RSSSony says $200 Blu-ray players are still a year away
By Ed Oswald | Published March 5, 2008, 5:11 PM
Despite discussion that the company needs to reduce prices in order to advance the format, Sony still seems to be mostly ignoring those calls.
Price continues to be the biggest argument against Blu-ray, even though it is no longer facing serious competition from HD DVD. It is no surprise that analysts and press have begun pressing for answers from the company on this issue.
Such was the case at a Sony press conference in New York Wednesday. While the gathering was meant more to update the media on Sony's overall efforts, Blu-ray obviously came up as a subject of discussion.
Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow said to reporters that a $200 player "could happen" next year, but didn't mention a target time frame, according to an account by Gizmodo. He did however offer that he expected a $299 player to be available this year.
This would match up well with NPD Group's projections that there is still no real market for high-definition discs until 2009, when it saw the price of players falling below $200, and a broader array of content available
Glasgow also offered that the company expects to sell some five million Blu-ray players in 2008, however this includes sales of the PlayStation 3 along with its set-top systems.
Ed, I see what you did there, you petended there will be NO $200 Blu-ray players for a year.
What Sony actually said, was that Sony won't be selling any $200 Blu-ray players for a year or so...
This news article is jsut flaimbait for those that still can't understand that HD DVD was heavilly subsidised.
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|For a 'battle' that is supposedly over, there sure is a lot of whining about HD-DVD... How many different formats of CD's were there? Oh ya, ONE. How many DVD formats? Hmmm, just ONE.
Now, we've got ONE HD format, and instead of manufacturers having to hedge their bets on two platforms, they can build to one spec. This means MORE manufacturers will build drives, and stamp discs, and the prices will come down as competition between manufacturers increases.
Personally, I don't think Sony, Toshiba, or anyone, was making money on $99, $199 or even $299 players... there is a huge IP investment here of billions of dollars, that the measly HD-DVD and Blu-ray sales have no where near recuperated.
I'm not sure why we expect HD players to be $99 when it was only a couple years ago that DVD players really broke through that barrier... and I'm not sure you can put 'Durabrand' $49 players next to a Toshiba or Sony and say they are great...
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|They have no competition, so they have not incentive to reduce price. They can now gouge customers a little longer.
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|Now, the competition will be between manufacturers to BUILD players cheap, rather than between the formats' champions wasting money trying to convince us which player to buy.
As always, no one is forcing anyone to buy anything...
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|Rent or VOD.. Why do we need to feed Sony anymore.. so BlueRay is a way to sell a game.. people get a life.. Wii is way better anyways..
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|Wow yah like I didnt see that one coming.
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|No hurry for them now. There is no competition. Although if they dawdle long enough, we might get HD downloads by the time Blu-ray becomes affordable for the mainstream.
What I don't get is why Blu-ray is so much dearer than HD-DVD? The technology is basically the same, just slightly different disc design. Why is it that HD-DVD was flogging players for under $100 last year... and Sony reckons 2 years later they might get $200 players? Are they just trying to milk the market or have they really dropped the ball recently when it comes to manufacturing?
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|"Are they just trying to milk the market"
If you looked up Sony in the dictionary, that's what the definition would be.
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|probably because no one was buying them and they were getting killed by Blu-ray.
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|Is that why they were ALWAYS cheaper?
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|No its because they didn't try and BS the public into buying an unfinished product. They rolled out the product to compete with DVD whereas Sony started their BS at the beginging saying that production costs were so high and that is the reason why the need to sell it at this much. To reduce the price right now would show that they spread lies and have inferior products.
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|I remember back in 2001 when I made the jump to the next break through in video player technology, the DVD Player.
At that time, it was 5 years after the DVD player initially came out in 1996. I payed $250 for my RCA DVD player 5 YEARS after it came out.
DVD players once had a price tag +$1000!
I laugh when I see people cry about a next generation player technology costing more then $200 when it just became the next generation standard less then a month ago.
Now that it's become the motion picture standard for the next generation, far more manufacturers will start investing in blu-ray player production, supplies will increase and prices will fall.
If anything, the HD war was keeping manufactures from taking a multi-million dollar investment gamble on producing a hd format that could be dead in the following months...
lol... but wow. Do people on here have amnesia over the 90's - DVD and the 80's - CD?
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|I disagree here. I don't think you are going to see mass adoption of Blu-ray players in the market place at all now actually. To be perfectly honest, even though Blu-ray has won the "format war", I have a sinking suspicion that comsumers may just decide to sit the rest of this game out and stick to their considerably less expensive upconverting DVD players until the follow-up technology to Blu-ray (next generation HD disc format) hits the market in late 2008/early 2009.
There is a lot of bad feeling in the market right now with respect to Blu-ray. I don't expect consumers to be rushing out into stores to embrace Blu-ray with open arms any time soon. I would expect to see upconverting standard DVD players to continue to outsell Blu-ray by a ratio of 99-to-1 for at least the rest of this year, and possibly even longer.
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|I agree many people didn't jump to DVD until recently and now that they are building their collections are they going to be impressed with spending more money on another disk format not to mention an over priced player??. No I for one am not. F SONY
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|**** Blue Ray download those mkv's and burn them to dvd's and play away on your popcorn hour media player ;-)
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|I've been looking for one of them but they are no where to be found. I have a ton of those wonderful MKV files sitting on my medial center PC.
