Blu-Ray Wins, Consumers Lose.

Blu-Ray prices significantly increase, no competition
Posted on 18.03.2008 at 10:06 in Tech News by Martin

Blu-ray Disc players from Samsung, Sony and Sharp are now the most expensive they have been all year, presumably because HD DVD’s exit from the high-def disc arena has removed some of Blu-ray’s pricing pressure. Although HD DVD was always seen as a distant second in the HD format war, it constantly received attention because of the lower cost of its players. Because of this, standalone Blu-ray players were not moving off store shelves very steadily. The majority of Blu-ray Disc movie purchases have to date been for consumers who own a Playstation 3, which has BD playback capabilities.

In a move to expedite HD DVD’s downfall, Blu-ray manufacturers and retailers aggressively cut prices earlier this year, to the point where it was possible to buy a standalone BD player for less than $300. Now, however, according to Pricegrabber.com’s most recent information, the average price for Blu-ray hardware is around $400, which is right around where it was last year. The players from Samsung, Sony, Sharp and Panasonic included here are the least expensive on the market and also the most widely available. LG’s BH200 is a dual format player with support for Blu-ray and HD DVD.



Within just the last two weeks, te average prices for LG’s BH200 player and Sharp’s BD-HP20U have climbed significantly. Every standlone Blu-ray-specific player in the chart above is now more expensive than it was at the beginning of the year. Ironically, although Blu-ray has been declared the winner, it is right now about the worst time to invest in a standalone Blu-ray player.

Source: Tom’s hardware

 

alot of people who wanted a blue-ray player baught a ps3 insted of a standalone player as it worked out cheaper and had more then one function. this was due mostly to hi-fi magazines sugesting it

 

Yes thats likely to play a big part too. though im sure there is a little of that increase due to having no competition, though it has been blown out of proportion (like usual).

 

the mortgage problem is that the people are asking for loans and the banks are giving it to them. but then the borrowers end up not being able to pay because it got piled up. in the end, the banks don't get any money and reposess the house or their property and resell it. the bansk may or may not get the full amount back. in addition, the banks themselves are having problems and borrowing money from other companies and they themselves own money and have problems paying back.

the prices of blu ray is slowly declining and is expected that by 2010 or so, blu ray may take over and kill dvd or close to that.

it's bad for the player buyers but great for the ps3 buyers. when sony releases a new profile, the old one is screwed as you can't upgrade the profile [i believe i read it somewhere in at toms but i don't remember where]. so this means that sony can earn easy money by just releasing new profiles every now and then and force those enthusiast to purchase them.

 

dvd's will not get replaced fully that quickly, look at VHS. people have large collections and it takes time to swap adn there will not be a big enough fall in price in the next 2 years for that to happen as dvd players are next to nothing and still give people a great picture quality. the price of plasma/LCD screens need to drop for people to want to upgrade thieir hole system

 

Look's I'm going to buy a PS3 pretty soon, but I want them to decrease it's size like they did for PS2. That hunk of plastic and expansive hardware is too big, but then i'll regret buying it if a year or two later a better version comes out. They should really let you "upgrade" your hardware system by paying half the price of a newer version of the same system. That would be so nice ;D

 

it won't get any smaller well not for a while, not untill they can make small processers run cooler