How many people willing to drop that sort of dough on Monsters or Bug's Life already have the SD editions? Plenty, I'm sure.
I've been avoiding upgrading DVDs to BD in general 'cause I don't want to get into that habit, but Pixar films were going to be my special exception. Not at these prices, though. :frowning:
I don't get the problem with the Pixar BR prices or why it's being discussed in this thread. They're $4 more than Pinnochio or Sleeping Beauty Blu-rays and a $1 cheaper than Wall-E. And in real dollars, they're on Amazon for $28 right now.
If they release The Fox And The Hound or The Brave Little Toaster at $40 then I'll believe they've raised prices for everything but they're just charging $40 for these because they know they can.
I don't know who really paid $25-plus for the Sleeping Beauty BD (and that one did come w/ the DVD version no less) and who will actually be paying $25-plus for the Pinnochio BD, but I'm not one of them even though I'm fast approaching 200 BDs owned now.
I do enjoy animated art (and was someone who collected comic books until I was well out of college, and also grew up wanting to be an artist), but I just do not personally feel that the PQ improvements for such films on BD are anymore worthwhile than any other quality films out there. The *only* reason I'm occasionally willing to pay more for them is because my kids enjoy them so much (*and* it's a case where I do not already own a pretty good quality DVD that's still a pleasure to watch). If I can buy 2 good films on BD for the price of 1 catalog Pixar BD and a candy bar, then I'm definitely going for the former. There's no way I can upgrade all the quality films I like-and-own on DVD to BD anyway (unless we get $5 bargain bin prices ), so I gotta draw some lines somewhere. And for me (and I guess many others) to splurge a bit and pay the occasional extra premium, there's gotta be more reason than just that the BD looks and sounds better, especially when the DVD already looks and sounds very good. Yeah, I'll be more willing if it's the Toy Story duo, but Monsters Inc and A Bug's Life are not at the same level, IMHO.
YMMV of course. Such things are certainly highly subjective and will vary depending on various factors. You don't need to "get the problem" for people to legitimately feel differently about the pricing of these things. For instance, ask my friend, who's probably more of a fan of T2 than me, what he thinks about the skull gift set thing costing some $150-plus.
I guess I should have phrased it as "These prices are about $4 more than the average BR catalog price so I'm not going to sweat it." If $28 is more than someone wants to spend, that's fine (there's plenty of titles that I've wanted to buy but am waiting for a sale) but it seems like people are acting like the discs will actually cost their MSRP.
I think the main part of the issue is the context in which we're discussing the actual prices for these Pixar titles. Namely, Mr. Iger has come out saying that BD titles are priced too low (or something like that).
In my view, it also doesn't help that discounts/sales for popular "family-oriented" Disney titles (which include pretty much all Pixar titles) tend to be on the rare side. This is true not just for Disney, but for other studios too, eg. Sound of Music on DVD probably never hit the bargain bin while it may only take a couple years for some quality, smaller films on DVD to get there.
Anyway, I don't mind if the initial release price is high as long as prices come down to earth over a reasonable amount of time. If it really never comes down, then I just won't be buying most of them and will be extremely selective about it -- and I'd guess most potential customers would also become extremely selective in that scenario too.
If Disney raises there pricing structer to match Fox I also will be cutting back on Disney releases. The more money Blurays cost the lest titles I will be buying. And if cost of titles go up I will consider cutting back on my home theater spending. And spend money on something else, that is if Blurays get more exspensive.