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WanMan
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 10270
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:21 pm Post subject: Blu-ray Player Prices Dropping below $300 |
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Walked into Fry's Electronics and noticed the Samsung BD-P1400 was priced at $299.99 on the shelf, which only had one left. Noticed this is basically the same price Amazon has it for also (No Tax, Free Shipping). I suppose if Fry's is near you then you could get someone to price-match. Using the 10% BB reward coupon seems silly if only to be offset by your local sales tax, though.
BTW, I know frys.com is the online store for Fry's Electronics and that this resulted when Fry's Electronics bought out Outpost.com (or were they originally owned by FE but used a different name?), but why should I be able to use Amex online and not in retail? With every small retail purchase from FE I tell them they lost another large sale because of not accepting Amex in retail.
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Moose
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 788
Location: Minnesota
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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Well, they're almost at a point where I'll consider a purchase. I just wish I could get it into bidders heads on Ebay that a 20GB PS3 isn't worth nearly it's list price and that if you're going to bid that much, get a new one!
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greg_mitch
Joined: 03 May 2006
Posts: 5320
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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Reading the information about BD+ and what it is capable of, I am nervous to buy a bluray player. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Plus, don't you think all of these bluray profile 1.1 players will be dropping like rocks anyway once the 2.0 players get released.
I bet they will be down to 250 within a month or two.
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yonexsp
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 311
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| greg_mitch wrote: | Reading the information about BD+ and what it is capable of, I am nervous to buy a bluray player. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Plus, don't you think all of these bluray profile 1.1 players will be dropping like rocks anyway once the 2.0 players get released.
I bet they will be down to 250 within a month or two. |
This seems to be the main reason Fox has delayed a number of titles for this very reason. Early BD players may it seems have big problems in the very near future.
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greg_mitch
Joined: 03 May 2006
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kal
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greg_mitch
Joined: 03 May 2006
Posts: 5320
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:27 am Post subject: |
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I really don't think that disc sales at this point in the ball game mean squat.
Stand alone players in the house mean more.
Don't you feel just a little bit nervous that a studio could implement a disabling feature for certain discs after a set time using this BD+? Too much DRM.
Although I might be able to talk my dad into purchasing a new 42" 1080p Panny plasma and getting the DMP30k for free. Then I could give him $200 for it and he would get a 42" 1080p plasma for $1300.
Tempting since it is profile 2.0 I think?
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yonexsp
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 311
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:53 am Post subject: |
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| greg_mitch wrote: | I really don't think that disc sales at this point in the ball game mean squat.
Stand alone players in the house mean more.
Don't you feel just a little bit nervous that a studio could implement a disabling feature for certain discs after a set time using this BD+? Too much DRM.
Although I might be able to talk my dad into purchasing a new 42" 1080p Panny plasma and getting the DMP30k for free. Then I could give him $200 for it and he would get a 42" 1080p plasma for $1300.
Tempting since it is profile 2.0 I think? |
Only Profile 1.1 as I understand it. No profile 2.0 available yet, except the PS3 is probably the best bet for that in the near future.
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ecrabb
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Joined: 13 Mar 2006
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Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:09 am Post subject: |
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Kal,
The Warner going Blu rumor has been confirmed - as a rumor. It apparently started as a "what-if" in an article in Business Week, and people ran with it. A Warner exec has stated they have no intention of changing from their current policy, which is to produce for both formats.
http://www.soundadviceblog.com/?p=677
Looking at the Amazon sales stats, BD/HD-DVD is at about 60/40 - or about, 1.5:1 - with neither really trending upward or downward significantly. I haven't seen any official stats anywhere that put general market media sales at 70% BD/30% HD-DVD.
With the price cut, PS3 sales are finally picking up, but currently only about 1/3 of those console sales generate much in the way of BD sales. The HD-DVD camp says they've surpassed 750,000 standalone players sold and are quickly approaching a million. Considering the significantly higher attach rate (about 4x) on the HD-DVD side, the million players number should start generating some serious media sales.
The war is still raging and certainly won't be decided any time soon - let alone by the holiday season.
SC
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WanMan
Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 10270
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:43 am Post subject: |
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| greg_mitch wrote: | | Don't you feel just a little bit nervous that a studio could implement a disabling feature for certain discs after a set time using this BD+? Too much DRM. |
No more than I did buying into a tape-based analog system that if used there would degrade in the quality of the sub-VGA content. If I just left it on the shelf the same emulsion is still open to becoming a problem and reducing the PQ on playback.
I am not sure if anyone over 30 years of age had not bought into some sort of magnetic tape-based system and over time felt the need for a more shelf-lasting system. I would find it hard to believe that ANY studio would set an EOL time on a title. That would produce such a backlash as to make worldwide headlines and protest-to-banning the studio.
You are/may be walking the line of paranoia.
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007
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kal
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| greg_mitch wrote: | I really don't think that disc sales at this point in the ball game mean squat.
