The reason why this NEX GEN DVD era is slumping, is not only so much the fact of the players...but also of the DVD PRICES!

these nex gen DVDs should be priced no higher than standard DVD prices. And...standard DVD prices of $19 - $25 a movie are too damn high. Your avg joe consumer doesnt want to spend this kind of money to watch a movie once throw it in their drawer or put it on their shelf!

ALL DVDs should be priced no higher than $10 in my opinion, then the DVD market would boom!

Seems the last time I bought DVD, it was in the $19 to $25 range. Course, I took a couple of years off knowing that high def was coming...

I want high def and i'll pay 19-25 or so get it. To pay more, it has to be a title that I really want, though, or I'll wait for the sales.

I think the studios idea to jump into a new format is to promote new sales and at new price so there will be more profit. Creating a new product that cost more to duplicate and adding more interactive features that cost more and sell it at same price is not what they want.

regardless....the bottom line is, your average mainstream consumers are simply not gonna buy many nex gen hi definition DVDs at these premium prices!

Most sales will be the results of the Home theater Hi Def movie fanatics which really only accounts for a much smaller percentage of the population.

Studios will only make the big money if they target their pricing models to attract the masses of mainstream consumers....For that to happen, Nex Gen DVD movies need to be under $20....under $15 if you really want to explode

Imagine a sliding scale with the rate of adoption correlating to the reduction of price.

Just like with DVD.

these nex gen DVDs should be priced no higher than standard DVD prices.Long term that probably will happen but in the short term it is pretty common for a new video format to have higher prices.


And...standard DVD prices of $19 - $25 a movie are too damn high. Your avg joe consumer doesnt want to spend this kind of money to watch a movie once throw it in their drawer or put it on their shelf!Which is why there are movie channels and various kinds of rental services for those consumers who just want to watch a movie once.


ALL DVDs should be priced no higher than $10 in my opinion, then the DVD market would boom!That would certainly increase sales but to take that a step further if they sold them for $5 they would sell even better. The thing is though companies are out to maximize profits so they will sell their product for a price that will make them the most money. For the majority of products companies are far more concerned with profit than with sales.

regardless....the bottom line is, your average mainstream consumers are simply not gonna buy many nex gen hi definition DVDs at these premium prices!

Most sales will be the results of the Home theater Hi Def movie fanatics which really only accounts for a much smaller percentage of the population.

Studios will only make the big money if they target their pricing models to attract the masses of mainstream consumers....For that to happen, Nex Gen DVD movies need to be under $20....under $15 if you really want to explode

Considering that DVDs are currently sold at higher prices than that in retail stores, I believe the answer is that if a consumer wants to save money they will continue to buy from Amazon, and other retailers that discount the movies.

Studios will also have to stop paying these actors 20 million a movie.

where are you getting new release dvd's for under 15.00 thats what i pay on the
tuesday special then they go to 19.00 and i see blu-ray and hddvd at 25 to 30.00.

where are you getting new release dvd's for under 15.00 thats what i pay on the
tuesday special then they go to 19.00 and i see blu-ray and hddvd at 25 to 30.00.

Put HD DVD in the search box on eBay

Put Blu Ray in the search box on eBay

Hundreds of listings.

ok i guess i am in a minority the day of the release i drive to a retailer get the movie
and watch it that night to impatient to wait on the mail days later.

Imagine a sliding scale with the rate of adoption correlating to the reduction of price.

Just like with DVD.

Exactly. I'm not sure why we have to go over this again and again. If you find something too expensive, don't buy it. But costs will come down. They always do. This notion that everything has to happen instantly or the format dies is silly. Give it some time. Patience.

When did people start buying DVDs and DVD Players like hot cakes?? After Walmart started selling those $5.88 movies at their stores. If HD DVD/Blu-Ray movies dropped down to even $15 then people would buy them alot more. But honstly, I doubt they can lower the prices this quickly so they have the bogo deals. Well, even at those deals I'm happy.

Imagine a sliding scale with the rate of adoption correlating to the reduction of price.

Just like with DVD.

Yup! I remember $30-$35 DVDs here in Canada and I only bought a couple at that price for ones I just had to have. I limited my purchases until the 2 for $25, 3 for $30 deals started and then my library really started to grow. It will be the same with HDM. There is already $19.99 BLu-Ray discs here in Canada and the past couple of weeks there has been 2 for $50 deals on Blu-Ray movies at Future Shop (owned by Best Buy).

As the user base grows we will see deals on older catalogue titles. It's all going to happen in time. It took several years for DVD prices to be consistently cheap at brick and morter stores.

If anything we are ahead of the curve compared to DVD. It was almost 4 years in before DVD players were around $400 here in Canada. Blu-Ray players are already at this price point.

Things are looking good!:cool:

if you're watching once and throwing on a shelf, you shouldn't be buying at all and stick to renting.

