am i one of the few that are concerned with cheap players come cheap parts assembled
by cheap labor with quality compromised all for a sale.

am i one of the few that are concerned with cheap players come cheap parts assembled
by cheap labor with quality compromised all for a sale.


Not for anything but 2k8 will be the year of "cheap". So much so that our goverment has already slashed rates 3/4 of a percent. The last time the US fed reserve did that was about 24 years ago which makes this a not good move.

the reason i say this i bought cheap goods in my youth that seemed to expire around
the time the warranty ran out thats not a good way to try and move a new product
your trying to get large masses to adopt. that being said i don't or try not to overpay
for merchandise also .

'Figgie' - agree, in the coming 9-18 months, to move ANY product, manufacturers and retailers are going to need to cut prices to get consumers to spend what money (or available credit) they do have. Ironically, it is this poor economic climate that may end up pushing Blu-ray standalone prices lower, since HD DVD player prices are no longer a credible threat.

'Figgie' - agree, in the coming 9-18 months, to move ANY product, manufacturers and retailers are going to need to cut prices to get consumers to spend what money (or available credit) they do have. Ironically, it is this poor economic climate that may end up pushing Blu-ray standalone prices lower, since HD DVD player prices are no longer a credible threat.

Yes, and hopefuly (to the economy driving prices down). What I am seeing though is that this rate cut will cause even more devaluation of the USD on the Global market. We already have EU pointing the finger at US for the market plunge. Even oil prices have dropped again. I am thinking the US Fed Res is in denial that there is in fact a recession happening, right now.

The significance of the Warner decision is that it will remove HD DVD from the marketplace. That's one important step to mass market adoption for HDM.

The second step involves content and price.

Blu-ray needs to expand its library significantly leading up to Q4 2008 and I'm sure that the studios are working on that very thing.

On price the OP is correct that $99 is a critical price point that will bring in a large wave of buyers. However I think it's more likely that by Q4 2008 you will see Blu-ray players at or below the $199 price point. $99 will have to wait for 2009.

I suppose we need to have some consensus on what constitutes 'mass market' but I would say that if we have a Blu-ray title that, by year end, has sold over 1 million copies, then that means HDM has a bright future.

1. Wow, I didn't realize that WB controlled Paramount/DW and Universal. Definitely news to me.

2. I think most could agree that "mass market" would mean that the graph showing DVD and HDM would have to be smaller than a billboard and still have the HDM line visible as something other than the bottom line of the graph.

Yes, and hopefuly (to the economy driving prices down). What I am seeing though is that this rate cut will cause even more devaluation of the USD on the Global market. We already have EU pointing the finger at US for the market plunge. Even oil prices have dropped again. I am thinking the US Fed Res is in denial that there is in fact a recession happening, right now.

Yes, and unfortunately it's not only a FFR drop that could signal a lower USD/EURO, it's the fact that the Chinese are fleeing from the dollar and into the Euro! And how do they do that? By buying Euros with their Dollars resulting in . . . an even weaker USD. Add to that the entire derivatives market fiasco (this is going to be at least as big as the sub-prime meltdown) and things don't look good for the US economy in 2008 and 2009.

The interesting part of this as it relates to the adoption of HDM is that based on their business plans, HD DVD had a better chance for more rapid adoption based upon their lower player pricing strategy (assuming that it continued if Warner went HD DVD not BD). Since the USD to Renminbi is relatively "locked in" a tanking USD wouldn't have affected "made in China" HD DVD player pricing very much (if at all). It is my understanding that most BD players (to date) are made in Japan, whose currency floats versus the USD, so not only is the BD player pricing strategy working against mass adoption (in a down economy) but on top of that, a weakening USD is going to make Japanese sourced players even more expensive for US consumers. Talk about a double whammy!

The $199 players (assuming they arrive) will have to be at least profile 1.1 (or Bonus View) capable, meaning they will play all the PiP features and anything else that makes use of the secondary video decoder.

I was thinking of models along similar lines to the Funai BD player:


http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2008/01/ces_2008_funai.html

Funai press release here: http://www.funai.us/bluRayDiscFunai.aspx

I would hope that by Q4 all the old profile 1.0 players will have been cleared from the retail channels (they'll still appear on eBay of course).

Don't people buy Funai-type products for less than $50 or so? It makes me cringe to think that BD will be at such a premium that I'd have to lay out $200 for a Funai player.

I'd be more interested in a Panasonic for $500, but I'm not so sure the Wal Mart/Target shopper would go for the Funai at that price. The only DVD player I've had that failed within 6 months was a Daewoo. Thankfully, I only paid $39 for it.

So with the information from Digital Bits on NPD's week ending 1/12 standalone hardware numbers, in the first full week after WB announcement HD-DVD had a 15% share of software sales and 8% share of hardware sales.

I wonder how quickly Toshiba could get their production lines working on building a dual format player?

People want confidence in a format more than they do bargain bin prices. Thats what will get mass market adoption.
I'll take bargain bin prices.

A $200 DVD player 5 years ago would have sold 10x as much. Heck a $200 BD player right now would sell at least twice as much. Like I said people want confidence, not bargain bin prices.

I like bargain bin prices...keep your confidence!

It's certainly true that DVD replacement (i.e. tens of millions of BD players in consumers homes) won't begin util prices come down, but what you don't seem to understand is a lot of other things have to happen before that is possible.

The cost of movies is far higher than the player (even with $1,000 players) and consumers are mentally conditioned to not want competing video foramts (ala DVD/Divx, or the legendary VHS/Beta). What consumers want is a single format, and they want one that feels "worth" the upgrade. The format war has depressed adoption by second and third tier early adopters, as has the profit-eating artificial price lowering. That may seem weird to you, but most earlier adopters (especially the ones who aren't hardcore tech geeks) like the status that comes with purchasing an "elite" product, and this usually build consumer demand before prices come down ("wow honey, did you see how good that blu-ray player looked on Tom's HDTV?"). THEN when prices come down sales take off.

