Sony Blu-ray pricing: $23.45
p2p news / p2pnet: Sony Pictures is the first Hollywood studio to release pricing on its high-definition DVDs expected to be introduced early this summer,” says Red Herring.
A whacking $23.45. And that’s wholesale.
Blu-ray will compete with Toshiba’s HD-DVD and among the flics in Sony’s initial batch will be the somewhat elderly The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator, says the story. And that’s 56% more than the $14.99 it costs for a Hitch DVD from BestBuy.com. A Terminator disc goes for $9.99.
Failure of the Blu-ray and HD DVD firms to reach a unified standard, “has set the stage for a formats war akin to the VHS vs. Betamax battle of the 1980s,” says Reuters. “Each side hopes to reignite the sagging $24 billion home video market with new players and discs that offer greater capacity and interactive features.
“Other film studios like Time Warner Inc’s Warner Brothers declined comment, while General Electric Co’s Universal was unavailable and a spokeswoman for Viacom Paramount Studios said the studio was still working out pricing with retailers.”
Toshiba said it’ll offer $500 and $800 HD DVD players in March, lower than a $1,000 Blu-ray player model currently under development by Samsung Corp, “a member of the Sony-led Blu-ray camp,” says the story, adding:
“HD DVD plans to start rolling out hardware and titles by March and members of the Blu-ray consortium have said they will start shipping players by as early as May.”
Still, anyone willing to lash out for an iPod he or she can then load with $1-a-pop DRM tunes from iTunes will probably pay it. And all to watch a movie that’s more likely to be garbage than good.
Also See:
Red Herring – Blu-ray Discs Won`t Be Cheap, February 8, 2006
Reuters – Sony next-generation DVDs to cost about 20 pct more, February 9, 2006
February 10th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Do they really think the public will hand out that kind of money for blu-ray movies, not to mention the cost of the players.
Oh, and by the way, scratch one of those blu-ray discs and your out an easy $25+
February 10th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
The VHS to DVD change was HUGE because it offered a more compact product and a visibally superiour product. Sure HD movies might look a TINY bit better IF you have that 46″ plasma and the money to go buy yourself a HD player…. but I don’t think think that the differences between the DVD and HD dvds will be great enough that it will drive consumers to go buy new equipment… even in 5 to 7 years, i just don’t see it happening
February 10th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
I know i wont be wasting any money on this crap. I mean what’s the point? Existing dvd quality is good enough.
Who wants to store 50 gig per movie on their hardrive? No one with a sane miind of course.
I’m in the process of building a new PC, which will have over 1 TB storage, but even this would be used quickly with massive formats like this. It’s a dead duck, it simply doesn’t know it yet.
Oh sure, you are bound to get some sony fanboys buying this overpriced, overhyped gear, but real consumers will simply not fork out $23 for a 6+ month old movie.
February 12th, 2006 at 4:12 am
@#@$#%$ it! I have to buy my DVD’s all over again. I already own 2 or 3 editions of the same movie (the original featureless first-gen DVD release, the slightly better re-release, and now the super-duper collector’s/sucker’s edition)
I have multiple copies of The Professional, T2, Predator, all 4 Aliens movies- yes ALL 4. i bought them again on the Quadrilogy set. stop this craziness!!!! and for the love of crap, why can’t they settle on ONE format? i had enough of that when I was deciding which type of DVD burner to buy. DVD+/-R/RW/RAM/DL… accck!!!! there’s like 7 or 8 formats.
Just because Sony is a right bastard, I’m inclined not to support them and cast my vote for the Toshiba format. Toshiba makes reliable stuff. they don’t go sueing kids or deliberately making dangerous crap copy protection schemes that destroy your computer and then telling consumers that we suck because we won’t know what a rootkit is, so why does it matter.
it won’t be for at least a decade before bluray/hd dvd takes off and become commonplace. look at how long it took DVD to get market penetration. it waited out the first 2 or 3 years just because the players and discs were so expensive. now that most people have DVD and DVD movies, it’ll be a much harder sell. and DVD’s now cost $10-15 average, so what’s the point?
i’ll wait, and I think most customers will too. eventually, Cyberhome will make a bluray player for $100
/zi.
February 12th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
“Sony is not issuing suggested retail pricing on its Blue-ray Disc titles, leaving retailers free to determine their own margins, but retail street pricing is expected to range between $29.95 and $34.95 each.”
Ouch !!!
February 13th, 2006 at 3:11 am
Not when I can pay $17.99 or $19.99 (?) to rent three @ a time from Netflix.
What a bunch of morons. No one’ll buy this crap.
Who gives a fuck if a movie looks a little better. If I want real life quality, I’ll go out of the house & live.
Drop dead Sony. We’ll bury you with your DRMed Coldpaly CDs.
February 13th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Thats their intention. To recharge you again for the same catalogues. They did it with vhs -> dvd.
I can see a reason to upgrade to dvd format, but these so called High Definition format discs are simply pointless. Now i can appreciate the value of HD TV broadcasts as they don’t require expensive players or superfluos discs.
Most people these days are using media centers/PC’s for playing and storing movies, and at 50 gig a movie, your disk space will run out pretty fast. However, if you stick to 1.6/1.4 gig xvid compressed movies, you retain the excellent quality of dvd at a tiny size. Think about it, thats several hundred movies on 1TB storage or even more if you compress further to 700MB a movie.
TV shows are even better, you can get compressed HD TV shows at about 350MB. So you can see why these smaller formats will always win.
I can’t wait for sony to fall flat on it’s face.