And there are probably better sites to complain about the high costs of early adoption than AVS. That's just a given to most people here.

And there are probably better sites to complain about the high costs of early adoption than AVS. That's just a given to most people here.

True, but there is often a lot of discussion about how to get HDM to a wider audience, fears about HDM being superceded by download before it gets established etc. Pricing certainly fits into this and the landscape has changed since DVD first came to town.

for years this has been a sight for early adoption and insight to get the best
out of audio video performance and media experience here of late not so much.

It is too early for cut rate pricing..... Only a couple million folks even have the ability to use HD Media. DVDis king and theuir huge volume allows for low prices.....Wait until numbers of HD players get into the 10s of millions, then the prices of software will drop... Give it a few years..

When DVD's first hit the market and even after it started to catch on titles were around $24.99 - $29.99 on an average. The format war has driven the prices down. MSRP's are high for nex gen discs, usually $29.99 - $39.99, but places like Fry's and Amazon sell it for almost half of that. Prices are not steep, not for two formats that are a year and a couple months old.

When DVD's first hit the market and even after it started to catch on titles were around $24.99 - $29.99 on an average. The format war has driven the prices down. MSRP's are high for nex gen discs, usually $29.99 - $39.99, but places like Fry's and Amazon sell it for almost half of that. Prices are not steep, not for two formats that are a year and a couple months old.

Also, VHS was much cheaper at the time. I remember tapes being sold for $10 and less, yet DVDs were a minimum of $20 street price. Were there calls for DVDs to be priced the same?

Hell, I only buy HDM when they're on sale. Always less than $20, usually around $14-$16 per movie. Only DVDs I buy are $9.50 and below.

Look at it from the retailers' point of view. There aren't nearly as many HDM players in the world as there are DVD players, so they'll only devote floor space to HD media if there's significantly more revenue to be made doing so.

The first format to slash their prices to look competitive with DVD is the first format that retail will drop like a hot potato, at least in the early stages. Once adoption of the players goes up, the media prices will come down. They need to go through a natural process, hand-in-hand. Thus it has always been, thus it shall always be. (Okay, so that's a little over-dramatic but the point holds presuming the same retail outlets + players + media model. A real game changer like electronic distribution could be completely disruptive.)

Look at it from the retailers' point of view. There aren't nearly as many HDM players in the world as there are DVD players, so they'll only devote floor space to HD media if there's significantly more revenue to be made doing so.

The first format to slash their prices to look competitive with DVD is the first format that retail will drop like a hot potato, at least in the early stages. Once adoption of the players goes up, the media prices will come down. They need to go through a natural process, hand-in-hand. Thus it has always been, thus it shall always be. (Okay, so that's a little over-dramatic but the point holds presuming the same retail outlets + players + media model. A real game changer like electronic distribution could be completely disruptive.)
Makes sense. I'm guessing that Amazon simply has a lower carrying cost for this low volume formats. That is why they can charge quite a bit less. I also think that HD DVD will get dropped like a hot potato completely independent of media pricing. Retailers want to sell a single HD standard -- and sell it at high margin.

$20 for a movie i'd buy i dont think twice on. anything over $20 has to be a must-own, hence why i havent pulled the trigger yet on several wanted titles.

In the early days of DVD, I blew a lot of money on discs each week. Didn't matter if I hadn't seen the movie, if the disc had neat-sounding special features, I'd buy. I looked forward to every Tuesday morning.

These days, thankfully, I'm a lot more careful with my spending. I have a Netflix account and I rent almost everything. However, I will purchase DVDs if the price is right - blind-buys, even. But that price is almost always less than ten dollars. Honestly, I get excited going through the $5 bin at Wal-Mart. I suspect many, perhaps most people (non-AVS members) feel the same way.

Also, VHS was much cheaper at the time. I remember tapes being sold for $10 and less, yet DVDs were a minimum of $20 street price. Were there calls for DVDs to be priced the same?

The main--and inexpensive--competition is DVDs. They are cheap. They are ubiquitous. They are "good enough." HDM doesn't have the time DVDs had.

The main--and inexpensive--competition is DVDs. They are cheap. They are ubiquitous. They are "good enough." HDM doesn't have the time DVDs had.
You could say the same thing for VHS when DVD first launched. The only thing DVD had going for it when it first launched was that it was a more convenient form factor. It wasn't recordable, it didn't start with startlingly better PQ, it was vastly more expensive... and yet somehow it evolved past all of that and supplanted VHS.

I'm not saying that Blu-ray necessarily has the capability to pull off a coup of similar proportions, but considering we're heading into the second year of the format, it's far ahead of the curve compared to DVD at a similar point in its lifespan, and doing as well or better than might be expected for a new format due to having so much of the industry (studios, CEs, and retailers) supporting it.