Stand alone players in the house mean more. |
Funny, I've always thought the opposite. To me the money's not in the players. Seems true since the prices are now in the $200-$300 range for both sides. *NOBODY* is making money selling Blu-ray and HD-DVD player hardware. The money's to be made by selling movies.
Which scenario is better:
(1) 100 people with player X buying 1 movie/month for the next 10 years
(2) 50 people with player Y buying 3 movie/month for the next 10 years
Number of players out there is meaningless. If the disc sales that matter. It could go either way.
| ecrabb wrote: | The Warner going Blu rumor has been confirmed - as a rumor. It apparently started as a "what-if" in an article in Business Week, and people ran with it. A Warner exec has stated they have no intention of changing from their current policy, which is to produce for both formats.
http://www.soundadviceblog.com/?p=677 |
Yup - I was aware of that when I mentioned it above. If you read the blogs it seems some of the 'experts' out there still think there's something likely going on... and that Warner may announce something in the next few months.
| Quote: | | Looking at the Amazon sales stats, BD/HD-DVD is at about 60/40 - or about, 1.5:1 - with neither really trending upward or downward significantly. I haven't seen any official stats anywhere that put general market media sales at 70% BD/30% HD-DVD. |
Amazon is mostly US right? IIRC the 70/30 number was worldwide sales over a few week period. Not very meaningful in the long term however. Time will tell. I completely agree that this war is far from over.
Kal
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ecrabb
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: | | greg_mitch wrote: | I really don't think that disc sales at this point in the ball game mean squat.
Stand alone players in the house mean more. |
Funny, I've always thought the opposite. To me the money's not in the players. Seems true since the prices are now in the $200-$300 range for both sides. *NOBODY* is making money selling Blu-ray and HD-DVD player hardware. The money's to be made by selling movies.
Which scenario is better:
(1) 100 people with player X buying 1 movie/month for the next 10 years
(2) 50 people with player Y buying 3 movie/month for the next 10 years
Number of players out there is meaningless. If the disc sales that matter. It could go either way. |
Greg's opinion more closely mirrors that of the wonks, but you're both right, really. You need players on the streets for people to buy movies, but lots of people buying lots of movies makes for a popular platform - which sells movies AND hardware. Your example probably isn't far off from what's happening right now, actually.
In the US, if you include PS3's (which the BD camp always does), then the BD player numbers are huge - like three times what the HD-DVD camp has. In theory then, BD software sales should be approximately triple, right? Nope. It's only 1.5x or so... Because so many PS3 buyers don't buy movies (about 2 out of 3). Standalone player buyers... They buy movies. That's why the attach rate on the HD-DVD is so high compared to BD - about 4x last time I looked.
Because of all that, the theory is that if the HD-DVD camp is able to continue pushing standalone players out the door at a much higher rate than the BD camp, they'll eventually start catching up in software sales. Who knows whether that will actually happen?
What will be interesting is to see Jan/Feb media numbers. You have to believe there are millions of HD-DVD, X360, PS3, etc. all under the tree as gifts. Imagine when those people start buying movies!
SC
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kal
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:02 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, yes, I see what you mean. The players sold vs discs sold thing is very much a chicken/egg thing for sure. I think both have sold enough however that it's pretty meaningless to compare. It's a close race no matter what anyone says.
I think the biggest swings can happen if studios start to take sides. If Warner moves to HD-DVD only, that'll even things out very well. If they swing to Blu-ray's side then things get very much lopsided in favour of Blu-ray. (Not that I'm saying that Warner will choose one - just hypothesizing).
Q1 2008 will certainly be interesting. Like you said, we'll how all those machines that end up under the tree get used.
Kal
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greg_mitch
Joined: 03 May 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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Yes what I was trying to say is that the number of discs sold so far is squat when compared to DVD sales.
No one will ever determine if the stand alone is worth more than the game system in making the format win.
Either way...I find it very difficult to get past intentional screwing of the customer with unnecessary DRM. How much quicker would movies be out without waiting for BD+ to get finalized? How much faster would movies load in players? How much cheaper would players be?
I guess no one will know.
I want one but at the same time I don't want to support DRM. It isn't about hating a specific company, although I admit I have never really liked Sony stuff (except for my 1252!).
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
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Location: Fort Collins, CO
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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| greg_mitch wrote: | | Yes what I was trying to say is that the number of discs sold so far is squat when compared to DVD sales. |
And will continue to be so, until A) one side or the other caves in, B) some miraculous solution (e.g. uber-low-cost dual-format player) appears, or C) another format (think online web-delivered DRMified) takes advantage of the HD-vs-BD pissing contest and jumps into the gap with a simple solution that kills both of the disk-based formats.
Remember that probably 80-90% of J6P's out there wouldn't see a difference on their teevee even if they bought both a BR *and* an HD player. That's changing, as HDTV enters the market more seriously, but I'd bet at least 50% of the HDTV owners sit so far from their screens that they wouldn't see the difference between SD and HD anyway.
