Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

This was not the case everywhere (shipping to Canada was expensive then, not to mention the exchange rate at the time was brutal). I remember DVD prices in Canada in that period (as late as 2002--USED DVDs at local video stores were 20$ plus) and current BD prices in Canada are, if one takes inflation into account, cheaper than SD DVD was at the same period. Moreover, far fewer people in that period were regular internet users, so the exposure to such prices was far smaller than today. So, all told, the "more affordable" DVD prices of yore were not nearly as widely known as you might think (and, thus, their impact on market behaviour was likely less important than one might think).

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

Agreed. The insane deals/prices (that eventually helped cause the dot.com crash) did not really benefit everyone. Only those of us who were willing to shop online in those early days (and deal w/ such things as webserver crashes, eg. 800.com had loads of that, IIRC, among other things) benefited from them. The average B&M shopper did not benefit. And then, there was the repercussion of the dot.com crash when one considers the big picture.

DVD pricing at B&M retail level back then was not that much lower in absolute terms than BD pricing today. Basically, we're talking maybe ~$5 diff in most cases, which is roughly what you get from 10 years of (relatively low) inflation. Prices have not been *artificially* inflated at all. Just lots of people have short memories and/or don't look at it objectively -- and only compare BD prices to the recent trend of bargain bin DVD pricing. In fact, online DVD prices were actually *artificially* deflated back in late 90's up until the dot.com crash (and retailers like Hollywood Video paid for it w/ near-billion-dollar failures like Reel.com, IIRC).

Of course, I'm not suggesting that the studios and hardware makers should not continue to (gradually) bring prices down (just like w/ DVD before). But some of the complaints about prices are really overdone.

Personally, I don't mind going a bit backwards w/ my movie shopping habit and do a little renting w/ more selective buying. Buying way more than I have time to watch (and/or rewatch) isn't exactly the best thing anyway...

_Man_

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

I was already cutting back on DVD buying and substituting some rentals even before doing the Blu-Ray upgrade week before last. I got up to three little "DVD bookcase" units plus two shelves on a regular bookcase and still had a couple dozen DVDs stacked up next to the TV on any given day. Even when many of them were bought for $15 or less the mindless library-building has a downside.

I just culled out and gave away 40-50 titles and will not be buying any more SD DVD's except for a few television show seasons here and there. And we're going to try to rent instead of buying Blu-Ray titles whenever we can, hopefully keeping the ratio up to 2-3 rentals per purchase in the future. That'll still mean getting rid of another 50+ old DVD's eventually because we're not buying any more shelves...if it can't fit in 20 linear feet of shelf space then we don't need it!

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

That was my first DVD player, and I got it around the same time, but I'm pretty sure it cost me $399.

I'm just about to order the Sony 550, also for $399 (but minus $150 for using the Sony credit card).

Come to think of it: my first VCR, a 2 headed Panasonic top-loader, cost me $399, back in late 1984 or thereabouts.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

I bought a Sony Player (forgot which model) in 1999 for about $300 (Actually it cost me nothing because I bought with Best Buy gift cards earned as a bonus from work). That would be about $390 in today's dollars.

My first BD players will probably be the S550 which will be no more than $399 (probably less, since I plan to wait until after Black Friday). So my first DVD and my first BD will cost about the same adjusted for inflation.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

MY first dvd player was a Marantz early model '97 or '98 cost me over $500, I still have it sitting in my closet, what a brick! My first LD player was also Marantz (520) still works fine. Looking to pick up a Panny BR player soon.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

In November 1997 I bought a Toshiba DVD player for about $400. I don't remember the model #, but I DO remember it being finicky as heck. It came with 5 movies. I remember Absolute Power was one of them and I think maybe Blazing Saddles was another, but I could be wrong on that one.

Sometime in 2007 I bought an HD-DVD player, also a Toshiba (Model: HD-A2). again, around $400 (not sure on that - may have been $300) and finicky!

Early in 2008 I bought Blu-Ray - a Panasonic BD30K - ALSO $400. I remember being bummed because I missed the 5 (or was it 10?) free movie offer by just a couple of weeks.

Just to round things out, my first CD player was a Sharp circa 1985.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

You guys are definitely not the norm. You can congratulate yourselves on your anecdotal evidence justifying what you already want to believe . . . but it's just that: anecdotal. You've got to take into account lots of factors being ignored. The economy was a lot better 10 years ago. Sure, we're all making more money, but there are currently people who are at exactly the same point in their careers where you were 10 years ago.

I was not an early adopter in any sense. My first DVD player was a cheap Apex at Walmart for $80. I wouldn't have even bought that in 2001 if it weren't for getting my hands on a bootleg disc of Fellowship of the Ring (don't worry, I later bought both versions and I'll get the BR too).

My very first HD TV was purchased this year.

It may be true that BR is dropping faster than DVD did, but it seems there ought to be objective, industry-wide information on that. Can't someone just find that and post it?

Anyway, there is a HUGE difference which even this alleged faster dropping must be measured against: when DVD came out, there wasn't a dirt cheap digital format to compete against. It's *all* relative. BR *has* to drop in price much faster, simply because the competition with the current dominant format is so much more demanding. And, of course, DVD didn't require new receivers, TVs, etc. in order to enjoy, either.

I'll probably buy a BR this holiday season. But again, it will be tied to a release I want to watch: the Rush Snakes and Arrows concert in BR. So much of this depends upon the available software. I certainly will not be buying many BR discs. I'll be renting. But then again, my DVD collection is probably still under 100, including concert DVDs (the main thing I buy). Like I said, you guys aren't typical.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

1st dvd player was a Sony DVPS500 in March of 98--$500, had built-in dd decoder but no dts. This was replaced by a DVPS550 later in the year that's still going strong at an ex's house.