Frankly, if we look at the future, our options are:
DVD
Blu-ray
Downloads

I don't consider HD DVD to be commercially viable for much longer, so I don't include it in the list. DVD is on the decline. Downloads don't have the necessary infrastructure, and will be heavily infested with DRM that will make BD+ look positively tame in comparison.

Here's reality:

1997

*349,000 DVD-Video players shipped in the U.S. (About 200,000 sold into homes.)
*900 DVD-Video titles available in the U.S. Over 5 million copies shipped; about 2 million sold.
*Over 500,000 DVD-Video players shipped worldwide.
*Around 330,000 DVD-ROM drives shipped worldwide with about 1 million bundled DVD-ROM titles.
*60 DVD-ROM titles (mostly bundled).

1998

*1,089,000 DVD-Video players shipped in the U.S. (Installed base of 1,438,000.)
*400 DVD-Video titles in Europe (135 movie and music titles).
*3,000 DVD-Video titles in the U.S. (2000 movie and music titles).
*7.2 million DVD-Video discs purchased.

1999

*4,019,000 DVD-Video players shipped in the U.S. (Installed base of 5,457,000.)
*Over 6,300 DVD-Video titles in the U.S.
*About 26 million DVD-ROM drives worldwide.
*About 75 DVD-ROM titles available in the U.S.

http://www.allformp3.com/dvd-faqs/19.htm



A long way to go to for the formats combined to match the numbers from the start of DVD.
Only PS3 can match/beat any of those numbers.

You could say the same thing for VHS when DVD first launched. The only thing DVD had going for it when it first launched was that it was a more convenient form factor. It wasn't recordable, it didn't start with startlingly better PQ, it was vastly more expensive... and yet somehow it evolved past all of that and supplanted VHS.



Sorry, I have to disagree with the PQ comment. DVD's PQ was always startlingly better than VHS. Some of the early discs were perhaps no better/somewhat worse than LD (anamorphic discs had a huge advantage on a WS TV though) but both LD and DVD were/are both watchable formats on a larger TV. VHS was always barely watchable IMHO. I bought very few movies on VHS and those I bought ended up in the garbage after DVD established itself. I don't plan to toss alll my DVDs.

BTW the available bandwidth for DVD exceeds that of many of the so called HD movie downloads.

A long way to go to for the formats combined to match the numbers from the start of DVD.
Only PS3 can match/beat any of those numbers.

DVD had too major advantages over the HDM formats.

1) it was released as a finished product. I was still using my 1st gen Sony DVD player a couple of years ago.

2) There was no format war.

We will have to see how fast BD gets adopted once the format war is over.

DVD had too major advantages over the HDM formats.

1) it was released as a finished product. I was still using my 1st gen Sony DVD player a couple of years ago.

2) There was no format war.

We will have to see how fast BD gets adopted once the format war is over.

1) You were not using DTS then.:eek:

2) There was a format war between Toshiba's SDD and Sony's MMCD. It was decided (in large part by Warner support) before they both went to market (literally days).;)

DarkFudge, now you see the taboo about trying to discuss movie price on a forum like this. AVS is where videophiles and the more elite folk come to talk, so naturally they are not going to understand the advent of lower prices leading to mass adoption.

The fact is that no one wants to walk into a B&M store and pay $29.99-$24.99 for a disc that they can get for $19.99 and is perfectly good enough for them.....even upscaled. To a lot of people here, $30 is perfectly fine. Many said the same thing about the price of Laserdiscs.

The other fact is that this isn't DVD vs. VHS. Back then there wasn't a lot of choice. There is now. Someone mentioned the choices being DVD, HDM, downloads. That isn't all. Try:

DVD
HDM
Downloads
Cable HD DVR
Satellite HD DVR
VOD HD

What is suprising to me are the number of people I know who are actually tired of buying and keeping space for discs. I had one friend told me he bought a 500 DVD changer, put his discs in there, and threw the cases away!

As for the Ebay/Amazon route, oztech is dead on. If you want to order your movie and wait, then that's fine. But many people don't. I stopped using Amazon for new movies because I was tired of waiting 2-3 days after the movie was out on shelves to get it, just to save a couple bucks. People want their movies NOW. They want to go out to the store and buy it when it launches.

Anyway, with all the HD choice out there, HDM isn't going to sell tens of millions of players until people can walk into a store and pay $24.95 for a new release movie. $29.99 isn't going to cut it. $34.95 is just Fox and New Line being stupid.

DVD had too major advantages over the HDM formats.

1) it was released as a finished product. I was still using my 1st gen Sony DVD player a couple of years ago.

2) There was no format war.

We will have to see how fast BD gets adopted once the format war is over.
How soon you forget! There was a format war between DVD and DIVX. Furthermore, DIVX initially had exclusive studio support from Dreamworks, Fox, and Paramount, and three manufacturers making players (RCA, Panasonic, and Zenith) which is more than HD-DVD.

i could be wrong about this one but ever notice they never sell the new releases
below the ticket price at the movie house they seem to go hand in hand, you have
early bird prices on both and standard on both so holywood gets their money.

