$30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances! - Page 2

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Agree 100%.
Most people I talk to simply don't see the difference in picture quality.
YES, we all know it's there...but to the majority of people out there, it's just not noticeable enough to merit a player purchase, let alone spend double on software in some cases. This isn't like the jump from VHS to DVD that most people experienced. There's not a whole lot of "wow" factor here for them.
They've had the luxury of chapter stops and menus for over 10 years now....the thrill of not rewinding doesn't mean anything like it did back then.

So removing that from the equation, and adding that most people aren't seeing the "amazing improvement in picture quality" that the medium promises, the added cost is really a detriment.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

well, this analogy has been now de-bunked, as the more expensive Blu-Ray won over HD-DVD, as incredible as that seems now, and we are all now paying the price, aren't we???

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

The only reason bluray won so quickly was because of the PS3, if not for that who knows what may have been..

I understand what these guys are saying, Ive watched quite a few HD movies at my place with different people in the past 2 years and of them only a few guy friends have been able to tell the difference between standard DVDs and bluray/HDDVD. Women think im totally nuts including my current girlfriend. The ones who claimed they could see the improved quality werent exactly pissing themselves with excitment over getting there own. If the average person cant even tell the difference than there is no way they are going to be willing to pay nearly double for what is in there minds, the same movie in a blue case, not to mention fork over the $500 for the player. This is not comparable to DVD vs VHS, this is CD vs SACD/DVDA. And we all know how that one is going..

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

$30? That's a bargain. My local HMV is selling Blu-rays for £30 here in the UK...

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Funny, since many of my friends and relatives are saying how "great" my TV (meaning the picture) looks when I play some 720p/1080p games or 1080p movies.. Of course, I don´t really do these "Blu-ray vs DVD" demonstrations to them, so who knows... I did it once, and my friend said that he sees "the difference". I also compared the "Black Book" DVD to Blu-ray (superb HD-transfer) where the difference is literally "night and day" and my girlfriend said: "Now that´s a huge difference.". DVD really looks like s*** compared to Blu-ray with "Black Book" (some examples.. http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/wri...ackbookhd.html ).

I would say, that the people probably "see" the difference if they want (let´s face, many won´t care), but is that difference "enough" is the big question, IMO.

This "I can´t see the difference" is not true IMO, since the difference is quite noticeable in the end. People just don´t care..

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

DVD was the quickest adopted home media format in history. Blu-Ray is not that far behind it and moving along quicker than compact discs. Being early in the game, there's always a chance for the wheels to come off of the wagon, but if you have to slash prices because consumers see no incremental value in your product that is and will always be more expensive to produce than its alternative, then you should not be in the business of selling the new product anyway.

Regards,

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

I don't get the whole notion that Blu-Ray discs have to be the same price as DVD discs.

Prime Rib cost more than hamburger. Mercede's cost more than Kia's.

People understand that sometimes you pay more for higher quality. It isn't a new idea.

also, If you are showing off your Blu-Ray system and your friends don't see a deference, you have something wrong somewhere.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

I think the best chance of HDM succeeding quickly in the marketplace would have been if combo HD-DVDs weren't so flawed in execution and the studios replaced SD DVD 2 disc special editions with a combo disc and a bonus DVD. This way consumers would already own the media and could eventually migrate to a player.

As far as pricing on Blu-Ray titles are concerned, I don't think its realistic to expect the prices to be less than $5 - $10 more expensive per title. There is additional costs for the studios to produce them. The BOGO sales that were so common a year ago was only to win the war, the studios now need to recoup from the losses they likely had to take to support those sales.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Yes, and most likely it is your friends.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

The inherent assumption there is that Blu-ray should be looking to displace DVD, and I don't know that that's necessarily true. If, as you say, the quality improvement is incremental - I don't find it so, but I upgraded to a new HDTV when I bought my HD-DVD player, so I saw things doubly improve - then perhaps people shouldn't be moving on from DVD and BD should naturally settle into the position of being a high(er)-end product.

The two formats will be co-existing for a long time, anyway - there's just too many DVD and DVD-ROM players out there. I upgraded to HD-DVD and later Blu-ray because I saw a compelling improvement in quality, but if the larger audience doesn't, then they probably shouldn't do the same, and it doesn't make sense to push them to.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Ed, Warner Brudders must concur with you. If you recall, they recently announced they were lowering prices this comng autumn. That's a move that parallels what they did during the early days of DVD when Disney, Fox, and others had very high prices that were hurting DVD. Warner did 16 x 9 and low prices when some other studios didn't wanna do either.

