Ziz said:
I gotta go with A-M...compare Blu discs to standard on price-vs-content, not whether you're getting one or two or however many physical discs. Clarity aside, BD's other claim to the throne is capacity. The 10 disc Ultimate Matrix collection is only 4 or 5 discs on HD and BD (coming on 10/14), but they retail for the same basic price range.
And where are you seeing these prices at? I just checked Amazon and TheDigitalBits. The "10 disc ultimate set" on DVD sells on Amazon for $31. The BD set, which only has the movies and Animatrix in hi-def, the rest are all SD, sells for $90. That's not exactly the same basic price range. Yes, at release they'll have been the same basic price range, but the DVD set has been out so long now that it's easy to get it much cheaper.
Every other release I've seen recently (Iron Man, Hulk, Heroes) has the same number of discs for either the DVD or Blu-ray release. The difference is usually as little as a few bucks, but sometimes it's $20-$30.
And yes, everyone wants the player prices to come down, and yes eventually they will, but when to spend that money is a different decision for everyone. To use the standard "car" analogy - would you rather have a cheap car that's expensive to insure (yes, they do exist) or spend a little more for a car that has lower insurance? I was actually faced with a decision like that when I bought a new car a few years ago, so I know it's possible and not just theoretical.
The CEO of Sony said very recently not to expect prices to go below $299 by this Christmas because they were not going to license the players to the Chinese manufacturers. They do not want cheap players on the market. Why is that? Because they're trying to milk the consumers, but the consumers aren't buying it.
SInce I don't have to insure my player, I'd rather just have a cheap player. I don't really have that choice right now though, do I.
Corollary to the "disc count" issue - one of the things I hate about 2 disc releases - 1 film/1 supplement - is that they use the extra disc as a reason to jack up the price. Early on, discs were dual sided instead of 2 disc sets. Know why they stopped doing it? Because people complained that they had to actually read the disc core to figure out which side to play. They wanted something idiot-proof like artwork on two separate discs so that they wouldn't have to think about which side of the disc is which. ',:-\
Uh yeah. I'm sure the price is jacked up so high. Or not. Yeah, it's a lot easier to read a giant label than it is to read the tiny lettering on the disc core. Dual sided discs were a pain in the ass and I'm glad they got rid of them. And since you can still fit two discs into a single disc package, there's really no need to cram everything onto a dual sided disc anyway.
Tiptup said:
However, if by some mysterious happenstance, the Blu-ray critics are correct, then only the BD association stands to lose if they've priced Blu-ray wrong. I can't predict the market well enough to determine where Blu-ray will ultuimately go, but I know it's doing fine right now. Anything else seems like worthless speculation to me.
Actually, it's not doing fine. DVD purchases might be down, but they're still way ahead of Blu-ray purchases. Blu-ray adoption is low and slow right now, due completely to player prices. The excuse the BDA is using is that DVD took a while to become popular with consumers and it took a while for prices to come down.
Here's a little breakdown of similar prices when DVD was being adopted. Keep in mind that Divx was around from 1998 until 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express))
DVD player prices were as low as $200 in 1999 and as high as $1200. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpidvd.htm Even on sale, I can't find a Blu-ray player for that price. DVD player adoption was also rapid according to that. Sales quadrupled from the 1.1 million players sold in 1998. So at the time that was written, October 2001, DVD player adoption was rapid.
And here's another article that suggest prices will be around $300 for the foreseeable future http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/35730
These aren't really critics making these statements. These are industry observers looking at historical data as well as the current market. Blu-ray adoption is low and everyone agrees that $200 is the price point at which most consumers start snapping up players. Anything above that and it remains in "videophile" territory. Unfortunately I can't really find any sales statistics on Blu-ray players or discs, but the article I originally linked to doesn't seem to impressed with sales figures to date.