When we
posed the question of buying a Blu-ray player now or simply holding tight for prices to inevitably fall, we received a variety of responses. Still, just about everyone could agree that lower prices on standalone players would be excellent for consumers, but those delectable deep discounts may be quite aways off. According to Stan Glascow, the president of Sony Electronics, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) -- the group that maintains control over the BD standard -- has yet to license the technology to any Chinese manufacturers. In other words, prices are staying relatively high due to the lack of competition from China, not to mention the lack of another major format to keep things in line. Continuing future, he did admit that there would eventually be Chinese Blu-ray players on the market, but he did note that it didn't "need to drive that and hand the technology over" any time soon. So much for those Christmas in July (2008) wishes, eh?
[Thanks, Jake B.]
Update: For whatever it's worth, China Hualu Group Co., Ltd
is listed on the BDA's website of licensees. Interesting. Thanks for the heads-up, Dave!
posted Mar 7th 2008 5:02PM
sony wants to monopolize bluray? keep prices high by controlling the players in the game? never would have seen that coming
There are over 10 major CEs producing players so I fail to see your point really.
It is disappointing if no Chinese manufacturer is allowed to produce Blu Ray drives. They do drive the prices down and I'm sure there would be a way to enable them to manufacture while protecting patents if that is what the BDA is worried about.
xym
I see the BR fanboys are still at it.
As if the CE producers are going to drive prices down,good luck clinging to that wet dream, this is a blu ray cartel, always was, and it will be until the Chinese are allowed on board.
You are a muppet if you think the Japanese cartel are going to drive prices down, this ALWAYS was the plan. Kill HD DVD and then maintain high prices and cream the market place.
Hahahahahahaha, shite profile BR players at ridiculous prices, you BR zealots are now seeing what the HD DVD crowd has been arguing about for months, a sony dictated cartel with a monopoly designed to the rape the market, 2 quote another, 'reap the whirl wind blu fools', the consumer friendly product has been dorked by your cartel of choice, i hope you enjoy your over priced niche market format,any BR bogos this week?, lofl!, you are now getting what you all deserve!
Yeah, that makes total sense. Artificially keep the prices high and the adoption rate low. Spend hundreds of millions developing a format and then only sell it to 1% of the population. What a freaking great business plan that would be.
Of course it makes a great conspiracy theory for bitter fanboys....
Yeah, so whats the plan then genius, fight amongst themselves instead of the Chinese, lol.
Keep the market small but very profitable as long as possible, then hand it over to the Chinese in 3 or 4 years after you have stuck it into every early adopter on the planet.
Sony, the benevolent CE manufacturer, known for its great customer relations, lol
@ minimalist
umm, you do realize that this is exactly what most of us said would happen. This is called Sony proving that they don't know how to handle distribution and manufacturing of a mainstream media format. This is exactly what I was afraid of, if they don't smarten up, BD will remain a niche format until the next medium comes along.
This is exactly why I say Sony should NEVER have control over a media format, they just don't know how to handle it, and it's the consumer that gets f***ed over in the end as usual. That is the definition of bad business, but hey, enjoy you PS3 because BD is the only thing keeping it afloat right now! Oh yah, they screwed you on that one too.
Gus, the operative word in my comment was "if", "if" that was what was happening. And indeed it seems to be BS.
Either way, you claiming a cartel is simply ludicrous. The ENTIRE CE industry supports Blu Ray now, including Toshiba through its Samsung partnership. There are or soon to be players from Daewoo, Denon, Funai, JVC, LG,, Lite-On, Loewe, Marantz, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sigmatek and Sony. To name a few. Toshiba won't be long off either I'm sure.
These manufacturers want to make a profit and their prices will reflect that. Toshiba massively subsidized its HD DVD players to make them appear cheap. Blu Ray players will become cheap through economies of scale and competition. There will be plenty of sub $300 players this year, possibly even a few under $200. All through competition.
It shouldn't be hard to understand this concept.
@Gus
Uh, if you purposefully keep the market tiny for 3-4 years their will be no market. Any sane businessperson realizes this. Thinking that any of the members of the Blu-ray Association (BDA) would throw away the chance for that kind of profits is absurd. Stockholders just LOVE it when companies have slow or no growth.
