony's Jay Vandenbree is over in one corner griping about HDTV price drops, the outfit's Stan Glasgow is off in another making a bit of sense. In a recent interview with Reuters, the bigwig stated that he understood that movie studios "needed to make money, and [that] packaged media (discs) is a critical way for them to [do so]," but he continued on to say that he would "love to see those prices come down, as well as the price of Blu-ray players to drive adoption." These absolutely laudable comments come on the heels of him admitting that Blu-ray sales overall would fall around 10% short this holiday season of prior expectations, despite the fact that BD deck prices are apt to hit record lows on Black Friday. It's actually pretty astounding to hear a higher-up such as Stan uttering such logical statements, and if you're looking for more of his take on the industry, you know where to head.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
L3 @ Nov 20th 2008 11:04PM
That's the problem with the adoption of this wonderful technology. It's like having a $1500 suit and a $6.95 JC Penney's tie.
Jeebus @ Nov 22nd 2008 1:26PM
Where would you recommend I buy my ties then? And how much should I pay?
Steve @ Nov 21st 2008 1:17AM
I agree with you L3. Who cares if you can get a player for $100 on Black Friday if the discs are $30 a pop. Media prices need to be solidly in the teens. And the studios need to stop it with the $40 MSRP on discs too. Give us a break!
Let's not turn Blu-ray into the printer industry where they sell you the printer cheap and then rape you with the ink cartridges...
mitch @ Nov 21st 2008 10:28AM
I think we can rely on other companies to push the price of BR discs downward, If the studios do not willingly do it on their own.
Rentals and disc burners ought to eventually force their hand to come down. They can charge whatever they like, but... as long as blockbuster rents them to me at a reasonable price, I'll be happy.
Besides, I doubt that those will be the conditions that bring prices down.....eventually this will be an issue of volume. Assuming that the market sees enough value in this new medium..... Once the manufacturers have roped in enough early adopters and the hammer falls, production will rise, and prices will fall (because profit margins can be slimmer). Obviously this is an overly simplistic model but I think it is safe to look at it this way......Eventually Wal-Mart will realize that there are enough BD players installed to justify cutting deals for large orders, slashing the prices, forcing anyone else (small local stores too) who sells discs to do the same, making the world a cheaper place, all the while forcing more Mom and Pop shops to shut down but making sure that hard working 12 year olds stay busy all over the world.
Ordeith @ Nov 21st 2008 12:07PM
Blockbuster hasn't rented anything at a resonable price in a long, long time.
squiggleslash @ Nov 21st 2008 8:19AM
1. Disc prices need to drop.
2. BD releases need to be more useful than their DVD counterparts.
3. Encouragement needs to be given to give the format greater usefulness outside of movie distribution. For example, BD-R prices need to plummet, and BD burners need to drop below $100
4. BD's "showstopper" flaws, such as BD+, need to be deprecated with an aim that every BD release will work on every Blu-ray player. Given the comparatively small number of players made, studios need to TEST EVERY TITLE ON EVERY PLAYER before pressing discs.
5. An infrastructure needs to be added to ensure BD doesn't compete with online downloads, it becomes a part of it. A simple way of doing this would be to incorporate the HD DVD high level standards into BD (that is, Advanced Content, Mandatory Managed Copy, etc.), but I'd be happy with someone just coming up with a technical equivalent as long as it's open.
6. Something needs to be done to help independent vendors ship discs without having to pay well above the odds. There's no reason why it should be virtually impossible to ship training videos in HD without charging the Earth for them, for example. This might be fixable simply by allowing the online infrastructure integration thing above.
7. Something that disassociates the "fixed" Blu-ray from the failed format should be done, if only rebranding it "Blu-ray Plus" or something.
8. Blu-ray player prices need to come down, and I don't mean "Clearance items". There are no non-clear out BD players right now with an MSRP significantly under $250. Let me repeat that because some jackass right now is probably going to respond with "Yu ur lyeng. I bought a first generation Sony for $50 from Discount Electronics Mart only duh odduer day." There are no **NON-CLEAR-OUT** BD players right now with an ****MSRP**** significantly under $250. I want to see sub-$100 players that support the features above (either directly or upgradeable)
As long as Blu-ray is expensive, unreliable, and competes with online downloads instead of embracing them and being a part of them, it's not going to stand a chance in hell. Most people I know are way more interested in what Netflix is doing than they are in Blu-ray.