1st BD player was the intro samsung around sept of 06 when they dropped to $699. Replaced by a 60 gig PS3 in Feb of 07-$599

1st HD DVD player was an HDA1 in April of 06-$500-rationalized by cost of 1st dvd player, now have one HDA2 and 2 HDA3s--bought as backups due to large collection of HD DVDs when the price dropped to $79 at Costco.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

It is true a poor economy may constrain a persons purchasing power (essentials become non-essentials), However a $250 Sony DVD player from 99 and a $250 Sony Blu-ray player from 08 when both have a similar feature set (using comparable technological specs of each players time) has a strong correlative value for making comparisons of price changes and points across time.


In most cases if such information is linked to it has been my experience that it is usually derided as being corporate shilling or as misrepresentation/manipulation of facts to make it seem like Bu-ray is cheaper when they know (just know) in their hearts that it must be more expensive despite well presented evidence given by sources that prior to giving this information were deemed as reputable. The point of this thread was to give people an opportunity to tell their experiences of purchasing DVD and Blu-ray players, for lack of a better word, in the "real world". It is very easy to say all Blu-ray players should be $99.99 two years after the formats inception but when compared to the prices of its predecessor two years after inception statements like that begin (especially from what I have seen here from the posts) to border on the ridiculous. Here is a link to another site with an article about prices (Blu-ray Pessimist or Optimist?) It is very informative.


You are absolutely right that all things are relative but your statements seems to draw the conclusion that DVD had an easy ride to mainstream acceptance. DVD was an unproven new technology that had no previous track record. VCD's had existed before DVD but not in North America at that time. Most of the people I told about DVD back in 97 were very skeptical about movies on on a CD it sounded cool but then again it just sounded like a small laserdisc. Most of the major rental companies were not in favour of DVD's (Blockbuster, Hollywood Video etc.) as the sell through model eroded rentals. If you think the installed base of DVD's is big you should see the size of the installed base of VCR's that DVD had to overcome to gain acceptance as an alternate video format. There was also the confusion between open DVD and DIVX that turned off consumers. It wasn't until 2000 that DVD started to take off (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...dvdsales.html). I had to buy a new receiver and TV in order to enjoy all the DVD format had to offer (5.1 Surround, 16:9 Anamorphic video) just like you have to have an HDTV and an HDMI 1.3 Reciever to get the full benefits of Blu-ray (you can use 5.1 analog on some players for sound, too). But you can hook up your blu-ray player to a 14" 4:3 TV and 2 channel receiver and it will work but you will not get the full benefits of the format just like it was with DVD (even VCR's had pro logic and most people just hooked them up and used their TV speakers not even taking full advantage of that format).

Out of the 30+ posts in this thread the consensus seem to be that Blu-ray players are comparatively priced in accordance with their DVD players during the same period in the formats growth. If myself and the people who posted are considered to be atypical in that our purchases of DVD players and Blu-ray players fall within the same price parameters, I guess we must just be lucky. In my opinion I believe we will see $100-$150 dollar Blu-ray players but probably not for another two years (perhaps around the same time they started to appear for DVD players). But that's another thread.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

Mark,

An alternative idea comes to my mind on reading through the posts here. It is possible that what really happens is any given person has a certain amount of money they're willing to venture on a "new" (or not-so-new as the case may be for us non-early adopters) gadget. In that case, a person might wait until any particular kind of player gets to, say, $300-ish whether that means waiting two years or five years or whatever.

Of course it's a totally untestable theory but IMO it fits with the anecdotal reports in this thread as well as any other explanation. My thinking would imply that you can't really infer anything about the relative pricing-vs-time patterns of DVD and Blu-Ray if what's really determining each individual's entry into the technology is the point at which it reaches their comfort level.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

But the dates given for the purchases should indicate the availability of players at a given point in the life cycle and at what price. I fail to see how this makes it impossible to infer anything about pricing/time patterns.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

My first DVD player was around '96 or so, was the DVP-S7000. Probably spent close to $1k on it. Couldn't do DTS, couldn't play burned DVD's very reliably...

My first BD player was somewhere mid 2007. The BDP-S300. Don't remember the exact cost...seem to remember it being in the $300 range.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

My first player was a Panasonic DVD-A120... I got it as a Christmas gift in 1999... my dad got it for $199.99 ... also got South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut and Pinnocchio with it - Player still works great.

First BluRay (Only BD) Sharp BD-HP20, $249

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

Wow, how'd you beat the rest of us?!?! DVD wasn't released in the U.S. until March 1997 (test markets in 7 cities) and country-wide in late 1997.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

'97 was probably right...that was a long time ago...my memory fails me.

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

I bought the first DVD player I could find.

I got the Toshiba SD-1006 from Future Shop here in Canada. Not sure when that was, must have been spring of 1997. I also bought the only 2 movies they had in stock, "Jumanji" and "In the line of fire".

Total cost with the 2 movies and taxes was right at $1000.00 CDN.

(I sure felt like a big shot having the only DVD player around!)

Blu-Ray player: I picked up the first PS/3 I could find. I bought from a guy that advertised in the paper. It was the original 60GB model. He had bought it and decided he needed the money. It was unopened and it is still working great. I paid $700.00 CDN.

Very happy with that purchase!

I had tried to get a PS3 out here in Vancouver, but it was a madhouse. Shoppers were paying homeless people to stand in line overnight for them!

I tend to agree that getting started with Blu-Ray has been much easier and cheaper than the start of DVD.

(Thank God that the format war did not last too long!)

Re: Your 1st DVD player vs. 1st Blu-ray player: How much and when did you buy?

First DVD player was an Onkyo. I bought it in November 1998 for about $400.

First Blu-ray was a Sony BD300, I picked up for only $180, but I had a gift card, so I only paid $150.

Cool thread