The price of Blu-ray dropping rapidly, but is it enough?
By Dave Parrack
The price of Blu-ray Disc movies and television box sets are dropping rapidly, and set to drop even further over the next four years. But with the economy in the state it is, and technology shifting as fast as it is, will it be enough to save the format from the proverbial scrapheap?
Blu-ray is doing well. As a young format, it’s starting to shift, and getting in many people’s homes. Although DVD sales are still way ahead of Blu-ray sales, the latter is slowly but surely making headway, and becoming more popular.
The price of the players has come down considerably over the last year or so, with a sizable drop just before Christmas. And now, according to Adams Media Research, and reported via Venture Beat, the price of the Blu-ray Discs are dropping too.
The research suggest that prices actually increased as a whole between 2006 and 2007 with the average price of a Blu-ray feature film jumping from $28.37 to $31.98. But then Blu-ray won the format war, and knocked out its only real competitor, HD DVD, in the process. Since then, prices have dropped.
Between 2008 and 2009, the average price dropped from $28.07 to $25.34. That trend is predicted to continue over the next few years, with $23.18 in 2010, $21.32 in 2011, $19.69 in 2012, and $18.55 in 2013.
These price drops aren’t due to the distributors cutting the list price, which have stayed roughly the same since 2006, rather they are as a result of retailers dropping prices to sell more stock, more quickly. This is obviously squeezing their profit margins but this is a strategy forced on retail outlets by the worsening economy.
Whether these lower prices will be enough to lift sales of the format until they reach the critical mass needed to oust DVD is still open to question. Certainly the new price point will do some good in getting consumers to at least give the format a go, but whether they will continue to buy the still-more-expensive-than-DVD Blu-ray movies as the Credit Crunch deepens is doubtful.
Even if they do, and the Blu-ray format is declared a success, there’s a black cloud constantly on the horizon in the form of digital downloads. As broadband speeds increase, and distribution methods improve, the whole idea of buying a physical copy of a movie may become moot. In which case, Blu-ray will fail, however cheap it may be.
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Stumble It!
March 15th, 2009
digital downloads will never become a reality as no one wants it.
people prefers physical media over crap downloads.
DD is just a microsoft midnightsummer dream. will never become reality even in 100 years
March 15th, 2009
we will never have the bandwidth to download a movie in a short amount of time. Still quicker and easier to go get a movie than wait a day or so to download plus Blu ray is a better quality than andy digital download. Why waist time and money on a download. I guess another weak article by a microsoft groupie. Go play your 360 before the ring of death gets it.
March 15th, 2009
I dunno what Wes & larry are smoking but some of us already have the bandwidth to download ordinary DVD & even HD.
Between VOD through DVRs and digital distribution (already well underway with umteen services – even Sony has a dedicated seperate service for the PS3 & it’s Bravia HD TVs) it’s obvious that the demand for physical media is waning.
The really funny thing about Blu-ray is how they are having to slash prices.
Amazon already have some of them at DVD prices.
I bet the CE corps that spent vast amounts on R&D for Blu-ray are loving this.
There’s no money in it so expect it to be short-lived.
March 15th, 2009
Some people barely have enough money to pay their mortgage in this economy. Blu-ray players and the expensive movies that go along with it are way down the list in “needed” items in today’s world.
Digital Downloads? Sure after the damned broadband companies stop implementing those absurd “cap limits”. Until that happens, it is just a pipe dream…pardon the pun.
March 15th, 2009
This is one of those articles where people came and spurt opinion as if it were fact. Digital downloads? No matter what kinda inroads DD makes in the industry there will always be room for blu-ray. And do you think that if blu-ray players are under $100 and the movies are under $15 people will still go out and buy DVD players and movies? This is just like saying the Ipod killed teh Cd market. There are still places in the world that have never seen an Ipod
March 15th, 2009
The problem with digital downloads is pricing and value. Why should it cost me $5.99 to rent a new HD release on Xbox Live when i could rent the same movie for the same price. Check out Blockbuster.com, they are selling the DVD version of Transporter 3 for $19.99…in digital format. The DVD itself will sell for the same price initially but will drop in price quickly just like every other DVD release. It just makes sense to buy a physical copy.
Games for instance can never successfully go digital download only at $60 a pop. I trade my games when i am done or if i don’t like them. If i buy digital, i’m screwed. If digital downloads are to be taken seriously and have a chance at succeeding, concessions need to be made by the publishers on pricing. I’m not going to pay $5 less for the digital version. They’re going to need to look to 25-50% off if they want my money and i’m sure others feel the same.
March 15th, 2009
Guys who are you trying to kid?
Netflix alone proves digital downloading is happening, growing and will become a major force in future.
Blu-ray is getting cheaper, that’s true and paradoxically this ensures it’s going to die soon.
The margins in it are vanishing.
This means the movie industry will leap to switch to a format where the customer carries all the overhead.
Blu-ray (like the guy dfrom Samsung said) has about 5yrs left in it……and because of the global economy tanking all of it will be as a small niche & pretty much ignored by the mass market.
Too few will bother with the huge HD TV or the high-end audio equipment needed to make the most of Blu-ray.
