Blu-ray Pricing Slowly Trending Downward
Blu-ray Pricing Slowly Trending Downward
Posted 11/20/2009 at 5:25am
| by Paul Lilly
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Blu-ray has had the high-definition market all to itself for quite some time now, yet here we are still talking about the format's adoption rate. That's because pricing, for the most part, has kept BD players out of the living room, but according to Taiwan-based BD player makers, that's about to change. Kind of.
Sources say the average retail price for Blu-ray players will drop from $193 to just $77. Such a significant price drop would surely boost consumer demand, but there's a catch. While prices are coming down, such a dramatic decrease won't occur until 2012, still more than a year away.
On the desktop front, blank media is expected to come down in price as well. By 2012, the average retail price is expected to drop from $5 to $1.50, the same sources say.
Image Credit: contrib.andrew.cmu.edu
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Lost_Intelligence
November 21, 2009 at 10:56am
Along with prices of media, they need to develop a consumer friendly version of DRM. There have been some half-assed attempts but nothing that says to the consumer "You're not a criminal, you have rights with your purchase".
Jox
November 21, 2009 at 10:31am
Screw the hardware - let's see some price drops in the cost of movies! Blu-Ray will continue to face adoption problems until the cost of a blu-ray movie is more in line with the cost of a DVD. 300-dollars may seem steep for a player, but it's a one-time cost. People won't bother with it if they have to pay exhorbitant prices for the discs.
-Jox
devin3627
November 20, 2009 at 9:42am
i wish everyone would just throw out the cd like looking media and go digital. hopefully the next playstation 3 will only come with one to be backwards compatible. in the console world, sony owns bluray so xbox360 is never gonna support that. way in the future, i hope the new xbox360 future console uses ssd so that they kill off blu-ray media. im personally tired of video game manufacturers being limited by the size of media! but then again im a hardcore gamer.
Tekzel
November 20, 2009 at 4:34pm
Uh, Blu-Ray IS digital. So IS DVD and CD. But, you knew that right? I think you meant, maybe, for them to go solid state? Or download only?
If so, there are problems with that idea. For one, the devices will be much more expensive and more susceptible for failure in case of solid state. For download, it has to be stored somewhere, and you have the same problem. With a disk, as long as you treat it with care and it is made out of quality materials, it will last MUCH longer.
I think the big problem is the cost of movies on blu-ray. My god, its obscene!
aviaggio
November 20, 2009 at 8:28am
Still waiting for BR burners to drop below $100 ($80 would be even better). It's really stupid. Had HD-DVD not folded it would be dirt cheap by now. Sony has no incentive to drop the prices because it has zero competition. The pressed discs are nearly the same price as DVDs now, with most new releases being under $20. There is simply no excuse for hardware prices to be so high, which I guess is why Sony is under investigation for illegal price fixing.
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