What MSFToshiba did was try to artificially lower the pricing before there was sfficient consumer demand. That did allow people who were early-adopters at heart (but not pocket-book) to buy in, but it was never going to achieve wide-apread market penetration. Worse, it threatens the normal channels by which desirability is established, and could have caused consumers to see HDM as a cheap, waste-bin product before it ever achieved critical mass.

Luckily, the format war is now over, so we can get back to our regularly scheduled market penetration. As CE retailers drop HD DVD and push Blu-ray, more and more later early adopters will start to buy in (my brother in law and his coworker are two classic examples who jumped over the weekend) and the idea of HDM will start to excite people as they stop worrying about picking the "wrong" format and start being impressed by the image and sound quality, and the new intereactive features (which I suspect will player better to families and younger people than it has to HT enthusiasts so far).

So in short, the Warner decision is the most important thing that could possibly happen, and it absolutely had to happen before prices dropped too much, or we could have lost everything.

nice to read some common sense in this forum. It seems that the number of HD fanboys that just want to drink the kool-aid here are huge!

Yes, and unfortunately it's not only a FFR drop that could signal a lower USD/EURO, it's the fact that the Chinese are fleeing from the dollar and into the Euro! And how do they do that? By buying Euros with their Dollars resulting in . . . an even weaker USD. Add to that the entire derivatives market fiasco (this is going to be at least as big as the sub-prime meltdown) and things don't look good for the US economy in 2008 and 2009.

The interesting part of this as it relates to the adoption of HDM is that based on their business plans, HD DVD had a better chance for more rapid adoption based upon their lower player pricing strategy (assuming that it continued if Warner went HD DVD not BD). Since the USD to Renminbi is relatively "locked in" a tanking USD wouldn't have affected "made in China" HD DVD player pricing very much (if at all). It is my understanding that most BD players (to date) are made in Japan, whose currency floats versus the USD, so not only is the BD player pricing strategy working against mass adoption (in a down economy) but on top of that, a weakening USD is going to make Japanese sourced players even more expensive for US consumers. Talk about a double whammy!

Good points, but the real killer is that HD disc won't be just competing with DVD, it's going to be competing with mortgages heating oil prices, gas prices, food prices and credit card debt. Lower interest rates helps things like home and auto loans and new credit offers, but it'll do little to help those already in debt.

Not to mention Credit card promotions like 90 day and 6 month offers from holiday sales will come up in March and June.

Consumer confidence is going to get really interesting then.

For many the $300-800 rebate being discussed on Capitol Hill is likely to go right to bills.

Luckily, the format war is now over, so we can get back to our regularly scheduled market penetration. As CE retailers drop HD DVD and push Blu-ray, more and more later early adopters will start to buy in (my brother in law and his coworker are two classic examples who jumped over the weekend) and the idea of HDM will start to excite people as they stop worrying about picking the "wrong" format and start being impressed by the image and sound quality, and the new intereactive features (which I suspect will player better to families and younger people than it has to HT enthusiasts so far).

So in short, the Warner decision is the most important thing that could possibly happen, and it absolutely had to happen before prices dropped too much, or we could have lost everything.

Enough of this "grade school" ecomomics. I like bargain prices!!!

Good points, but the real killer is that HD disc won't be just competing with DVD, it's going to be competing with mortgages heating oil prices, gas prices, food prices and credit card debt. Lower interest rates helps things like home and auto loans and new credit offers, but it'll do little to help those already in debt.

Not to mention Credit card promotions like 90 day and 6 month offers from holiday sales will come up in March and June.

Consumer confidence is going to get really interesting then.

For many the $300-800 rebate being discussed on Capitol Hill is likely to go right to bills.

Any bit helps with me!! ;) btw lest not forget the 2nd round of ARM's that are about to reset this year (3 years from 2005).

i really would like to know how many people think that a 100.00 player will have the
quality built in, that it will outlive its 1 year warranty.

The upconversion DVD player that I bought at Walmart 2 years ago for $39 still works fine. Does this count???

For the people who are currently saying that they won't buy Blu-Ray until some arbitrary price, if you have a DVD collection, that probably makes little sense. For me, the cost of media (DVDs and Blu-Rays) far far far outstrips the cost of the hardware, even after buying several generations of DVD players and an early Blu-Ray player. I'm certainly not going to keep buying DVDs now that there is a single HD format.
I won't buy a Blu-ray player until it's bargain bin priced.

I won't buy a Blu-ray player until it's bargain bin priced.

Which model of stand alone BD player have similar upconversion results to that of XA2? Not PS3 please since I am not a gamer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Which model of stand alone BD player have similar upconversion results to that of XA2? Not PS3 please since I am not a gamer.

According to PS3 game sales, neither are many PS3 owners. ;-)

The PS3 is still the best player out there, modulo the DTS-HD MA issue, and it can do a good deal more, including media streaming using DLNA, SACD (if you get the 80 gig version), and other such useful things.

Wrong title! The Title should be "Nothing matters till HD media price is within $5 of their SD counterpart". Hardware cost doesn't matter as all will eventually spend more on media than their initial hardware investment.

According to PS3 game sales, neither are many PS3 owners. ;-)

The PS3 is still the best player out there, modulo the DTS-HD MA issue, and it can do a good deal more, including media streaming using DLNA, SACD (if you get the 80 gig version), and other such useful things.

Sorry you confused me. I just need to brand and model number. If PS3, $399 is too much for me.