How soon you forget! There was a format war between DVD and DIVX. Furthermore, DIVX initially had exclusive studio support from Dreamworks, Fox, and Paramount, and three manufacturers making players (RCA, Panasonic, and Zenith) which is more than HD-DVD.

That was at best a skirmish. :)

That was at best a skirmish. :)

never the less if you were working retail at the time it caused some confusion
for the costumers and ticked some off when it was discontinued almost like
whats taking place now ,years later and the industries still can't seem to
learn from their previous mistakes.

never the less if you were working retail at the time it caused some confusion
for the costumers and ticked some off when it was discontinued almost like
whats taking place now ,years later and the industries still can't seem to
learn from their previous mistakes.

I remember when they first came out. One day I walked in to CC, picked up one of the disks and realized how they were supposed to work and laughed out loud and put the disk back on the shelf. :)

You're right though, the industries have not learned anything, but they have their own motivations which may not be related to benefiting the consumer.

DarkFudge, now you see the taboo about trying to discuss movie price on a forum like this. AVS is where videophiles and the more elite folk come to talk, so naturally they are not going to understand the advent of lower prices leading to mass adoption.


Of course, the "elite folk" and "videophiles" who post here do "understand" that lower prices lead to greater sales (that's just elementary economics). The disagreement -- at least to me -- is that there's no major hurry for prices to drop significantly. As with every CE technology we've ever seen (including DVD), prices will drop, quality will improve, features will get better, and, perhaps, it will catch on with the mass market. Despite the smug and condescending post, it is not a lack of "understanding" that causes some to disagree with certain views of others.

The reason why this NEX GEN DVD era is slumping, is not only so much the fact of the players...but also of the DVD PRICES!

these nex gen DVDs should be priced no higher than standard DVD prices. And...standard DVD prices of $19 - $25 a movie are too damn high. Your avg joe consumer doesnt want to spend this kind of money to watch a movie once throw it in their drawer or put it on their shelf!

ALL DVDs should be priced no higher than $10 in my opinion, then the DVD market would boom!


I get most of my movies at about $20 from Amazon anyway. Besides, why are we talking about DVD? I thought this is an HDM (HD DVD/BD) area.

1) You were not using DTS then.:eek:

2) There was a format war between Toshiba's SDD and Sony's MMCD. It was decided (in large part by Warner support) before they both went to market (literally days).;)

No I didn't get a DTS capable receiver until 2005. Given how few DVDs have DTS sound tracks, it didn't seem worth junking my DD receiver.

To me a format war is where two competing formats are actually sold to consumers. By the time DVDs and players shipped, there was no war.

How soon you forget! There was a format war between DVD and DIVX. Furthermore, DIVX initially had exclusive studio support from Dreamworks, Fox, and Paramount, and three manufacturers making players (RCA, Panasonic, and Zenith) which is more than HD-DVD.

I only recall a Divx player from RCA sold at CC. It played regular DVDs and required a phone hookup. The whole format only lasted a few months I think.

Mike Mullis, I agree with everything you just said above with one minor adjustment,

I don't think that High Definition DVDs (either format) will ever completely become mainstream until you can walk into a B&M and actually pay UNDER $20 for a new movie.

And in my opinion, $19.99 is still too high for my taste, I think we are being taken for suckers. Most people buy a movie and watch it once....maybe twice and shelf it.

To me the ideal and fair pricing model for Movie Media would be such:

Standard DVD movie releases: $9.99

Hi Definition movie releases: $14.99


In my eyes, and in the eyes of the general public, the pricing model of movies should be no more than the pricing model of music cd albums....in fact, people seem to get more replay use out of music cds then they do movies

How soon you forget! There was a format war between DVD and DIVX. Furthermore, DIVX initially had exclusive studio support from Dreamworks, Fox, and Paramount, and three manufacturers making players (RCA, Panasonic, and Zenith) which is more than HD-DVD.

Didn't DIVX players also play DVD's? Well, I can't find any evidence of that.

However, a little flashback shows Montgomery Ward (Remember them?) selling DVD's for as little as $14.99 during the format war.

http://www.fightdivx.com/divx3.htm

Hmmph...

Now, we're seeing catalog HD DVD's and Blu-Ray discs for as little as $19.99? :o

You could say the same thing for VHS when DVD first launched. The only thing DVD had going for it when it first launched was that it was a more convenient form factor. It wasn't recordable, it didn't start with startlingly better PQ, it was vastly more expensive... and yet somehow it evolved past all of that and supplanted VHS.



I seem to remember things differantly.... way differantly.

Video tape was revolutionary in its time, but had a lot of draw backs. And PQ was NOT one of them, because in those days everything sucked, and we watched that suckiness on 17 to 26 inch tv's.

