Blu-ray players: Mighty pricey

The demise of the HD DVD format has been bad news for both bargain hunters and at least one big-time technology company.

The Sony BDP-S300

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In the three short weeks since Toshiba announced that it was pulling the plug on the high-definition technology, prices for standalone players using the rival Blu-ray format have been headed north. In fact, as noted by PriceGrabber.com, Blu-ray prices are at their high point for the year, at an average of about $400 apiece for the devices. The Sony BDP-S300, for instance, was just a small mocha latte above that level, at $403 as of Wednesday.

Prices for Blu-ray players had been dipping down to around $300. Just last week, Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow said that the company would be "at a $300 rate" through this year--and would even hit the $299 mark in 2008. Apparently, though, retail outlets haven't gotten that message just yet. (Glasgow also allowed that the price might reach $200--next year.)

If you're a penny-pincher who's of a mind to buy technology on the endangered species list, you could of course go out and buy a $99 HD DVD player.

You might also do well to heed the advice of TGDaily, which in musing about the Blu-ray price increases is also looking ahead to later this year when Blu-ray players gain some advanced features and the ability to connect to the Internet: "Many of the current Blu-ray manufacturers have announced new players that will support BD Profile 2.0, so my advice would be to buy a PS3 or wait for the next-gen players." (The PlayStation 3 game console offers Blu-ray and Internet connection already. But don't go looking for Blu-ray on the Xbox 360.)

But if you're still buying Blu-ray today and ruing having to shell out a few extra bucks, imagine how Toshiba feels. The consumer electronics giant, a leading backer of HD DVD, could see a whopping $986 million loss in its high-def DVD business for its current fiscal year, according to Japan's Nikkei business daily. Correction: This sentence initially had a "b" instead of an "m" in the dollar value of the loss. The expected loss is $986 million.)

[NowComeOn]

It should be 986 millions losses

It should be 986 millions losses not billions.

[ldva]

$986 million, not billion

From the Reuters story:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp is likely to book a 100 billion yen ($986 million) loss in its high-definition DVD business and post a full-year operating profit of around 250 billion yen, falling short of its outlook, the Nikkei business daily said on Thursday.

Shame, too, about the Blu-ray price gouging. According to this post (http://www.pcdoctor-community.com/pcdblog/2008/03/01/may-the-best-hd-win/), HDD had a lot going for it.

[The User]

Cool, a $986 billion loss

With a $986 billion loss, their revenue must be easily exceeding GDP of Japan.

[sanenazok]

Japan GDP, not even close

First of all, it was obviously a typo, get over it. Second, and most importantly, Japan's GDP is 4.5 TRILLION- it's the fourth largest economy in the world! They only get beaten out by the US, China, and India. Of course they do it with a population of 125 million. C'mon look stuff up before posting! This is even on wikipedia.

[Jon Skillings]

Typo fixed (argh)

Y'all are right. The loss is indeed expected to be $986 million. As I was typing, I clearly was thinking "That rounds up to a billion" and fell victim to one of the oldest typos in the book.

Thanks for catching that. And argh.

[epross]

Not surprised, but hopefully its temporary

I'm not surprised by the price increase, but I'd bet that it is the retailers jacking up prices and not the manufacturers. I think the manufacturers (especially ones like Sony who also sell content) want to get the players out there faster so that they can sell more blu-ray discs. In the long run that is where they are going to make their money. They need people to switch from DVD.
Retailers like BB, CC, etc. don't care as they sell it all so they make their money regardless of what they're pushing. If they can take advantage of the fact that HD players are no longer in competition and charge more for BD for those of us that want the next gen for our HDTV sets, then that is what they are going to do. However, one thing I've noticed over the years is that late winter and early spring seem to be the worst time for buying any electronics. Prices tend to be higher at this time of year then at any other. I don't know why, but I'd guess it has something to do with not being near a major holiday or event like "back to school". Still I hope that there is enough competition between the blu-ray manufacturers to encourage competition and keep the prices moving downwards. I just read that Oppo is in the design stages for a blu-ray player, hopefully that will shake the market up as they tend to delivery a huge range of features for a realistic price.
I just looked at my local BB and the Sony BDPS300 is $499 (Cdn) just before Christmas is was $599 (but on sale almost everywhere for $399 - usually with purchase of a Sony TV) so does this constitute a higher price? To my mind it is $100 cheaper, just the promotion has ended and you had to buy a TV to get that. Depends on your point of view I suppose.
Downloads are the future, but they're a long way off still.
http://hometheatermag.com/news/031108moviedownloads/

[jchastn]

price gougeing

I agree with this estimation. This is retailers trying to make back all the discounting they did on both the HD-DVD units AND the Blu-Ray units when they were in competition. Wait a few months and it will settle down.