@aplen22
Sony is not driving this boat. The BDA is in control of these decisions. The BDA board of directors is controlled by 18 CE companies, all of whom are in this business to make maximum profit, not to make bad business decisions. Maximum profit comes from major market penetration, not selling expensive boutique players to 1% of the market while downloads quietly take over their market. Not to mention, the real money is in movies and licensing fees for them. No players in the wild means movie sales remain pathetic meaning nobody, the licensees or the movie companies make any significant money. Again sounds like a great business plan.
Okay first, if they're making "good business decisions" in the first place, show me these good decisions. Thought so, the players are still priced ridiculously high and it's been two years! Not to mention the price of media is sky high. They are only after high mark ups, and now that they have successfully bought out the studios and drove Toshiba into the ground I don't see prices going down anytime soon.
What's putting a bug up my butt about this article is that by keeping the Chinese manufacturer out, the prices will stay high, so it is a good business decision for the BDA, but not for the consumer. But if the BDA keeps pissing off the consumer this way, this format will remain niche until the tune changes otherwise.
There, I wrote this comment reply without saying it's Sony's fault but we all know who's at the helm on this one, considering the actual article was quoting from the president of Sony, so get you head out of the ground and realize SONY is screwing us over. Any questions?
Thought so, the players are still priced ridiculously high and it's been two years! Not to mention the price of media is sky high.
Need I remind you of the history of DVD development? In 1998 (two years after DVD's introduction... the same point at which we are currently at with Blu-ray) I bought one of the cheapest DVD player available. There were no cheap Taiwanese DVD players on the market at the time. The player I got was 350 dollars. DVD's ranged from 30-40 dollars. Adjusting for inflation that is 450 dollars and 38-50 dollars respectively. What a niche market DVD proved to be!
It seems lots of people are confusing the tail end of DVD's reign with the way things have always been.
As if Sony needed to give people another reason to hate them.
Well, at least the war is over so that adoption can begin in mass huh engadget?
Regarding competition between the manufacturers already in the game: What are they competing for? All the new models are priced higher than the previous models, none are 2.0, and half of them hardly work at all. They're competing alright, but it's to see who can sucker the most money out of the consumer.
Price wars and bogos are OVER.
There's an old addage that comes to mind:
"Be careful what you wish for."
This is clearly untrue.
Check the site http://www.blu-raydisc.info/flla_licensee_lists_ROM2.php
China Hualu Group Co., Ltd China
DESAY A&V SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD China
Dongguan Contel Electronics Co., Ltd. China
Gowell Electronic Limited China
SHENZHEN MTC CO., LTD China
TCL Technoly Electronics (Hui Zhou) Co., Ltd China
Tonic Digital Products Ltd. China
WINBASE ELECTRONICS CORP., LTD. China
I have a flyer from one of these companies showing their prototype player which they demonstrated by invitation only at CES 2008.
Do you want a cheap player or a good player? Once a technology gets commoditized, all of the reputable manufacturers pull out of the market. Look no further than the massive consolidation in the television market.
The things that make a truly excellent piece of hardware; power supply, vibration control, analog circuitry, etc., are not things on which corners can be cut. With a few notable exceptions, these have not been high priorities for Chinese manufacturers in the low end of the US market.
All that said, Oppo DVD players are really outstanding, and the sooner the enter the Blu-Ray market the better off we'll all be!
What is a "Chinese manufacturer"? Some of the best US, Japanese and European brands build stuff in China by Chinese manufacturers.
Building stuff in China is one way to keep prices relatively low. (Okay, sometimes with Chinese BRANDS it's intellectual property theft, too.)
I guess we have to assume that what Sony/BDA means is that they will allow lots of BluRay stuff to be manufactured in China but not be Chinese brands.
Nathan thank you for an intelligent comment. I expect if one were to go to BB or CC and look at existing DVD players all or nearly all are made in some non-Japanese Asian country. It would be reasonable to expect that future Bluray players at those price points will be made in the same countries.
The thing that really reduces the cost of players at this point is a reduction of parts count. When existing players continue to rely on many expensive IC's sourced in Japan and the US (an by companies different than the player's manufacturer) player costs stay high regardless of the country of manufacture. As soon as IC's are available which aggregate multiple functions in one chip solutions costs will drop with retail prices soon to follow. Hence the road to cheap Bluray players is not merely by the production of existing designs by cheap labor but instead through the reliance on far few chips. Obviously this approach coupled with inexpensive labor squeezes costs once again. This process has already occurred on upscaling DVD players and it did so without the veiled assistance of the Evil Empire. It will happen again and soon.
