Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Lindberg /forum/post/0
Korea was actually the second territory in which Blu-ray was released, but even here, it isn't really taking too much hold. I saw a lot of stores stock Blu-ray at first, only to pull them after not selling any for months. I've never seen a player in the wild, either.
Regardless, due to the market conditions in Korea, I doubt Toshiba will ever introduce HD DVD here. The only hope is the Xbox 360 add-on, but even that is unlikely, considering the lack of popularity of the 360 and consoles in general.
Wow, where did you see ANY blu-ray discs for sale here in Korea as early as January, other than on the auction sites? I saw none -- if they were selling anywhere, they were a novelty item. I was looking.
I have lived in the Seoul area for over 5 years, and although blu-ray players have been for sale in certain places (LG and Samsung Botiques, Costco, online) they have never dipped below the $1,200 range. Costco is forced to sell exclusively Samsung and Sony Bravia TVs, mostly (huge import taxes on the Sony making it crazy expensive). That's why their Samsung BDP1000 is still about $1,300.
Here are some prices on a Korean site. Prices are in Korean won. There are 920 Korean won to $1 at the moment. The only HD-DVD player sold here is the LG combo player that I can find. Not a Toshiba in sight:
http://www.enuri.com/view/List.jsp?c...cate_keyword=Y
Can you believe that the old Samsung 1000 blu-ray model is still sold for $1,300? The newer 1200 has yet to be released. Samsung and LG love to gouge the locals, and are forced to sell cheap in the USA to compete. We can get the dual-format models for closer to $1,500. In fact, I like to use blu-ray players as an example of government sanctioned price-fixing when discussing issues like the FTA and trade with the USA. They're pretty shocked to see Korean-made goods selling for twice the price here compared to the price in the USA. Well, I guess prices on such goods have to be high to help fund all of those room salon visits charged to company credit-cards.
The PS3 just came out here a few months ago. Sales probably haven't been that great. I've sold three games online (ICON, and 2 copies of NBA2K7), and only the marquee titles seem to be selling. I think NBA 2K7 wasn't even sold here (brought it from the USA).
As for blu-ray, there are only about 22 Sony titles available that have Korean subs on them, and the rest of the studios don't have any Korean. You can find some overpriced imports of discs like Rocky Balboa at Technomart near Gangbyeon station (if you know where to look), as well as all of the Sony titles, but little else, other than on auction sites (and they're mostly the same Korean-subbed discs).
Why would Koreans bother to buy blu-ray (or HD-DVD) with players costing over $1,000, and fewer than 25 titles to play on them? You can thank the Korean good ol' boy chaebol network of Samsung/LG for the crazy-high player prices. Well, at least the PS3 is an 80gb model costing around $525.
Here are the blu-ray titles seen here:
http://search.auction.co.kr/search/s...egory=36020000
Of those, The Host and Planet Earth are imports (The Host is a Korean movie, yet it hasn't even been released on BR here!)
There is also the issue that Koreans pay pennies for DIVX movies downloaded from pay movie sites like wedisk.co.kr (which at such low prices, I am curious if they ever pay ANY royalties to the USA studios). We all have very fast internet here, and my friends download a full SD movie in about 5 to 10 minutes. HD movies are surely on the way, if they aren't already (I haven't looked recently, but will).
That is what the movie companies need to investigate, IMHO. These Korean sites. HD movies are never going to take off here when people can just download a compressed HD movie that fills their 16x9 screen and looks "good enough." There are, in fact, a lot of "HD telescene" movies for sale on auction.co.kr, but they're mostly all Korean flicks or TV shows.
Koreans have a very high percentage of LCD and Plasma TVs in their homes -- very high, probably only behind Japan.
The only HD-DVD titles I've seen were on online auction, and at one of the stores in Techno-mart. All of those seemed to be imports.
Oh, here are the HD-DVD titles I'm finding online in Korea:
http://search.auction.co.kr/search/s...6020000&page=1
Jarhead
Borne Supremacy
King Kong
Apollo 13
Serenity
Doom
The Fast and The Furious
Koreans are into PC gaming more than anything, and the 360 has a fairly decent following going, although it's minute compared to PC gaming.
My PS3 is a Japanese model that I bought from a store in Technomart four months ago. It was surely brought here in someone's luggage.