I remember broken cassettes, machines that would eat tape, rental tapes that were "faded", and speaking of rentals, when was the last time you paid a "rewind fee"? (I bet Blockbuster really misses that one!!!!).

Let's be real; anyone who had a collection of videos tapes (meaning, people who had a lot of broken, faded, half eating cassettes) where chomping at the bit to dump them for DVD. People where obviously willing to pay more for a format that wasn't prone to breaking, fading, being eating on the first play, etc. The only thing that kept VHS around for so long were all the porn collections out there.

The same is apperently not the case for the HD formats vs. DVD. DVD's look quite good, and Upscaled DVD's, for most people, compair quite favorable to HD disc. So PQ, the HD formats ONLY advantage, is not a big sell.

Personally, I don't see Blu-ray (everyone seams to be too quickly walking away from HD DVD) having much of a future on PC's, or even Macs for that matter, so DVD is going to stick around. And unless Blu Ray can defeat DVD, Blu Ray goes the way of UMD before very long. Another in a long line of quaint Sony formats that went nowhere.

I seem to remember things differantly.... way differantly.

Video tape was revolutionary in its time, but had a lot of draw backs. And PQ was NOT one of them, because in those days everything sucked, and we watched that suckiness on 17 to 26 inch tv's.
Compare and contrast to ADGrant's comment above.

A number of early release DVDs DID suffer from inadequate PQ as I remember it. They were better than VHS, but not by much (similar to what Blu-ray went throug with titles like The Fifth Element) due to poor encoding.

And yes, hardly anyone had big TVs back then, so it didn't matter that much which one you were watching - which is the point I was making about the PQ not being "startlingly" better at first for DVD. DVD would move on and clean up its act, but then - so has Blu-ray. Current Blu-ray releases, by and large, look much, much better than their DVD counterparts.

I remember broken cassettes, machines that would eat tape, rental tapes that were "faded", and speaking of rentals, when was the last time you paid a "rewind fee"? (I bet Blockbuster really misses that one!!!!).
I remember those too. VHS sucked. We only used it because it was the only game in town aside from the equally if not more sucky Betamax. No one is denying that. :)

Let's be real; anyone who had a collection of videos tapes (meaning, people who had a lot of broken, faded, half eating cassettes) where chomping at the bit to dump them for DVD. People where obviously willing to pay more for a format that wasn't prone to breaking, fading, being eating on the first play, etc. [I]The only thing that kept VHS around for so long were all the porn collections out there.
Here I'll disagree. DVD movies were superior for pre-recorded stuff, but DVD burners weren't common until much later in its lifespan. VHS stuck around for a long time because it was the only way you could timeshift content like TV shows.

The same is apperently not the case for the HD formats vs. DVD. DVD's look quite good, and Upscaled DVD's, for most people, compair quite favorable to HD disc. So PQ, the HD formats ONLY advantage, is not a big sell.

Personally, I don't see Blu-ray (everyone seams to be too quickly walking away from HD DVD) having much of a future on PC's, or even Macs for that matter, so DVD is going to stick around. And unless Blu Ray can defeat DVD, Blu Ray goes the way of UMD before very long. Another in a long line of quaint Sony formats that went nowhere.
I agree that Blu-ray still has a ways to go before it supplants DVD; and it probably will never permanently kill DVD in the way DVD killed VHS. But it does have some points in its favor, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?

.....Here I'll disagree. DVD movies were superior for pre-recorded stuff, but DVD burners weren't common until much later in its lifespan. VHS stuck around for a long time because it was the only way you could timeshift content like TV shows...

Timeshifting wasn't that hot on VHS. Programing the decks was obtuse at best, capacity was WAY limited, the slightest change in program schedules completely screwed up the recording, and that's assuming that the tape didn't jam:eek:! Most people I knew who recorded onto tape actually pushed the record button to make sure they got what they wanted on tape.

But even at that, that was just a reason to keep a tape deck around for those people who liked to collect video. And those people didn't surrender their decks for DVD's, they surrendered their decks for Tivo's.

As a side note... the only time my deck flashed "12:00 AM" was in the event of a power failure. Which was another reason to stick around to press play.

No I didn't get a DTS capable receiver until 2005. Given how few DVDs have DTS sound tracks, it didn't seem worth junking my DD receiver.

To me a format war is where two competing formats are actually sold to consumers. By the time DVDs and players shipped, there was no war.

