A brief stroll into most high street retailers in the UK such as HMV and Virgin proved a step too far for me this weekend. Blu-Ray Titles such as X-Men 3 and Kingdom of Heaven are being priced at £29 ($57), other titles such as AvP at £23 - and HD-DVD titles receive similar treatment.
Pricing like that is going to kill HD from the get-go (and we're already a year into both formats). J6P will never accept that sort of pricing. It was never this bad even in the early days of DVD - then the most you would have to pay was £20 per title, and there was usually a buy 3, get one free deal.
At least there are alternatives - online retailers allow us to save 20% off these prices which brings the prices into a £14-£23 range. Given the intelligent lack of region coding on many releases, importing is still the cheapest - I ordered a bunch of titles from the US and even with postage it only cost be about £13 per title on average - including "premium" titles such as the Departed.
When will this end?
Pricing like that is going to kill HD from the get-go (and we're already a year into both formats). J6P will never accept that sort of pricing. It was never this bad even in the early days of DVD - then the most you would have to pay was £20 per title, and there was usually a buy 3, get one free deal.
At least there are alternatives - online retailers allow us to save 20% off these prices which brings the prices into a £14-£23 range. Given the intelligent lack of region coding on many releases, importing is still the cheapest - I ordered a bunch of titles from the US and even with postage it only cost be about £13 per title on average - including "premium" titles such as the Departed.
When will this end?
