News Blu-Ray to cost $30 a time for films

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/02/09/blu_ray_35_dollars/

 

If the DVD/UMD bundles are at a significant discount to buying the two separately, I can foresee a flourishing market in eBay sales of the unwanted 'half' of bundles - i.e. you buy the bundle, keep the DVD and sell the UMD, or vice versa.

As for Blu-Ray pricing, I don't think $30 / £25 is all that bad to be honest. The early DVDs cost that sort of price, and you can bet that the price will fall fairly quickly. You have to remember that the cost of mastering a high def disc will inevitably be higher, and we are told that, at least initially, manufacturing costs will be significantly above DVD costs. For what will be, until Blu-Ray players fall to the sub-£200 mark, HD TV sets become the norm, and PS3 is launched with its integrated player, a niche market, I don't think the price premium is unjustified.

 

$30, hah!

Fat chance of anyone *I* know buying movies at that price, resolution be damned.

I don't buy movies unless I catch them at the $14.99 new release price.

Sony can take their $30 pricetag and put it where their rootkit went.

 

ah trekari... you'll change your tune one day... dvd's started off at that cost and i'm sure you would have been one of the guys who said "who needs dvd.. i've got a VCR that can record too!

Beta or VHS?

 

Oooh goodie, an overpriced format that offers no discernable difference over the current one bundled with one that can only be watched on an overpriced device with a 4" screen, all costing me about 30x more than what I currently pay for movies.

Yep, I think I'll be sticking with my current free movie rentals + dvdshrink method.

fev- do care to note that sales at $30 a pop for DVDs weren't that good. Not to mention that the difference between VHS and DVD is MUCH more noticible that that between DVD and HD media.

 

Do you have eyesight problems? The difference is patently obvious even on a 17" PC monitor, and especially on the larger LCD TV screens that are becoming more and more popular.

Sales were hardly slow - DVD was the most successful new media ever. Having said that, of course early sales weren't as high as sales now, but that's only partly to do with price. A lot is to do with the fact that DVD players weren't particularly widespread until the current generation of consoles came out with DVD drives built in, and the Chinese manufacturers started producing absurdly cheap players.

I agree that the quality difference between VHS and DVD is pretty significant (though I argue that the difference between DVD and HD is pretty big too), and of course DVD had a host of other advantages too:
(1) smaller form factor
(2) discs don't need to be rewound - random access
(3) play CDs also
(4) play in computers
(5) disc quality doesn't deteriorate with multiple viewings
(6) multi-language soundtracks and subtitles
(7) digital surround sound
(8) directors' commentaries and other 'extras'
(9) multi-angle, popular in a certain *ahem* niche market

Generally, even if you don't give a damn about picture quality and are happy to watch on a 14" black and white portable TV, you'd still see benefits moving to DVD. Not sure that the HD formats will enjoy the same runaway success because only videophiles with what is currently classed 'high-end' hardware will see any difference, there aren't the practical benefits over DVD that DVD has over VHS, and, TBH, DVD picture quality is more than acceptable to the majority of people.

 

Price goes up so does piracy. Internet speeds go up along with bittorent tates. The movie studios compain about piracy but they just make things worse.

 

Personally I'm happy with 1.4GB Xvids for now, I'm not dying for a quality increase, I am dying for some quality movies, but then, hollywood isn't into that sorta thing are they?

 

I'll watch 700Mb Xvids quite happily so long as the story is conveyed it really doesn't matter. High quality is what I go to the cinema for.

 

I love how people complain so much without putting any thought into it. It's fun to flame the big guys, isn't it?

Let's look at it from this perspective -- there are huge teams of Sony workers who have put their last few years into developing Blu-Ray, from concept to market. That means that Sony have lost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars paying these people and paying for the tons of prototype technology they've been using. Now I know you love to say "omg, good, cuz sony r suck and i want them to lose money cuz they suck", because the general mindset of the kind of people who make these comments (and of course you're not the only one, there are tons and tons of others crawling the internet looking for a place to complain) is that all large corporations are bad, yada yada yada. Guess what -- I bet you've used a CD in your life. And I bet you've benefitted from VHS, DVD, the color TV, a radio or anything that uses radio waves, in-home hifi (or so, I don't know how "high" you can rate something like a Bose surround sound), or any of the other major advances that have been made due to large corporations pouring large amounts of money into development. And that's not even looking at how they continue to develop after the huge number of products that have had that large amount of money poured into development that have failed.

New technology costs more money, news at 10.

It's not like it's all Sony/Apple/Microsoft/Creative/Intel/<insert large corporation here>'s fault that they need to make back some of the money they spent on development. Also, as the technology becomes more and more popular, more and more manufacturers start to produce the technology, manufacturing processes become less expensive, things happen to allow them to take the price down. It's not like they're saying "this costs $2 to manufacture and develop, let's make $28 off it in profit". While any large buisness loves to make money (or any buisness, or any person for that matter), that's not how the world operates.

