Blu-ray player sales (1 Viewer)

[Alfonso_M]

Blu-ray’s Market Dominance Will Be Delayed, Says ABI Research


"it will be 12 to 18 months before this market kicks into gear. Consumer electronics manufacturers need to introduce full-featured players and then get prices down to the $200 level. Until then, non-HDTV owners will certainly favor standard definition DVD players. A depressed economy in the United States could also lead HDTV and prospective HDTV owners to opt for upconverting standard players as they delay buying higher-ticket CE items. In addition, Blu-ray packaged media comes at a heavy premium over standard DVDs, although studios have brought prices down to the low $20-range for some titles."

 

[RealDraken]

I don't know about smaller display sizes, but with my PT-AE2000 and a 92" screen at 3.5 meter seating distance, the difference between SD DVD and bluray through my PS3 is astounding. Up-converted the SD DVDs are pretty decent, but when it comes to details the bluray titles simply blow them away.

And forget about SD DVD without upscaling. Even through component cables and with a pretty decent player like my Denon DVD-2900 it is rather grainy...

I'd say that anybody who says the difference between SD DVD and decent 1080p material is small, whether it be BD or HD-DVD, probably has too small a screen or sit too far away to take advantage of fullHD material at all...

 

[David_Jr]

BD too expensive for me right now. I have an A2 & A3. Watching V for Vendetta last night in SD on the A3 on my 50 Samsung plasma I had to doublecheck the disk to make sure it didn't have HDDVD by mistake (kidding). The upconverted picture is so good I can see why many wouldn't pay such high price to get into $ony's party. BTW looking for another scrap heap HD player leftover. I have no complaints with either machine.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I think the point of the thread is what is keeping sales down and it was suggested that many average consumers with smaller screen sizes don’t see a big difference. I don’t expect that even many high-end consumers have a 92” display. And I pretty much expect that everyone who does have that size has already gone HD.

I freely admit that yours is bigger than mine.

 

[Bo_Darville]

i have a sd-dvd player jukebox that holds 400 dvds. i enjoy the convenience of being able to select from my entire collection without inserting/removing dvd's each and every time. how far off in the future do you think consumers are from being able to purchase blu-ray jukebox players? that would likely make the difference for me

 

[Goko]

Yooooo, Bo,
Since Blu-ray currently fields only about 500 titles, how long do YOU think it will take for someone to manufacture a 400 Blu-ray jukebox player?

 

[Mendoza]

The main reasons as I see them are price and consumer confusion. Blu-ray players currently retail for $400-$500 and the discs sell for $25-$35 in stores. These prices put the technology outside the mainstream, for now. Furthermore, the consumer who wishes to take full advantage of an HD player has three main routes s/he can pursue: 1) S/he can walk into a store and probably get raped; 2) S/he can either pay a professional or persuade a friend/family member to purchase and set up a system for them; or 3) S/he can spend hours and days educating him or herself about display technologies, audio technologies, and reading reviews before making informed decisions.

Also, regarding how noticeable the difference is between DVDs (even upscaled) and Blu-ray/HD DVDs, there's no denying that the difference ranges from minimal to huge. I've found that most recent films, shot within about the last 3 to 5 years, offer maybe a 20-25% increase in quality. On the other hand, films older than 15 years, which are good enough to warrant a painstaking HD treatment (see: Goodfellas, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc...) offer maybe a 40-60%+ improvement, particularly when you compare the first-run DVD editions to their HD counterparts. For my money, these films are the selling point for Blu-ray -- not Spider-Man 3, not National Treasure, not even the re-release of Norbit featuring profile 2.0 compatibility and direct links to all your favorite Norbit websites(!)
Once we start seeing popular, quality titles being released like Alien/s and The Lord of the Rings & (og) Star Wars trilogies, this will most definitely contribute to greater interest in Blu-ray.

 

[andrew markworthy]

It isn't just a matter of the economy (though that's a major factor). It's also squarely the fault of the good folks behind BD:

(1) the discs are way too expensive - it's a basic economic rule that you can only charge high when there is high demand and/or the high price implies quality or exclusivity. But to the average consumer, BD isn't all that much better than SD DVD, it shows exactly the same movies, so why pay a lot more for so little extra in return?
(2) the players are too expensive - same argument as for (1)
(3) there's a limited range of titles relative to what's available on SD DVD; newsflash to marketing executives - the first gen buyers are guys aged 30+, and that means we want the old classics and mainstream catalog, not the lobotomised teen fodder that dominates the high def releases
(4) BD came to the market in an unfinished format - come on, just how much trust is the average consumer going to have in a format that is being changed all the time?
(5) in simple economics, the marginal return on improved picture and sound quality aren't worth the additional outlay for the average consumer, regardless of cost; quite simply, Joe Six Pack has not been convinced; a little less energy on squabbling over which was better, HD or BD and a bit more on telling everyone the good news about the big improvement in picture quality would been better all round in the long run. The fanboys for HD and BD didn't help here, either. Before buying into high def, I got tired of asking friends and colleagues who already had high def systems about how good high def was and getting back a lengthy explanation of why their system was better than the other one.
(6) the resolution of the format war helped nobody either - the 'well now we've found which is the VHS and which is the Betamax' is specious. Those who sat back on their complacent asses when BD won expecting sales to rise were just soooo wrong. That was the time for increased effort, not lazing around. When VHS won over Betamax, the battle was over a brand new market with a clear utility. In the case of high def, we're talking about what is to most consumers a small improvement in an existing product. It's like deciding which is the best set of golf clubs - it may help sales to existing golfers, but it won't make people take up the sport.
(7) non-US sales of players are not being helped by the unhackable region encoding. In Europe, we've got used to buying from the USA and the far east via the 'Net. Now that avenue is drying up (okay, not all discs are region encoded, but a lot are). You think BD discs are expensive in the USA? Try doubling the cost and you've got the UK prices.
(8) all the extra whistles and bells that BD is squandering the extra disc space on mean diddly-squat to most people; the extras simply confuse most consumers, and the much-hyped interactivity would be great if the market for BD was ten year old kids - but the main buyers are adults, and we have better things to do with our time.