3dpenguin @ Nov 21st 2008 10:05AM
This guy is a retard. He knows damn good and well that the prices for Blu-ray movies aren't being fixed by the studio's profits, but he is trying to make it sound like they are, instead they are partially fixed by his own company Sony and other higher ups in BDA, and the only reason why he made the comment about the disc prices because he knows that if Blu-ray doesn't pick up him and his shit eating grin will be in the unemployment line.
Cam @ Nov 21st 2008 12:09PM
I'll toast to that!
Rob @ Nov 21st 2008 11:09AM
Blu ray will be nothing more than today/tomorrow's laserdisc due to a few reasons:
Disc player prices-need to come down.
Disc prices-need to come down-why should I pay $23 for a blu ray of an older movie that came out on dvd a few months ago that I can now get for $6 from best buy?
The differencwe in queality will NEVER justify that purchase.
Compatibility:The discs need to play on a your player. Sure DVD had some issues when it came out but were resolved by this time.
Backward Compatibility-If many discs are including digital downloads, why not include a dvd or the ability to burn a dvd.
I'm less liekly to buy a kids movie on blu ray if I need to buy another copy to play in the car, airplane, etc.
Cam @ Nov 21st 2008 12:08PM
What an idiot. If I'm a studio right now, I'm doing you a favor, Stan, by even bothering to sell your lameass packaged media. Of course I'm going to mark it up because I have to pay all your stupid licensing fees and deal with all the difficulties it takes to make a blu-ray disc in the first place.
If I REALLY want to make money, I sell digitally. There's not cost with manufacturing because there's no discs and you probably only have to split revenue with your sell-through partners, but this isn't much different from selling packaged media through a retailer.
Sony is turning into the new Bose...making money by selling crappy products through marketing and reputation
techie @ Nov 21st 2008 2:04PM
You seem to be forgetting that packaged media is a very large portion of the income for the studios and that there isn’t any standardized player hardware with multiple suppliers for download purchases.
Who the hell wan't to lock their purchases to a single/few units and be in the mercy of a DRM license server that can be shut off any second (just look at severel music suppliers), accept that you cant sell the movie what you are tired of it and and with that even have accept less quality both picture and sound. In my book people would have to be idiots to accept to buy downloads under current conditions.
Renting movies over the Internet is however a different thing.. If shops like Netflix can keep delivering HD to the current prices it is very interesting.
Cam @ Nov 21st 2008 4:32PM
Yes, I realize packaged media will be around for a while. But I think YOU'RE missing the point. You say, "packaged media is a very large portion of the income for the studios". Well duh, because they're able to charge $30 for a movie on blu-ray. If they lower the prices like our friend Stan here wants, they won't be making as much money now will they?
And maybe you need to learn how DRM works because for most technologies, you don't need to be online to watch your content. You need to be online to obtain the license, but after that, you're good to go (on that device). So DRM license servers going down doesn't really affect the majority of people who are using their purchased content.
And I'm not sure what you were trying to say in the 2nd paragraph so I'll just leave it at that.
3dpenguin @ Nov 21st 2008 4:46PM
The major problem with the statement of the studios needing to lower their prices is blatantly misleading. All indications show that the studios make at most the same amount as on DVD, around $8 a disc, some indications show that it might be as little as $6 a disc. So even if they reduce their profits by 50% your still talking about an SRP of around $30-$33.
LonnieDvD @ Nov 22nd 2008 10:56AM
It's not just the Blu-Ray prices, the HDTV prices need to come down too. Why should us SDTV owners pay $500+ for a good HDTV when our SDTV's are still working fine?
Cam @ Nov 24th 2008 2:47AM
because HD is magic! isn't that why you're reading engadgetHD?
LonnieDvD @ Nov 25th 2008 6:25PM
I read engadgetHD to keep track of the new stuff, it doesn't mean I will throw away money on it.
carlb @ Nov 26th 2008 4:55AM
Between the flaming laptop batteries and the root kits on music CD's, I really can't say that this is a company with which I would do business at any price. These were the people who all but invented region-coding, that nice little scam by which last year's movies in one region can be introduced next year somewhere else at the full "new-release" price by keeping out-of-region discs out, and then there's all the copy protection. It was bad enough on analogue media where the images would bend, roll vertically or distort in colour - do we really need this rubbish digitally now? It's just a way for a vendor to unilaterally add more terms and conditions to the deal after they've already taken my money. I (dis)respectfully decline.
LonnieDvD @ Nov 28th 2008 6:00PM
I gotta give Sony credit for one thing, they make great standard DVD players. I've been using Sony DVD players for years now, rarely have I had any problems with them.