I still have my 1st 1999 Toshiba Dual-Tray DVD player and it supports DTS digital out via Optical and Coax. The Component-Out was limited to 480i and as soon at my 4:3 56" RPCRT died, I bought a Toshiba 65" RPCRT in 2005 and component 480i looked very poor on this HDTV. The search for an up-converting DVD player started and ended with a Toshiba HD-A1 (Canadian released on May 2006) connected via HDMI, DVDs never looked so good and I was floored when I seen my 1st HD DVD, it was love at first sight. :D

...Angelo

The same is apperently not the case for the HD formats vs. DVD. DVD's look quite good, and Upscaled DVD's, for most people, compair quite favorable to HD disc. So PQ, the HD formats ONLY advantage, is not a big sell.
The problem with upscaled DVD is that it look better or at least too close to the HD people is getting in their house for many shows/channels (much compression used) so they don't justify paying $30 for a movie and not $20 or less (player price aside).

Compare and contrast to ADGrant's comment above.

A number of early release DVDs DID suffer from inadequate PQ as I remember it. They were better than VHS, but not by much (similar to what Blu-ray went throug with titles like The Fifth Element) due to poor encoding.

And yes, hardly anyone had big TVs back then, so it didn't matter that much which one you were watching - which is the point I was making about the PQ not being "startlingly" better at first for DVD. DVD would move on and clean up its act, but then - so has Blu-ray. Current Blu-ray releases, by and large, look much, much better than their DVD counterparts.

...

Here I'll disagree. DVD movies were superior for pre-recorded stuff, but DVD burners weren't common until much later in its lifespan. VHS stuck around for a long time because it was the only way you could timeshift content like TV shows.



I still have a number of early DVDs whose PQ is not stellar by the standards of today's DVDs and even by the standards of some laserdiscs in 97. No one would have ever mistaken them for VHS though. I think you have forgotten just how bad VHS looked even on TVs common in 1997. I had a four year old 32" Sony CRT in 97 (lots of people had those). I also had a VHS copy of Blade Runner and a DVD copy of the same movie. I used to show people the clips from the VHS copy and then clips from the DVD. Everyone could clearly tell the difference. VHS isn't even as good as analog cable. It cannot even display a full resolution NTSC signal.

BTW I know very few people who have ever used DVD burners for recording TV shows. Tivo launched in early 1999, long before DVD burners were common.

one thing blu-ray has on its side is the fact that there are several mfg's making
players so if you don't like one brand there are several more to choose from.

Blu-ray discs are not DVDs.

Incidentially, the answer the the question that is the title of this thread is: people who want to see high-quality 1080p video and hear high quality audio on their A/V systems. I imagine these are people who enjoy movies and tend to have nicer A/V setups. But it also includes lots of people who just care about picture quality, as they perhaps have a nice big LCD HDTV but no receiver hooked up to the TV. For some of these people, the price is not a huge obstacle, but for others it is perhaps one of a few splurges they make.

Personally, I don't see Blu-ray (everyone seams to be too quickly walking away from HD DVD) having much of a future on PC's, or even Macs for that matter, so DVD is going to stick around. And unless Blu Ray can defeat DVD, Blu Ray goes the way of UMD before very long. Another in a long line of quaint Sony formats that went nowhere.

I agree with this. The more they try to lock down BD with DRM, the longer DVD's will stick around for PC's for sure. Although ripping DVD's isn't legal (at least in the US), it's a "feature" that DVD's have. It's no different than trying to sell DRM laden music to people that are accustomed to CD's with no DRM.

And to really comment on the original thread topic, no, the vast majority out there will not pay much more, if any.

Didn't DIVX players also play DVD's? Well, I can't find any evidence of that.

However, a little flashback shows Montgomery Ward (Remember them?) selling DVD's for as little as $14.99 during the format war.

http://www.fightdivx.com/divx3.htm

Hmmph...

Now, we're seeing catalog HD DVD's and Blu-Ray discs for as little as $19.99? :o

Divx players definitely *did* play DVDs.

Divx vs. DVD was entirely different from Blu-Ray vs. HDDVD or either of those vs. DVD. Divx arrived late to the party, for one thing. DVD was already out in the marketplace for a year or more. Divx was difficult to explain to people. As a lawyer friend said to me, "What do you expect from a video format designed by a law firm?" They tried to market Divx as a replacement means for video rental, but, again, it was complicated; AND it involved a sort of Big Brother system that was offensive to lots of people, stupidly designed, and led to the most total death of any format ever. That is, even if you kept your player repaired and your discs in good condition, they were absolutely unplayable without approval through the telephone line; a couple of years after the system was abandoned, they shut down the computer, at which point the discs were unusable.

The whole Divx skirmish was something like six months from the first discs coming out to the announcement it was over.

The entire purpose was to assuage studio piracy fears. Disney, Fox, and somebody else -- Paramount, I think? -- had held back on digital media up till then, while Warner and others were having increasing success. The Divx studios quickly saw the handwriting on the wall and realized they'd have to start releasing DVDs. Poor them! They ended up making a fortune.

One other difference: There were lots of DVD "fanboys"; I don't recall ever seeing posts by Divx "fanboys"; there weren't any.

One other difference: There were lots of DVD "fanboys"; I don't recall ever seeing posts by Divx "fanboys"; there weren't any.

