I’m smart, I bought an HD-DVD player early…
Lan on 29 Feb 2008 | Uncategorized
“I’m the Idiot Who Bought an HD-DVD Player”
Okay so this guy has some points here and there. Tactics here and there were shady and all in all I’m pretty bummed about the death of HD-DVD. The article mainly circles around the idea that the “Idiot” who was an early adopter of HD-DVD, was basically a cheap skate, and wanted too be cutting edge without cutting their wallet. Hey, I totally agree. I’m in with that circle. But take this into consideration, I got a high definition video player, which upscales amazingly well, with 5 free HD-DVDs, for $99. And yes, they did come! I got all five last night (several months later but hey they did come). With Bluray, back in Nov 2007 they were around $349 at the cheapest, and then Bluray movies at around $30 a pop. Given later on Sony jumped on the free movie band wagon, and started offering Bluray discs with their players as mail in rebates. Anyhow, jump ahead a couple of months. HD-DVD “dies”. Bluray reigns victorious. The US economy is on a downward spiral. Consumers begin buying less and less luxury goods and focus on savings and the necessities. Prices begin to rise in almost every market. Sure, Bluray is the winner, but who’s gonna buy a player now? They’re still just as expensive as a couple of months ago. In addition to that, the real “nerds” of the format war already know that come the fall, the new Bluray profile release may render a large number of current generation players virtually useless to play discs created after the profile update. Okay they’ll probably still “play” the movies, but no extra features. So jump ahead to Nov. 2008. The economy hasn’t looked so bad since the 80’s. Spending is at a crazy low. The price of gold has gone through the roof. Black Friday rolls around. No one has a ton of cash to spare. But it’s a spending frenzy weekend. We’re Americans, we’ve got to buy stuff. Plus we just got that check in the mail from the “Economic Stimulus Plan” not too long ago. Lets go out and spend some money. Am I going to see a Bluray player for $99? How about $200? Doubtful. The fact of the matter is Bluray may be too expensive for the average American to purchase in the not too distant future. DVDs are cheap and they play great on HD-DVD players. HD-DVD players are cheaper than ever and movies are on the move with stores trying to liquidate their remaining copies. I’ll most likely use my holiday savings money on some other random gadget or a device to play some new downloadable media. Later I’ll use my birthday and Christmas money hunting around the bargain bin DVDs and saving the rest of it for the harder months ahead.
Who knows maybe with the surge of HD-DVD players and purchases of HD-DVD media on the horizon, the format can be resurrected from the grave. Maybe Toshiba will see that the US consumer now wants cheaper products, so they can have high definition and not have to spend some serious coin. Maybe we can still have a repeat of the 80’s with betamax and vhs…. and the decline of the US economy (see any parallels here?). I know, it’s just wishful thinking. I still think, I’m smart, I bought an HD-DVD player early.
Scott Stare on 02 Apr 2008 at 3:18 pm #
I thought this article might go well here, it is from yahoo technology:
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/14249
Now that HD DVD’s on the way out, it looks like Blu-ray manufacturers and retailers are feeling free to jack up prices. Meanwhile, prices for HD DVD decks and combo players are plummeting.
The editors of TG Daily (by way of Audioholics) have been scouring the Web for Blu-ray and HD DVD player prices, and can you guess what they found? That’s right: Since Toshiba gave up on HD DVD in mid-February, Blu-ray prices—which had been showing some modest declines back in December—have spiked.
Take, for example, Sony’s entry-level BDP-S300, a Blu-ray player that doesn’t even have the latest Blu-ray profile (it’s stuck with the bare-bones 1.0 spec). Back in December, the S300 (which originally sold for a whopping $600) actually fell to about $270 on Amazon; now, according to TG Daily, average prices for the player have swelled to $403.
Then there’s Samsung’s BD-P1400, one of the first Blu-ray players to sink below $400. On January 10, the P1400 skimmed the $300 mark, according to TG Daily; now it’s back up to an average price of $374.
Meanwhile, prices for HD DVD decks have, unsurprisingly, been tumbling. Toshiba’s mid-range, 1080p-capable HD-A30, which originally sold for $400, began the year with an average price of $254; now, it’s selling for a mere $134, TG Daily reports. The entry-level HD-A3 1080i player can be had for a song: just $101, on average.
Also, combo Blu-ray/HD DVD players have been showing steep price drops. As I noted in a previous post, the Samsung BD-UP5000, originally listed north of $1,000, is on sale for about $500, while TG Daily has the average price for the LG BH200 pegged at $699, down from its original $999.
So, what’s going on here? Didn’t Sony just promise that we’d be seeing $200 Blu-ray players by next year? Maybe so, but as Chris pointed out in his post, Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association are holding out on licensing Blu-ray technology to Chinese manufacturers, who’d more than likely flood the market with cheap (or cheaper, at any rate) players.
Well, we wouldn’t want that, now—would we?
Kurt Franklin on 25 Apr 2008 at 9:05 pm #
Sounds like someone is trying to justify something… I was thinking about getting a blu-ray player but noticed the same thing Scott was saying about rising prices. IMO the best buy is the PS3. Go get it with Metal Gear Solid 4 when it comes out and you have your money’s worth right there (and you have an upgradeable blu-ray player to boot).