RSSWarner begins aggressive Blu-ray Disc pricing strategy
By Ed Oswald | Published July 15, 2008, 12:59 PM
The home video arm of the studio will cut the prices it charges retailers to order its titles in the holiday quarter, which translates to significant savings for consumers.
With Blu-ray player prices likely to sink further in anticipation of the holiday buying season, and a weakening economy cutting down on consumer spending overall, Warner Home Video's decision to cut its wholesale prices for Blu-ray movie titles may make sense.
Home video revenues actually seem to be surviving the downturn so far. Data from Home Media Research indicates spending rose 1.6% to $10.77 billion in the first half of 2008 over the same period last year.
Analysts say that data from the last significant recession nearly 20 years ago, video sales and rentals essentially held their own while other segments saw revenues down. The answer may be simple: The reusable characteristic of a purchased movie makes it more economical compared to a one-time event.
Even though a recessionary environment may be playing a part in the price cuts, it is more likely a lot of the drop has to do with shrinking production costs, and wider distribution of Blu-ray. Having HD discs nearer to prices of DVDs will only help to grow the market.
The cheapest catalog titles would cost about $11 per disc to the retailer. Among those titles would be Clockwork Orange, Swordfish, The Fugitive, and The Aviator. Currently these titles average around $20 to $25 in stores.
With the discounts to retailers, prices would be likely to fall between $14 and $17. In most cases, this would be only slightly above what the standard DVDs cost presently.
Newer catalog titles such as 300, I Am Legend, and Ocean's 13 would also see some discounts, although not as significant. Whereas these titles generally fall between $24 and $30 now, the new prices should generally be less than $20.
Clockwork Orange !?!?
Don't tell me there is still a master around with better source quality than a DVD can handle.
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|All those movies suck!
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|Like they say about opinions
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|> Blu-Ray
Dude, I had forgotten this antiquity was still alive, LOL!
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|$20 is still too much for a movie.. 10-14$ is about right.. Maybe...
But why use disc's anymore anyways.. VOD is much cheaper...
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|Last time I checked VOD didn't include good sound, the extras, or the ability to watch a show over and over again for months even years on end.
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|Netflix all the way.
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|You said it! My movie purchases stopped the day I started my Netflix account. For 13 or 14 a month, I have 2 movies out at a time. I end up watching 8 movies a month for the price of buying one - some of which I've never watched a second time.
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|WOW!
Price reductions on the movies?!
Thats soo much better than a reduction in the crappy players! Hmm lets see purchase the only two players on the market worth while getting as the others don't support either audio or profile upgrades (700$ player from Panasonic or pioneer i think (probably mistaken)and the POS3)
Either way this is the exact reason why this is going to fail.
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|Right now, the media is way too expensive. The fall of media prices on DVDs happened much faster than the players themselves, which spurred adoption there.
You're right, players are still expensive.. but it is still fairly new. Either way, Blu-ray probably has a 12-month window yet before streaming HD video becomes viable.. so they better get moving.
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|With the caps the ISP's want streaming HD video is a dream.
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|Streaming HD becoming viable? Pfff yeah right. I'm sorry but I don't see VOD having any real advantages over Blu-ray.
A. You still have to purchase a player (PC/Console). Cheapest ones are about $350.00.
B. You have to pay an big ISP bill to use VOD. Combine that with your download price you have no price advantage over optical discs.
C. VOD has no standards in place. Microsoft of course is pushing Windows Media. Apple is of course pushing quicktime. You have Sony pushing either some mpeg format or some proprietary format of theirs. You have Adobe in the mix as well as Divx. Is this really any better than this profile crap that everyone complains about?
D. Most importantly VOD is not simple. Did we forget about the generation that couldn't fix the blinking 12:00 on their VCR? Explaining to them what they need (hardware, ISP, etc) is not simple. Blu-ray disc players aren't exactly easy to hook up, but they do sell everything you need in one place plus the installation services to go with it in one place.
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|Not true...
1) Netflix/ Roku player is doing some cool things, for some reason they're doing much better with their launch than Mac did.
$ 100
2) If you have BluRay..I'm guessing you're with the times and have high speed DSL already.
3) This part I agree with, but who cares....it's all in the box (PC or otherwise)
4) Play, Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward...Can't get much more simple than that.
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|Simply look at the percentage of households running cable TV. Cable TV == ISP. Technologically they are almost ready to roll out cheapo VOD set-top boxes.
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|The problem comes with compressing all of these HD broadcasts onto a single signal. Comcast already ruined most of the HD Quality video when they compressed so many channels into a rather small amount of bandwidth. I honestly think that once fiber to the curb becomes more common place is when we will see more of a likelihood for HDVoD.
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