In many ways, the Blu script is quite similar to DVD's. Warner's role looks about the same.

$30 BD's are bad enough but there's a hell of a lot of $35 BD's getting dusty on local shelves 'round here.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

I firmly believe that BD & SD DVD need to be the same price in order to eventually replace the old format with the new one.

But one thing is that BD disc sales are rising.

SD DVD sales are not growing like they used to.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

I have this idea, based on what I've been seeing for the last few months, that there has been an industry-wide "agreement" to raise SD and BD prices across the board (I'm talking U.S. prices here). New SD prices have increased considerably. And it seems that in general new BD prices have too. There was a window a few months ago when many new BD prices (not from Fox) were very close or even cheaper than the new DVD prices.

Is this just from my very limited view of the sources I regularly buy from? Really, it looks to me that we're back in ~2000 by the new release pricing.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

"Funny, since many of my friends and relatives are saying how "great" my TV (meaning the picture) looks when I play some 720p/1080p games or 1080p movies.. Of course, I don´t really do these "Blu-ray vs DVD" demonstrations to them, so who knows... I did it once, and my friend said that he sees "the difference"."


I never did a "demonstation", just popped in the disc. I have one friend who is also a geek like myself who owns an HDDVD player and a Bluray player. He has a better display than myself, he is my only friend who would prefer high Def media over DVD when it comes to watching a movie.

For the record I have a 1080p native 37" Sharp LCD hooked up directly to my PS3via HDMI and calibrated with AVIA. What could I be doing wrong? Or do my friends all need there eyes checked? Maybe they are just liars. I guess I can discount my ex's opinion anyway. But im pretty sure it comes down to the fact that most people dont care enough about quality. Maybe thats why we see so many Kia's and Hyundais on the road....

Ya know, if BMW and Mercades lowered there prices...

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Were you guys watching the DVD and BD stuff at the same distance from the screen? How far were you sitting from it? Try sitting two screen widths or slightly less away from the screen and repeat the demo. Then see if your friends still think that BD looks the same as DVD.

I'm using a 57" set. I can sit 10' from my set and still notice differences between SD and BD discs, especially colorwise. The differences become even more apparent as you get closer to the screen. Upscaled DVD almost always looks soft. A salesman at my local stereo shop demo'd a projector for me. He used T3 as the test disc. As soon as the image came up I knew I was looking at upscaled SD not a Blu-ray disc. It looked good, but as usual it looked soft to me.

A buddy of mine bought STARGATE: Continuum on SD and brought over to my place to watch it. It was okay but all through the film I kept thinking to myself, "This looks bad. Should have rented the BD." Of course, I wasn't about to tell him that since he thought it looked pretty good.

Frankly, it is all relative to the display. His set isn't so good so my set looks good to him. I think my set looks okay, but I know I have issues with lost high frequency detail and so on.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Apparently Criterion is of the same belief.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

I suspect Criterion just figured their market's way too niche and (SD) pricing already high enough to still try to bump the BD pricing higher.

Personally, I have no problem w/ BDs being priced a little higher than DVDs (maybe a few bucks higher), and I don't know why anyone else should have a problem w/ that either.

Of course, part of the problem is that although the MSRP diff may not be that much in many/most cases, the street prices *are* often much higher for BDs -- at least at the B&M stores. The diff for online pricing seems more reasonable OTOH. And no, I don't think it'd be fair to bring in bargain bin prices for particularly old DVD titles into the discussion. It makes more sense to compare pricing for recent releases.

_Man_

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

The MSRP of software hasn't become higher and actually has lowered for some BRD from studios like Sony and Warner catalog titles. However, retailers are no longer discounting software like they did in the prior gravy days of SD DVD.





Crawdaddy

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Hmmm... I haven't noticed that. Might just be your imagination.

Only things I've noticed is that the stores themselves (whether online or B&M) have been changing their pricing strategies over the years though some of that were probably related to how the studios price their products as well (both in terms of MSRP and actual distribution/wholesale pricing, etc.).

For instance, although most of the better (ie. BOGO) HDM sales had ceased on online as soon as the format war ended, actual sale pricing did not get worse across the board at the B&M level. Personally, I'm finding sale pricing between B&M and online stores are coming more into parity, and the everyday pricing of BDs seem to be going down a bit over time (and we're really only talking ~7 months now) although the crazy BOGO sales have stopped.

But honestly, I don't know why anyone should expect frequent BOGO sales to continue anyway. That is just totally unrealistic. Meanwhile, we *are* getting occasional B2G1 sales combined w/ general downward trend in everyday prices. *THAT* I think is what we should expect and actually want to happen for the long term success of the format, and again, remember, it's only been ~7 months since the format war officialy ended. And of course, while frequent BOGOs have stopped, that doesn't mean we might not see some BOGOs pop up again during the holiday shopping season.

