Blu-ray being adopted faster than DVD but price will remain the same
By Mike Ferro
The Blu-ray adoption rate has been climbing quickly. However, the price of the medium won’t be dropping as fast. The new HD format has grown tremendously over the past year and it is clear that Blu-ray is the new format, but the question remains if it will ever cost the same as the DVD.
Blu-ray discs offer unparalleled space never before seen on the DVDs. The fact that Blu-ray is a new format means that new manufacturing factors have to be calculated into the price. This basically means that the new format will have a premium attached to it.
The Blu-ray format is currently being adopted much faster than the DVD was. The format also increased by an incredible 91 percent during the first half of this year over last year. It is clear that consumers have accepted the new format and many have made the jump. However, with average prices of Blu-ray discs at $30 some consumers may be reluctant to make the jump.
There is still a section of the market out there that relies on VHS and DVDs to watch movies. This section does not own a HD TV set and even care about high definition. According to News.com, Sony representative Tim Harris indicated that it would take some time for Blu-ray movies to drop in price.
There is some light at the end of the tunnel as it seems like Sony will be experimenting with lower prices temporarily just for the holiday season. Harris stated, “We are certainly looking at introducing the catalog ranges at different price points – at Christmas time we will be introducing a range of $20 on some of our cataloged products.”
Harris also indicated that Sony will be monitoring the market to decide on when to drop the price of the disc. It will be interesting to see how quickly the price of a blu-ray disc will drop compared to the DVD.
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Stumble It!
August 17th, 2009
It probably was counter-intuitive for Sony to tell us that they are considering lowering prices of blu-ray movies later. It would likely have the same effect of the ps3 slim and imminent price drop on the ps3 sales figures. They sunk like a stone because everyone’s waiting to buy a cheaper/slim one.
August 17th, 2009
Actually it isn’t.
In it’s 3rd year DVD sold 98 million.
h**p://www.dvdinformation.com/News/press/042809.html
At 6mths into it’s 3rd year we’re told Blu-ray has sold 40 million.
DVD did not get the boost of being sold as part of a game console guaranteed to sell several million fast either.
So in fact, all things consodered Blu-rtay is not doing anything close to as well as DVD did.
August 17th, 2009
I almost see a correlation between the Blu-ray hype and the “hype” that surrounded Vista when it was released.
Blu-ray is still expensive. DVD’s look great and far less expensive for both the players and the DVD’s themselves. The up scaling DVD players look fantastic and rival Blu-ray for the fraction the the price.
Maybe when one can buy Blu-ray players for $29 or less, movies for $10 or less and blank discs for less than $1.00 each…then maybe…until then it is all hype. I like to see how well Blu-ray can run on Linux like DVD can.
Like the “hype” surrounding Vista that it looked great and did all these wonderful things, people stayed away in droves and hung on to their XP computers for dear life.
Especially with this economy, Blu-ray has a long way to go with the price before anyone considers replacing their DVD collections.