Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

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I am not sure about this yet thought it was worth mentioning


There is a lot more info

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

I'd rather see them keep the prices constant and up the bit rates.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

I'm ALL for this.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

It's good, but Warner was never really that bad on price. Fox needs to do this.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Exactly. Of the major studios, Warner is the one LEAST in need of price decreases.

Not that i'm complaining, mind you!

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

And include lossless audio.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

If others drop prices, Fox will have to as well.

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EDIT** I need someone to explain this part to me:


What's the concern here? That the studios won't actually be turning a profit on the product?

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Mike,
That's how I read it, Warner again is trying to take the lead and move this format forward with more reasonable pricing that hopefully will get the other studios to adopt too. Warner has previously stated that they need to increase profitability and probably figures one way to do that is to increase sales in this troubled economy by jumpstarting this format into a mainstream market product.

As to your question. Perhaps they're talking about oversaturating the market with lower pricing has caused the SD DVD market to be stagnate in growth. I think they're wrong there because people are still buying software, but to expect them to do so at that same rate for several years might be unrealistic especially with so many options for the consumers entertainment dollars.





Crawdaddy

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Yes, sounds about right. Good news.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

As others have said, it takes one to start the ball rolling. As long as the quality of transfers doesn't also decline, this is a good thing.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

This pricing thing sounds good, but Warner needs to focus on including lossless audio and less DNR on all of their titles. Their minimalist approach to audio and video is frustrating especially since they own so many good titles.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Yeah, we heard you, but this thread is about BRD pricing.





Crawdaddy

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

I cannot imagine how lowering the price on SD material has caused the DVD market to stagnate. But, then again, I'm no marketing or economics expert--which is why I ask the question.

But, if that's what they believe, it seems like it would definitely benefit them to make the BD market as attractive as possible. It gets suckers like us to upgrade and will really appeal to all those non-hobbyists who want to take advantage of those new HD sets in their living rooms.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Yep, and retail outlets as well. Media preparation & manufacturing is only a small fraction (at most 1/20) of the cost of your Blu-Ray. The rest goes to studio, distributor, & retailer profit, promotions, transportation costs, & down a variety of rabbit holes. With DVDs becoming a "commodity" product, margins have fallen a long way. In a market of the existing very large size, there's still enough for profit to make new releases attractive, & enough money for marketing & so on (although there are a lot of small-time releases which don't get much publicity), even though a lot of the costs (manufacturing, packaging & transportation to an extent, &c.) are basically fixed.

Now, take a market which is at most a few percent of the DVD market, and try to impose the DVD pricing structure on it. There just isn't enough money in the pool to support serving that market. The demand for BD has to grow to some considerable extent before prices can fall, which is in a microcosm why introducing any new product is always a chicken-and-egg question. In the case of DVD the drop came somewhat early because a substantial part of the cost was soaked up by, e.g., losses at Internet retailers trying to undersell the market, which means your DVDs were paid for by their shareholders or venture capitalists. Unless you can sucker somebody into doing that again, the BD market is either going to have slow price drops & slow expansion, or go the way of HDDVD and collapse.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Hopefully they'll lower prices worldwide and not just in the US Domestic market.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

My sheer speculation and guess is, when you drop the prices too low/too soon, people buy up all the titles they want (sooner than otherwise) at a lower price. If you keep the price up somewhat higher, consumers will still buy the titles they want but at a slower pace. Hence, the studios make more money with the higher prices even though it's over a longer period of time.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Very smart move in my opinion. $30 a film is killing the format, especially in this economy.

The entertainment companies need to sacrifice some profit in the short run in exchange for more volume, more excitement and more market penetration. The long run profits would be tremendous if most people bought in.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Remember, time is a factor. Companies have to consider cash flow, not just overall profit. It's better to make $2 today and $2 tomorrow than to make $5 tomorrow if you need to meet payroll today.

Lee is right, though -- DVD has changed the nature of consumer video collecting. DVDs *are* a commodity. The faster that studios can get BDs to a commodity pricing level, the sooner those long-term mass-market profits will start rolling in.

I think that, currently, companies are trying to make the $5 today, at the expense of building that mass market for the long term.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Fully agreed. At some place like Best Buy. I see $34.95 and $39.95.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

So does anyone think this plan became a victim of the economy?

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Keep in mind it says "participating catalogue titles" not "new releases". Warner is trying to keep interest up on titles that will not generate sales under their own steam. People who have been lifelong fans of films like 2001 and other catalogue titles will take advantage of this, as will bargain-hunting film fans, in the same way that they did when catalogue titles on DVD started dropping in price to ~$10 in 2000, depending on the studio. Retail stores and some software manufacturers would like to keep prices as high as possible for as long as possible, because it affects their profit margins, but if the old product isn't selling, what's the standard procedure? LOWER THE PRICE.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

I could be wrong but I thought it was happening. The first post says that If the retailer is paying $11, I'd imagine the $15 price tag at Target and occasionally Best Buy for WB titles like A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Troy, etc is the results of that.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

no, the results of their brilliant roll out can be found here

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...il-2009-a.html

put out crap deep catalog, give it a standard jacked up MSRP, give deep discounts to retailers to buy in and allow them to sell at what should be the everyday normal price (if not less) 14.99, make it appear like the consumer is getting a bargain .... epic fail

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

My fault for phrasing the question poorly.

The titles listed in the article linked in the first post continue to be offered at bargain prices. That's why they keep showing up at Amazon on markdown. But the unspoken suggestion in the article was that this would introduce a new approach to Blu-ray pricing, and not just for "lesser" titles; the list included The Departed, 300, The Fugitive, I Am Legend, Ocean's 13.

The announcement in the linked thread looks like a different promotion. Maybe it's meant as a replacement, but in general my sense is that Blu-ray street prices are heading up, not down.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

That is the sense I am getting as well.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

You are mixing ideas. The thread is about studio pricing on hd-dvds e.g. MSRP, not about retailers using the format as loss-leaders.

It's really quite simple. Hollywood makes great movies and they make profits on the film in first release. Then DVD and SD revenue becomes sweet gravy.

That's the difference between the music sales and video sales business. Music sales are it. Nothing else to depend on to help turn a profit whereas video sales can help turn a so-so film into an effort that ended up with a positive balance sheet.

Sure, studios will want to keep up prices but that's just part of the marketing game. It's got precious little to do with their costs (as you have indicated yourself) and quite a bit about selling you something you don't need for as much as they can. Nothing new there.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Well, you are replying to an 8-month-old post.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

Sheesh. I guess I have to realize that at the right time and at the right moment I'm capable of practically anything.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

And what an eventful 8 months they've been. A lot of old arguments about the economics of Blu-ray adoption may (and I stress "may") have to be reexamined.

re: Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008

I work at Walmart, and I can tell you the VAST majority of customers think that $19.95 is way too much to pay for a brand new movie on regular old DVD. They'll buy it, but they'll make sure somebody hears how unhappy they are. I can't blame them really.....I mis the good old days of $14 new releases as much as anyone else.

Bottom line, anyone who seriously thinks the general public will ever get used to paying $30 for a single movie is out of their gourd.