6 or 7 years ago, when I bought my first DVD player, it was some huge 6-disc job from Toshiba. If I recall correctly, it cost me upwards of $400, when you can get a 6-disc DVD player for probably less than half of that right now. I also bought my first DVD (Saving Private Ryan, for the record) for $35.

Then again, I bought my first PC for a hair over $2,300 -- and it was an IBM 286 with 64k RAM and a 2MB hard drive. Of course prices have come down and I can get a computer that's much, much faster than that for three or four hundred today; welcome to the world.

</rant>

Anyway, back on topic: as far as the dual DVD and UMD thing goes, I think it will fit into such a small market, the market of PSP owners who don't own those DVDs and prefer to own it on both platforms, that it won't succeed. Then again, the UMDs are already made for these movies, and the DVDs are already made. Why not package them together for those who would benefit? Honestly, for the small market that it fits into, it's a nice money-saving opportunity.

 

i dont know if blu-ray will be popular because of the drm.
maybe we will se a reaperance of the rootkit with the blu-ray.
and i think that blu-ray vs hd-dvd will go the same path as dvd-r and dvd+r.
lets wait and see.

2 enormous things will happen:

blu-ray/HD-DVD and windows vista, after the lauch of these 2 the world will not be the same again.


edit/
another thing

why am i gona buy something for 30$ that will only bee seen one time, is ilegal to lend to a friend or resell it and you cant see in ublic places because more people that the buyer will be seing it?

 

much the same as when DVD began, they were expensive and VHS still ruled, very few people jumped straight on the bandwagon. But Gradually (and most noticable in places like blockbust) DVDs took over....now u can't find a VHS in a rental store unless it's in some bargin bin.

I reckon we may see Blue-Ray do just as well in a couple of years. As for me, i'll wait until it's cheaper and then consider a BlueRay drive for my pc.

 

Hands up everyone whose only travel + movie watching experience has been on a plane or a ferry? I don't even know anyone who can be bothered watching them in a car- and its not even that expensive now. I've seen one guy watching a portable DVD on the bus, and one guy on a train with a PSP. The bundling idea will help this out some... but the core idea, watching films on screens smaller than 17" is pants.

 

Blu-ray release is not quite the same as the DVD release, DVD's showed a huge improvment on people's exhisting TV set, enabled 5.1 sound, had lots of extra features, could select where you wanted to start, and the medium itself was smaller.

Blu-Ray on the other hand needs HDTV screens, are no smaller than DVD's and also has to still fight a format war. Now mainstream DVD recorders are only just reaching prices that people that shop in dixons and argos will pay i.e. the mainstream.

and as to the initial cost releasing in two price bands proves to me that they are able to sell them cheaper but want to make as much money as possible on the early adopters(and why shouldn't they). Unfortunatly I only buy movies at the £5-£6 pound mark which these days is two months after release and can see no point currently in updating my media library from DVDs (like i did with our videos), when there is little to tempt me feature wise.

Now don't get me wrong I can see the point of HD media for computers and consoles as they hold more data but I still see Blu-Ray and HD-DVD being a niche market for a couple of years yet in the mainstream movies market.

 

i for one refuse to pay more than £10 for a DVD, and for me to pay that much it has to be an amazing film in the first place... if they're gonna charge £25, then that cuts me out of the price loop meaning i'll to get them off ebay or otherwise.

 

I knew this was coming, but it's to be expected really.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest though...there's no point in me purchasing a Blu-Ray player because I don't own a HDTV. I don't have a HDTV because there's no HD content (UK) around, I'm not a console gamer, and it's still incredibly overpriced.

I'm the type of person that won't buy new tech unless I'm forced to (well, not counting PC's).

As for UMD's...what the hell is the point?! Last time I checked, UMD films were only slightly less than the 'proper' DVD version. I just don't understand why people would actually pay money for inferior video/sound quality...

IMO, UMD = Minidisc = Betamax.

Skutbag, I can see what you're saying, the ability to watch video on the bus/train/car is great, but why should we have to pay stupid prices to receive video on a media type that will only ever work with 1 system.
I'd imagine that most people (the ones with brains) will just shell out for a large memory stick, and rip their own DVD's...

 

My big issues is if the new Blu-Ray players will play DVD... I don't want to have to rebuy my collection just becouse 4yr from now my current dvd players dies (like it will last even that long) and i can't buy another one or a player that will play them.

 

Do not use that kind of language here, thanks
1080p vs 480p No difference what are you still using a 5 year old CRT Display, even on my 1600 res laptop I can tell that the difference between HD and SD is night and day.
Here go look at a picture one at 720 resolution and another at 1900 resolution and if you still don't see a difference you gotta get your eyes checked.

 

There's definately a difference but it's whether you feel that you need the extra definition and from what I'm reading most people are happy with DVD quality or Xvid quality.

 

Exactly.

I love the quality of the HD stuff I downloaded - so crisp. But I'm not gonna go out and spend bucketloads of cash on a new HDTV + Blu-Ray player...I've got better things to spend my money on.