So HD has an uphill battle. The current technology available in the vast majority of houses doesn't showcase HD's improved picture quality. It's already hard enough to sell the HD concept in that environment. Add in an idiotic my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours format war and I think it's very possible they might kill the HD-on-disk market entirely.
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kal
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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Some interesting quotes from that article: director/producer Michael Bay (Transformers, Pearl Harbor, etc) says "I know what the final product should look like - Blu Ray suits my films better.” I dismissed it as a quote from a Blu-Ray supporter, even if he's a pro, but..
Later in the article, the author says "In my column More Of What We've Learned So Far of October 19th, I compared all HD DVDs with all BDs and I compared the best HD DVDs with the best BDs. My unavoidable conclusion is that BD provides a better presentation than HD DVD."
I believe the reviewer is a bit of a BD fanboy, but he does seem to be doing some careful analysis. His results imply that BD has better video quality than HDDVD. Interesting.
Personally I have an HD-DVD player, which cost me a net of $50 (after I sell the free DVDs I didn't want). I've only bought one disk (Transformers) and don't plan to buy a lot more -- I'll join Blockbuster Online and rent them. If HD-DVD caves and Blu-Ray wins, I won't be out much in terms of equipment. I just wish Sony's evil-empire solution wouldn't dominate.
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kal
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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| garyfritz wrote: | | Some interesting quotes from that article: director/producer Michael Bay (Transformers, Pearl Harbor, etc) says "I know what the final product should look like - Blu Ray suits my films better.” I dismissed it as a quote from a Blu-Ray supporter, even if he's a pro, but.. |
Yeah, found that odd too. The full quote is:
“Does anyone out here want to challenge what I feel suits my films better in terms of look. I see every frame of my films over a hundred times before it is ever released. I know the lighting conditions I shot it and the result on the DI. I know the range. I know what the final product should look like - Blu Ray suits my films better.”
Both discs use the same codecs so I don't really understand how they could really look better though BD has a higher bandwidth but most people have said that even the HD-DVD bandwidth is more than is needed ....
| garyfritz wrote: | Later in the article, the author says "In my column More Of What We've Learned So Far of October 19th, I compared all HD DVDs with all BDs and I compared the best HD DVDs with the best BDs. My unavoidable conclusion is that BD provides a better presentation than HD DVD."
I believe the reviewer is a bit of a BD fanboy, but he does seem to be doing some careful analysis. His results imply that BD has better video quality than HDDVD. Interesting. |
Yes, I've heard this a few times now too, and not from 100% fanboys that can't put their thoughts together without sounding like well, fanboys.
All I can think is that maybe the storage limitation is causing studios to compress HD-DVDs a bit too far sometimes to fit content on discs, causing softening of the image [on purpose], compression artifacts, etc. Who knows. It is an interesting article (see: http://www.dvdfile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6326&Itemid=11).
Kal
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ecrabb
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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| kal wrote: | | Both discs use the same codecs so I don't really understand how they could really look better though BD has a higher bandwidth but most people have said that even the HD-DVD bandwidth is more than is needed .... |
Correct. Above a certain point, additional bandwidth doesn't make the codec work any better. The codec is optimized for a certain compression ratio - and additional bit-rate and bandwidth doesn't DO anything. It's like saying, well, if 10-gauge speaker for a 40-foot run works great, then 4-gauge speaker wire will work even better.
| kal wrote: | | All I can think is that maybe the storage limitation is causing studios to compress HD-DVDs a bit too far sometimes to fit content on discs, causing softening of the image [on purpose], compression artifacts, etc. Who knows. |
But, they're not! On many of the titles that have been released on both formats, the data rate is often very comparable. Heck, look a those still frames those guys overseas posted. Looking at them at 200% on a desktop computer monitor, most of them are impossible to tell the difference - on a STILL FRAME - blow up 200%!!! On a couple that you can see the difference, the BD is every so slightly sharper, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it's BD or HD-DVD.
Assuming there is no bit-starvation (i.e., the film is simply too long for the disk - regardless of which) there is simply NO reason one format will look better or worse than the other. It COMPLETELY depends on the transfer and how good the system and compressionist was that did the compression. Period. End of story.
Michael Bay is simply full of sh*t. For whatever reason, he chose BD, and is now making stupid remarks about his preferences.
If there were some major shortcoming in HD-DVD and some huge advantage to BD, he (and others) would have a point... but, there isn't. The differences are subtle, the experience can and should be identical, and there's just no reason anyone can legitimately say one is significantly better than the other.
I hate the extra DRM on BD, too (BD+) and I generally dislike Sony... Still, I gave in because I want to watch good movies. I'll take them however I have to get them... dammit.
I can't WAIT to see Cars, Ratatouille, and Casino Royale. Next week can't come fast enough.
SC
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