March 15th, 2009
i understand your point about blu ray but to be frank its simply a higher quality disc for those wish to truly enjoy their movies…i doubt it was ever meant to be enjoyed by everyone…not until a new technology comes out,which is said to be crystal format…but i have a playstation 3 and i completely love blu ray
March 15th, 2009
It’s great and all that broadband speeds are increasing, but the majority of the population still has a pretty low speed at their connection, and that’s not set to change in the coming years. Besides that, even though broadband is getting faster, video file sizes are ever increasing, and by the time broadband would be capable to download a 25GB bluray movie in reasonable time, and people would have enough storage on their hard drives to ever consider downloading them, the movies would have a far greater resolution already, as would the TVs. I don’t think Digital Download will ever be able to replace physical mediums, since the consumer doesn’t want to have to wait for many days before being able to watch a movie, while instead they could’ve picked it up at a nearby videostore in 5-10 minutes.
March 16th, 2009
Sjaak
You don’t need 50gb or 25gb (and in some cases at that size the results were crap).
Go check out some of the .mkv encodes.
Once you strip out all the unnecessary crap you can easily have a very nice 720p image in 4.5gb or if you really must have 1080p it can easily be done in a 8.5gb size (sometimes a little more, say 12gb).
All with DTS 5.1 @ 1.5mbps.
That’s more than enough for the mass market.
It’s also worth pointing out that that is the work of talented amatuer encoders, professionals using professional equipment can be certain to do better.
If people don’t fancy waiting on downloading they can always stream (which is all about the buffer size, not necessarily the speed of the connection).
I know some of you want to pretend really hard that streaming/downloading can’t happen but it already is in so many places.
Almost every new HD TV (and even those Blu-ray players) are coming Netflix equipped or with LAN/wireless connections.
No point denying it, even if you live in some backwoods backwater it’s happening all around us right now in the cities and towns.
March 16th, 2009
WILL YOU JOURNALISTS GET A FUCKING LIKE ALREADY?
BLURAY IS HERE TO STAY. ACCEPT IT ALREADY.
March 16th, 2009
Downloads wont be a probability in most countries, even many areas in the US. Plus most people want a hard copy, not something on a hard drive that could crash. Plus you can have it in a bookcase or lining the wall so it looks good. People want that. Downloads will be more for youtube and stuff…
March 16th, 2009
Okay heres something for you to chew on skavvy.
first. Netflix is only PRO USA. The rest of the world cant get Netflix prior to bandwidth limitations. Or so they say.
second. IF i pay like $5 or whatever to download a movie to watch it should give me a choice to pay $7 extra or whatever to buy and save it to another meduim aswel. Im not gonna download something that took u like 5-7hours of my day just to delete it when im done.
third. HD might be high up in 1st world countries now. but i dont know alot of people in my country (South Africa) who actaully own HD tvs let alone Full HD tvs.
Face it people fly to high and think, every country are on the same standards as them. Im not prepared to go and replace every freaking movie i bought in the past and replace it with a Blu-ray disc. Blu Ray will take 7 years to get in the market properly anyways. Even our local video stores have blu ray movies . 10 at most . But most movies are like I robot, Knights tale and those old movies… FAIL
March 16th, 2009
Blu ray is not going away guys dont be mad that you dont own a player or cant afford one. These guys that say blu ray sucks and downloading is way better obviously have never seen a blu ray movie. Downloading movies sucks, it takes forever, its not cheap enough to buy, and you cant take it with you and watch it at a friends house, and the case is nice and i like to display my blurays on the shelf next to my ps3. The only thing i do download on the Playstation video store is tv show, thats about it. Its a prefrence thing,dont get me wrong i mean i like the idea that we have a choice, hard copy or digital copy, but i think hard copies are the way to go and blu ray aint going anywhere. My friend brings over his 360 to stream movies on netflix sometimes and he calls me a bluray snob because once your used to the picture quality of blu ray, you wont go back to dvd trust me. And if you want to rewind or fast forward when streaming movies on netflix it sucks the whole thing starts over. At least on my friends 360 id ont know how it is for everyone else. If anyone reading this is curious about blu ray, come on take the risk go buy a blu ray player or ps3 (get a ps3 way better) you will be satisfied and dont argue about paying a couple dollars more for every blu ray its worth it with all the features and picture quality your getting. Plus who the hell doesnt have an HDTV, come on guys were living in the present, get rid of those tube tv’s and get an HDTV
March 16th, 2009
The only way I would download movies is for free. No way would I pay to download a movie. I want a hard copy I can re-sell. And my ISP says if you use more than this much bandwidth we will charge you $5 a gig after that! 8Gig movie would cost me $40 just for my ISP!
Not a chance.
March 17th, 2009
I have both the large HD TV and the necessary high-end audio equipment (which you need to even hear lossless audio).
I find the idea that some want to push that ‘blu-ray is just so amazing’ laughable.
Some Blu-ray is.
Just like some HD TV broadcasts are and some .mkv encodes are.
But unfortunately more than a few Blu-ray movies are little better than DVD, just like some bad encodes don’t look great and low-bit-rate HD TV can be very poor.
At the end of the day it’s all just TV and movies – and besides myself and a couple of others I don’t know anyone who ‘collects’ movies.
Most people I know just say ‘what for, why watch the same movie so many more times’?
They watch a film once when it’s fresh and maybe catch it years later on TV.
Collectors seem to be in the minority, for most streaming or downloading seems perfectly acceptable.
It seems to me to be missing the point more than a bit to watches a movie and get excited about being able to make out the stitching pattern on an actors jacket.