 

[TravisR]

I still think that most people are missing that the figures that they are comparing are from January and February. The format war ended in January and so the clear winner boosted Blu Ray player sales for that month. After that bump in sales, they went back to normal. The article just twists the figures to say that the sales dropped.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Which is what I said above, but also contradicts your point about unfinished specs above.

 

[andrew markworthy]

EDIT: Erroneous post.

 

[cleverland]

I'll will have to agree with Alfonso on this except that I would expect purchases to increase dramatically by the upcoming holiday season when both the new Panny and Sony full featured models will be available. Hd audio has been a real challange to understand for most consumers even some of the advanced tech types due to the confusion of passing high def audio like DTS HD MA v.s. the ability to decode it. (PCM, bitstream, coax audio output jacks, decode, passthrough, only via HDMI etc etc) I believe both the Panny BD50 and Sony S550 will finally be able to decode all of the HD audio formats? The idea of "final format compliant and decodes all HD audio" may help consumer confidence levels along with holiday sales compitition..

 

[Goko]

Sales have dropped and as well they should. Most hi-end CE enthusiasts would have to be an idiot to BUY at this stage of the game. Recent history has shown how badly you can get "burned" by paying close to retail prices for hardware/software items when all you need to do is exercise a little self control and wait for holiday sales which are sure to come.

The formula for mass acceptance for Blu-ray may be easily achieved by simply duplicating the economic strategies standard DVD used a decade ago: cheap players, a lot of titles (PQ/AQ is irrelevant at this point) and lots of sales on software. No big deal!

Now whether the average CE customer is willing to replace their current collections with Blu-ray is the question that has yet to be answered.

 

[troy evans]

The problem with that is, if everybody adopted that attitude, those sales would never come. When and if they did come they would be firesales( see HD-DVD) and it would go bye-bye. Someone has to take the hit on high prices to have the format take off. If we don't then you can bet we wouldn't even be this far along right now.

 

[Goko]

Naaaaa. I don't buy into that, but feel free to make those economic sacrifices because I won't.
It's not the early adopters that determine if a format is a success or a failure. Ultimately it's consumers like me that are not on a crusade and simply BUY because it is our pleasure and the price is right.

 

[Dennis Oblow]

Blu-Ray will be a niche market, until players and software come down to near sd dvd prices. The only thing holding back Blu-Ray is greed.

 

[JeremyR]

I guess that blows that whole idea that the Format War was what was keeping people on the sidelines. HD DVD would have hit mainstream in much shorter order because of price. Blu-ray will probably get there, but it's going to be a long haul.

 

[troy evans]

It is early adopters, that are in some part, responsible for more affordable pricing for the masses. Like it or not. If it were any other way we would all have HD-DVD players and be saying bye to Blu-ray. HD-DVD couldn't even survive when they put out players at under $200 or even $100. The reason why is because the market just wasn't there at the time in the numbers it needed. Blu-ray dvd sales consistently outpaced HD-dvd sales in the software reports month after month. So, early adopters decided which hi-def format you will end up buying, if you do buy one. What makes you think they don't play a part in making the Blu-ray players affordable? The way it works is when new tech hits the market prices are high. As the money gets made back for developement prices start to drop because the company is now seeing profit. That's anything in the electronics field. Game consoles, tvs, stereos, phones, etc. etc.

 

[TravisR]

According to the article, sales had a small increase from February to March. The drop they note is between January and February and, as I've said, there was an increase when the format war ended in January so there was no way for the sales to go but down between those two months.

The reasons people are citing in this thread are all probably very valid reasons that Blu Ray isn't in every home in the country but that's not the topic of this thread (although it has become that).

 

[Scott-S]

There is no reason why Panasonic or Samsung would sale a player for less than it costs to build. (Sony can, because they hold a vested interest in getting the format cranking - thus the underpriced PS3)

The price will come down when the components come down. This takes time for the Manufacturing to start mass production.

This is not new info.

I guess I will bring it up again. DVDs took many years to come down in price. To expect a BD player to magically come down in price instantly is either naive, or you have an axe to grind against BD.

Believe me, the player manufacturers want the price to come down as well. They make their money in volume. They know that the current pricing is not realistic for the mainstream. They will drop the prices as soon as they can.

Besides, these new generation players are expected to also be top of the line audio decoders. Something DVD doesn't have to do. Since the early adopters are constantly moaning about how they want every player to be able to decode 100 different formats and be able to send the signal out any possible connector. This adds greatly to the cost to design and build these things. Audio and video decoder chips are not cheap. And since the players all need multiples of each to try and keep up, this adds a lot to the cost.