True, everyone online despised DIVX (it was invented by a law firm). Some boycotted Circuit City for years afterwards.

It's interesting you mention the big brother aspect of Divx, how that was supposed to be such a bad thing, but now some people have no problem with it when it comes to video downloads. Maybe in our internet use over the last several years, with all the lists we've gotten on and all the spam, that we've just grown accustomed to being tracked in some way.

Then again, maybe it's just the convenience factor that makes the tradeoff worth it. Divx wasn't really any more convenient than DVDs, which didn't have usage tracking. Perhaps TiVo played a part in getting people used to it, as they were willing to have their viewing habits tracked in exchange for easy time-shifting. By the same token, the buying convenience and slight (IMHO) usability convenience over physical media could make it worth it too.

Agree with the original poster.

I started a (now deleted) thread a few days ago about seeing the "Close Encounters" blu-ray at Target for $38 and how that simply was never going to fly with mainstream big box shoppers in these recessionary times.

Hell, I have a 58" plasma and a PS3 and can easily appreciate the improvement that blu-ray offers.

BUT, it's NOT WORTH a $20 to $30 premium over DVD to me. I could afford it, but I'm not going to pay it, and if you can't sell it to me you can forget about J6P.

My enthusiasm for HDM is fading fast because the releases are so slow in coming. It's hard to argue to convince people to get blu when I haven't watched one myself for weeks now.

i will agree the 30.00 price is too steep they should have took some leasons from
laserdisc had that format had titles priced more reasonable it may have still gone
away but they sure would have sold a lot more. that being said i watch people look
and pick up titles 25 and under.

I think the studios idea to jump into a new format is to promote new sales and at new price so there will be more profit. Creating a new product that cost more to duplicate and adding more interactive features that cost more and sell it at same price is not what they want.

+1

DVD had too major advantages over the HDM formats.

1) it was released as a finished product. I was still using my 1st gen Sony DVD player a couple of years ago.

2) There was no format war.

We will have to see how fast BD gets adopted once the format war is over.

Agreed.
In fact I still have both Sony:rolleyes: DVP-S7000 and DVP-S3000 working quit well as extra players.
Lacking some features of newer players,but both built like tanks,and working just as well as they did right out of the boxes.
Absolutely no glitches from either.

The reason why this NEX GEN DVD era is slumping, is not only so much the fact of the players...but also of the DVD PRICES!

these nex gen DVDs should be priced no higher than standard DVD prices. And...standard DVD prices of $19 - $25 a movie are too damn high. Your avg joe consumer doesnt want to spend this kind of money to watch a movie once throw it in their drawer or put it on their shelf!

ALL DVDs should be priced no higher than $10 in my opinion, then the DVD market would boom!

Yeah, wow, take an introductory course in business or something and then start a thread. Instant adoption at the commodity level doesn't benefit any of the companies involved, and since they would simply abandon the market, it doesn't benefit the consumer either.

The price of media will come down as the volume sold goes up (and as production costs drop in line with the latter). That's the only healthy way to grow a market and keep all companies involved happy.

I have no problem with the current pricing of HD and BD. It's the lack of content that interests me that stops me from buying more discs.

ALL DVDs should be priced no higher than $10 in my opinion, then the DVD market would boom!

It "boomed" pretty well at the current prices. Although I agree with you in a sense; I think homes should be priced no higher than ten dollars. Also booze should be free. HDTVs should range in price from one to twenty-seven cents. Work should only be two hours a week...

Though my salary falls in the mid income bracket the amount of money I am spending on HDM is way too high. I haven't spent this much money on SD DVD. Why am I spending so much ?

1) Addiction to movies and electronics in general. Until 2004 High Definition was a day dream for me. Now it's becoming a common phenomena

2) On an average I have spent about $20 per title (incl shipping to Japan). It's impossible to get NEW HDM for less than $25 in Japan. There is no need to spend $30 on Spiderman-3 when the entire trilogy was available for $44 in amazon.

I haven't witnessed these kind of fire sales for SD DVD during it early years. I bought the SD DVD version of Swordfish, Matrix and Black Hawk Down for $19. Recently I was able to get these titles for more or less the same price that too on high definition.

Besides importing certain rare titles I have decided not to overspend on HDM and make full utilization of the BOGO / B2GO1 deals. However I just now broke my promise and ordered the Blu-ray version of 1408 and The Island from mediadis considering that these titles won't be released in the U.S in the near future.

For ex, it doesn't make any sense to spend $27.95 ~ $35 on catalog titles like Predator, Commando, ID4, Ronin etc. that carry no extras.

you just need to ship more at a time

I live in Taiwan and order all my movies from Amazon US. It is expensive to send a few disks at a time, but if you send 50 at a time it's really nothing since the shipping isn't much more

Of course, the "elite folk" and "videophiles" who post here do "understand" that lower prices lead to greater sales (that's just elementary economics). The disagreement -- at least to me -- is that there's no major hurry for prices to drop significantly. As with every CE technology we've ever seen (including DVD), prices will drop, quality will improve, features will get better, and, perhaps, it will catch on with the mass market. Despite the smug and condescending post, it is not a lack of "understanding" that causes some to disagree with certain views of others.