OTOH, yeah, if prices don't keep coming down over time, then the format just won't become mainstream (and replace DVD completely). Whether that's acceptable or not is another story...

_Man_

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

To be honest I never pay attention to MSRP, so I really have no idea there. Except I notice when the MSRP for Canada is mentioned in a review here and then I am shocked (I don't actually buy BD in Canada, so far...).

Thing is, in the last few months, I have noticed so-called BD sales and B2G1 etc. are actually similarly expensive (or at least not much cheaper) than the same BD discs were a few months ago when not on "sale". Hard to compare for new releases obviously, but just in general. I put it down to it being the summer, typically not a great pricing season for home video. I think this Thanksgiving will give us a better BD pricing perspective.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

When Warner lowers prices this fall and embarsses the other majors and way out-sells them, I suspect. What will the usual suspects do, same as DVD, I figur, quietly lower prices. That's what Disney and Fox had to do after DIVX was over and they tried to enter DVD with 30+ prices. I remember Disney announcing that DVD MSRP would be raised from $29.95 to $34.95 but before it got implemented, I quess Warner's sales or urgings turned 'em back.

When you look at the higher DVD prices, I think it's purr-fectly simple. DVD sales have eroded due to recording, so, do like the musick kompanies did in that situation. If you lose volume you raise prices to maintain revenue. Besides they may need lower DVD prices later as a show, so, start down from higher figurs.....to help position Blu...?

Deep catalog DVD's, the sort I'm apt to be searching out, seem like the ones that have gone up the most. I mean, some months ago when I was looking for some Orson Wells and Preston Sturges stuff, many of the prices I was encountering were higher than what I was paying online for BD's and HD-DVD's.

I'm expecting history to repeat with Warner leading the way. If $35 discs are here to stay or very long, BD is Laser Disc nouveau, maybe a bigger Laserdisc till prices slide. Warner's actions suggest to me that they want Blu to replace DVD as promptly as possible.

What's really sad is looking at the sunday circulars and seeing a $30 BD advertised, and then in a DVD ad across the page, the same title for $9. I've repeatedly seen such in the past months.

Latey, I've already seen quite a few Fox titles drop about $10. Mmaybe the Warner threat is working some already, or Fox is desperate for sales. The truth is proably a combination of both....?

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

lack of content will do more to hurt HDM than pricing at this point and time
who cares what the prices are when 90% of the content is crap, it's just not worth buying in the first place

open the vaults and roll out the catalog

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

People in Europe were paying nearly that much for SD DVD when I was there in March 2007. So I expect the answer is "yes".

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

It's also not like JSP needs to buy BD's to have access to them, they're available to rent from places like Netflix and Blockbuster so price for the discs shouldn't even be an issue.

Get granny a Blu-ray player for X-Mas and a NF account and she's good to go, assuming of course she has an HDTV. Ah hell get her one of those, too.

Speaking as someone who used to pay $40 bucks a pop for laser discs I don't mind the price of BD's, the quality I get with them is well worth it. Plus I look for deals and sales, the other day I bought The Hunt for Red October, Twister, The Perfect Storm and I, Robot for $25 a piece at Best Buy, and my local FYE has used BD's for less then $20, I bought Monster House for $17 and some change.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

Very well said and I agree 100%. Better almost always cost more.

Re: $30US Titles Are Killing HDM's Chances!

I personally do not have an issue with prices for new releases (at Amazon we're talking maybe 7 bucks more per new disc and better quality means you pay a premium) and think 18-20 is fair for catalog titles if they offer a very good improvement over the dvd. Having said that, I do see how some may balk at current prices or think they need to be lower for the mass population and I fully expect it won't be long before we see a lot of 15 buck blu-rays and 20-22 buck new releases become common.

As for some saying the improvement over dvd isn't easily visible...the only thing I can conclude is that people who feel that either:

a) do not care and are the type who would say a Lexus LS460 isn't much improved over a toyota Camry

b) are simply watching on small TVs

I challenge anyone who isn't in group A above to view a dvd and then a bluray on a 100"+ screen and say there isn't a good difference. I recently watched 3 dvds on my 106" screen (all upscaled to 1080p via the Toshiba XA2 hd dvd player) and I wound up shaking my head during each movie at how bad the quality is compared to blu-ray/high def. I then thought to myself how crazy I think it is when people say the diff between HD and dvd is small.

To me high def is to dvd what dvd was to VHS.