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|No surprise here.
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|what are they tring to get HD-DVD back in the picture ???
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|Sony already went through its fire sale craze during direct competition with HD-DVD. $200 price drop in 1 year and $400 million to Warner has done the trick. No need for any further price cuts with no competition.
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|HD war was over weeks ago but no matter, buckle up for more HD war commentary... and looks like we're about to take another trip on the piss and moan express.
The aftermath of it all appears to have left some pretty scorned HD-DVDers.
Does anyone want to pop their bubble and tell them that the red laser wavelength(650 nm) wasn't going to last forever?
In the digital storage industry where every nanometer counts, the next inevitable jump would be to a smaller wave length, which is offered by blu-ray at 405 nm.
HD-DVD was just new tires on the same old car.
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|If you are going to bash people you might want to get your facts straight before doing it. Otherwise you have a case like the above where you come out looking like an idiot. If you had any idea of what you were talking about you would know that HD-DVD uses a Blue laser as well.
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|Oh, look. You made his face turn red; or should I say blu?
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|"Glasgow said to reporters that a $200 player "could happen" next year"
HD-DVD players were already significantly less expensive, yet Blu-Ray was chosen. Now they want to complain about the price. Feel smart now?
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|This only reinforces my comments from before. Long before Blu-ray ever really takes off and gets widely accepted in the marketplace among mainstream buyers, a new optical disc format based on an ultra-violet laser will come to market and completely steal Blu-ray's thunder with prices at or below Blu-ray's price point and multi-player disc capacities from 250GB to 500GB. Watch and see.
Of course Blu-ray won't be lowering prices any time soon....why should they? Their only major compeitior, HD DVD, is now gone. Now they are in a (collective) monopoly position in the market. Of course they are going to now try and soak the consumers for as much as they can for as long as they can.
And this should come as a surprise to anyone? HD DVD was the ONLY thing that provided ANY incentive for the Blu-ray camp to EVER lower their prices. IF it wasn't for HD DVD coming to market, you would still be paying $700 to $900 for your new Blu-ray payers today.
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|I feel so special that Blu-ray won the format war. Its so much better even without another format even close to its capabilties its still more then $200.
Sony will NOT lower the price unless something better comes along. So I hope a company as something to win the war against Sony or sue for perhaps price fixing?
Sony could afford to take a loss on the Blu-ray players at this time. Perhaps I will look into the legality of going after Sony for price fixing.
It was one thing when they were the "better" format to be more expensive. Now there is nothing and you can't even say they are the "newer" format either.
I am going to say the following and I hope people agree with me.
Sony is more evil then Microsoft and George W. Bush combined into one devil looking creature.
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|hmmm a $200 profile 1.1 player.... what can't get internet content and no PIP. well how much for that player you say 2.0 profile... what $599. uhhh no thanks. Damn wished HD-DVD had won could a got one for $99 and it could do all that. You say PS3 is upgradable to 2.0. I got a new reciever that handle bit streaming HDMI 1.3 can the PS3 pass through the raw data. what.. It can't be upgaded. crap that won't do. So I'll guess I'll wait for 2 years for the price to come down.
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|Every fanboi that brings that POS console to the argument is still waiting on a good game. Until then they can enjoy the buggy experience of the game selection they have now.
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|This is why I will never buy Blu Ray movies, only rent and eventually copy them. I can't stand the fact that I would have to give money to Sony for any reason as they now have a monopoly on HD movies.
You just know there will be an open platform codec to view pirated and converted BD movies in full HD like DivX at some point in the next year or two.
Someone needs to come up with a new optical disc format that can hold these movies so we don't have to pay Sony for the blanks either.
It's coming, you know it is. Just like when P2P file sharing programs got wiped out, along came torrents.
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|"Someone needs to come up with a new optical disc format that can hold these movies so we don't have to pay Sony for the blanks either."
For now you can just use HDD's for the movies. They're cheaper than what a blu-ray player would be, even an external 2tb hard drive.
Something better might come out anyway. Netlix said they do plan on making everything 'Instant Watch'. It's already DVD quality, I wounder when we'll start seeing HD quality stuff. They do have that rumor going around too of Netflix teaming up with Microsoft so you can 'Instant Watch' their stuff on your Xbox too.
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|Look in the newsgroups you will find tons of blu ray stuff in there in all their 1080p glory. Best of all the movies are no where near the size they are on bloray but look amazing. I forget the file ext that they use but a very small download and everything is good.
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|Unfortunately your average consumer does not display any level of technological sophistication so they won't hurt too badly from these actions. And granted its just nice to press a button and things work - haven't had that pleasure for a long time :)
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|Hey Hollywood remember the argument made by the fanbois that they need the 50g disk space for games? Now Metal Gear solid won't fit on one disk???
I agree soon you will see these available on the web and Sony won't make a cut off these either.
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|Verison is already adverstising HD movies uncompressed through FiOS. Give it a year and they will be ready for ON Demand etc.
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|I read about that too. These dumb s***s.
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|Of course they are enjoying the money grab with prices rising for blu ray players.
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|Surprise, surprise...
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