BTW, the BDPS300 is at Costco for 349.00

[ibeetle]

And now the rest of the story

I notice the author forgets to mention that the reason why we
had so called cheap HD DVD players is that they were being out
sold (if you count Playstation 3 sales) so retailers had to move
them out, and that Toshiba was subsidizing the format for
retailers resulting in lower prices.

I am always amused by those that think of a new technology as
expensive when it is half the price of the previous technology it
is competing with to possibly replace.
When DVD players first entered the market they were $500 to
$700 dollars and DVD's were $30.00 to $50.00. And you had to
buy them... Blockbuster did not rent DVD for almost 2 years
after the format came out. I remember almost wetting my self
when the Blockbuster DVD rental shelf doubled from 10 to 20
movies over the course of 6 months.

If you adjust for inflation these so called expensive $400 Blu-
ray DVD players are about half what standard def DVD players
cost almost 15 years ago.

Finally, Blu-ray players are not increasing in price. The MSRP has
not been moved up... if anything it has been moved down. It is
just that retailers are no longer have sales as often or as good as
there were when there was two formats.
HD DVD supporters are just crying sour grapes. If HD DVD had
been the victor Toshiba would have ended there subsidy and
those players would have jumped up $100 in price.

[jrm125]

Precisely

You're completely correct. Had HD-DVD been the victor we'd have seen the same thing...recuperation of money lost on price cuts to fight the fight.

The fight's over, no more sales. But the prices haven't actually increased either, just returned to original, or actually dropped somewhat.

They'll drop anyway over time.

[squished]

However

In my opinion, the enjoyment and innovation factor going from DVD to Blu Ray is about half what it was going from VHS to DVD. Remember having to rewind tapes, fast-forward to favorite scenes, no bonus content, not to mention very lack luster sound and image quality? Blu Ray has a sharper picture and higher data capacity but not much else going for it. Given this, the price at which I can convince my wife (the CFO) to shell out for upgrading is half or less than what it would have been going from VHS to DVD.

[gsmiller88]

Of course they are...

Sony has to make up the billions they paid to the movie studios to
pick their format.

[celticbrewer]

so?

and if Toshiba hadn't done the same thing last year, the "war" would have been over a lot sooner

[pranojit]

I think we as customers should choose not the big corporations

I am only thinking if customers protested the Blue-Ray and still keep buying HD-DVD, that would be a major blow to movie productions for supporting Sony.
Competition is always healthy and Sony got rid of that and now will dominate the market.
Atleast, I will restrain myself from buying BlueRay and stick with HD DVD for sometime.

[celticbrewer]

There's competition

What are you talking about? It's not like Sony is the only company making BR players. There's plenty of competition.

People shouldn't be encouraged to buy standalone BR players now because of the V1 vs V2 specs. Is it coincidence that the players happen to be priced about the same as a PS3? When V2 players come out, I guarantee they'll be a lot cheaper- hopefully under the $200 mark. Sony probably doesn't want to hear the whining from people who bought a V1 player to learn it's not able to perform the newer (an in my opinion, pointless) advanced features.

[oxtail01]

Blue_balls

How ignorant is your comments? Competition destroyed HD just like competition destroyed Beta. You can't have it both ways just because you don't like Sony.

[jrm125]

Uhh...how?

How are you going to stick to HD DVD when they aren't even making media for it anymore?

[bruceslog]

Ditto

Bought my Toshiba HD DVD last week, getting movies for it now.
I Love it !

[fredtheviking]

Why?

The fact is Customer benefit if the Coorportations play nice with each other. HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray is just a tragic story of captialism at it's worst. Customers don't have to buy any HD technologies... Besides customers did decide, the vast majority who had HD format went with Blue-ray 2-to-1 (based on movie sales). There you go.

[lkrupp]

"tragic story of capitalism"

Neo-marxists never cease to amuse me.

[NMEN]

There's a lower priced, high quality alternative to Blu-ray

... called HD VMD. The New York Times just wrote about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/technology/10dvd.html?
ref=technology

According to the Times:

"A new system.. called HD VMD, for versatile multilayer disc, is
trying to find a niche. New Medium Enterprises, the London
company behind HD VMD, says its system?s quality is equal to
Blu-ray?s but it costs less... An HD VMD player costs less than a
Blu-ray because it uses the red-laser technologies found in
today?s standard-definition DVD players."

[lyntone]

sony

watch out , Sony has been know to put programs in some of their products, like root kits.,

[bruceslog]

Agreed and aware of that

This is a big reason I supported HD DVD.. I do NOT trust Sony at All !
And I have not purchased a Sony product in years, and will not buy anything from Sony.
So I bought my Toshiba HD DVD last week, and ordered the free movies.
I'm heading to Meijers one day super sale tomorrow to beef up my HD DVD list :)

[The_Decider]

$130 ROM Blu-ray player for your computer

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106227

Yeah, mixed reviews and it is an OEM. But it probably won't be long before players are reasonably priced.

IIRC, it took a while for CD and DVD burners to come down and writable DVD media is still a bit high, IMO.