You can call my post smug and condescending all you want. It's the truth, and there is certainly a lack of understanding when it comes to movie pricing.

When DVD came out I could walk into Suncoast and purchase a movie for $24.95. If I went to Best Buy, I could get the same movie for $19.99.

We live in a different world now. $29.99 for a movie is border-rediculous. $34.95 is just plain stupid.

And while you're quite sure prices will come down and things will magically catch on, you should ask how us Laserdisc folk are doing these days. We waited for prices to come down on our stuff as well. By the time they did, the public passed us by for something else.

And with other forms of HD programming out there, Blu-ray will suffer the same fate.

So if it's "smug" to point out that you don't understand that, well then call me smug. Because that is the way things are.

i see the pricing coming up lets compare
sd=480
hd=1080
sd=dd or dts
hd=dolby tru hd or dts master
why is it hard to understand when you get more mfg's are going to charge more.

You can call my post smug and condescending all you want. It's the truth, and there is certainly a lack of understanding when it comes to movie pricing.

When DVD came out I could walk into Suncoast and purchase a movie for $24.95. If I went to Best Buy, I could get the same movie for $19.99.

We live in a different world now. $29.99 for a movie is border-rediculous. $34.95 is just plain stupid.

And while you're quite sure prices will come down and things will magically catch on, you should ask how us Laserdisc folk are doing these days. We waited for prices to come down on our stuff as well. By the time they did, the public passed us by for something else.

And with other forms of HD programming out there, Blu-ray will suffer the same fate.

So if it's "smug" to point out that you don't understand that, well then call me smug. Because that is the way things are.

Let's check back in 6 and 12 months to see what has happened, and where things seem to be headed. I'm betting that by Holiday 2008, players are essentially all 1.1 or 2.0 compliant, they support all of the HQ audio formats, and cost less than the $400 they cost now. Movie selection will be better, and, perhaps, they will be cheaper. And Blu-Ray will be one of the hot items of the season. Downloads will still be struggling. Just one opinion, of course.

I also note that many of the people reading these posts have bought Blu-Rays (often many Blu-Rays) at the "border-rediculous" (sic) and "just plain stupid" prices you mention. So that is obvioulsy a subjective opinion.

I don't understand the point of this thread. If you aren't here for HDM, then why would you even bother reading and posting here?

The reason why this NEX GEN DVD era is slumping, is not only so much the fact of the players...but also of the DVD PRICES!

these nex gen DVDs should be priced no higher than standard DVD prices. And...standard DVD prices of $19 - $25 a movie are too damn high. Your avg joe consumer doesnt want to spend this kind of money to watch a movie once throw it in their drawer or put it on their shelf!

ALL DVDs should be priced no higher than $10 in my opinion, then the DVD market would boom!

By shopping wisely and taking advantage of sales, etc. most of the standard definition dvd's I've purchased in the last couple of years have been priced in the $5 (older titles with knocked down retail prices) to $15 (new releases the week they come out) range. I have a growing number of HD-DVD titles - and have paid over $20 for only 2 of them (one of which is the BBC Planet Earth set) - all the rest are in the $15 range - a bunch as low as $10 with bogo's.:cool:

I don't buy many DVDs anymore. I've purchased about 80-90 HDM titles over the last year. When I do want a newer title on DVD I just wait for NetFlix to start selling them used for $6-8. Don't even need to go out shopping.

As I have been one of those Laserdisc folks....We knew prices were not coming down. The highest priced studio's were the one's with the highest prices with HD discs now. But most things you really wanted to watch were available. The picture quality was great and was a must have with large projection TV. We knew it was never going to be a mass market item, the discs were 12 inches and could warp like LPs and the video was(gasp) analog. One of reasons DVD's caught on is they had a good picture and were small. With laserdiscs there were certain titles that were imports but when people started clamoring for them they became available. If the studios supply HD discs in titles that people want, people will come, volume follows and eventually prices will fall with quality maintained.

things have improved a lot since then i had 2 that suffered from rot almost a year
or so later but at the time it was the best and my introduction to stereo tv.

"In my eyes, and in the eyes of the general public, the pricing model of movies should be no more than the pricing model of music cd albums....in fact, people seem to get more replay use out of music cds then they do movies"

DVD had too major advantages over the HDM formats.

1) it was released as a finished product. I was still using my 1st gen Sony DVD player a couple of years ago.


I'm going to assume you are talking about hardware because I don't consider a disc where you have to "flip it" halfway through the movie to be a "finished" product.