Don't have to rely upon the Chinese, y'know. The Koreans can do it. Besides, the Chinese machines are probably full of lead anyway :P
Lead in electronics is a good thing. Much better solder connection.
Not all together unexpected. Sony is going to stifle competition so they can keep the prices artificially high and drive their profits up for as long as they can. I also fear that since the format war is over we will see progress in the format slow since there is little incentive to fix things now. High prices and little real progress. That is our Blu-Ray future I fear. It still amazes me that HD DVD players were doing things in their inital release in 2005 & 2006 that BD players still can't do. Hmmmmm...
How many times does this have to be said. Sony is not some evil overlord controlling Blu-ray. They are just one of 18 publically held CE companies, (most of them Japanese and Korean) sitting on the Blu-ray Association's board of directors. These companies all have to answer to their shareholders who will not sit idly by and be satisfied with meager profits from less than 1% of the population. No matter what the premium, there is no way this can compare with the profits to be made from mass market penetration.
Sony may have helped create the format but even so they still takes home less than 30% of the royalties collected from licensing fees (Panasonic, Pioneer and Warner get the rest).
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9874317-7.html
I'm sure Warner would love to keep the number of Blu-ray players low so they have nobody to sell their movies to.
"Sony" is not the same thing as "Blu-ray".
Good, enough garbage already comes out of China, no need to add shitty blu-ray players from there.
I'm with you, we don't need the market flooded with cheaply made chinese Blu-ray players.
Ya know, had Toshiba and the HD DVD gang allowed the Chinese to flood the market with cheapo priced players, the format war could've gone the other way. Ok, perhaps not, but it would've forced the BD faction to lower their prices. Also, I think that part of the reason that the BD folks aren't being so generous with the Chinese is because they are afraid engineers in China could reverse engineer some technology and eventually evade any future royalties.
I think they are dead certain that the tech will be reversed engineered and duplicated along with cost cutting.
Not letting Chinese brands license BD technology makes it easy to spot a pirate BD player. It also for the time keeps BD as a quality product.
There is a strong incentive to cut expenses at all costs. All it takes is for one of these cheap players to produce low quality images or break and the adoption of HD media will stall.
Once BD begins to hit the main stream all of these companies will jump on the band wagon and unleash the flood gates.
As for the HD-DVD supporters, do you honestly think that Toshiba would continue to subsidize HD-DVD players if they won? They were slicing prices so much even no-name Chinese manufacturers players cost more than a genuine Toshiba unit. There is no way they could have justified that level of generosity to share holders if they won. They also would have experienced a large consumer backlash if they had to raise the prices to a profitable level. Toshiba lost the format war long before Warner jumped ship.
No competition, no Chinese manufacturers.
Sony's dream to keep raking in the cash on BD!
it's kinda funny to me. Yes, the current manufacturers would love to keep the price on BD players as high as possible to recoup some R&D costs. Still the one thing that arguably won the war for Sony (PS3) is under incredible pricing pressure. As sony is forced to drop the price on the PS3 to stay competitive, then the rest of the BD player manufacturers will be forced to follow suite.
I've said it before, and I will say it again: If Sony can make a state of the art, bleeding edge cuper computer AND and BD player for $399 and still turn a profit, can you Blu ballers seriously tell me that no one(Sony included) can make a BD player under $199? Or at least a somewhat reasonable price? With the cell processor (ironically from Toshiba) being a big chunk of that $399, it wouldn't be too far fetched to say that it is possible.
Once again Sony and BDA, instead of BUYING movie studios outright and making back alley bribes with WB and Fox, make an AFFORDABLE (not cheap!), COMPLETE (profile 2.0), and FULLY FUNCTIONING(enough with the shitty Sammys that don't read all discs, etc.) HDM player that is not a video game machine (PS3) and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I will gladly jump on that boat once it gets there. Oh, and if it can up-convert well too that would be nice. I don't think I am asking for too much, am I?
I don't think BD discs being $30 is that big of a deal, cuz personally, I haven't bought a DVD in ages. I just rent from Netflix or Blockbuster online. Anyways, I think I got off on a tangent there, but just lower prices and make a half way decent player, and people will be forming a line to hand you buckets of cash. I will be on that line if/when that happens.
One of the big mistakes that buried HD-DVD is the fact that Toshiba undercut all of their competitors in price. The $399 price of the PS3 is just around breaking EVEN, let alone turning a profit. If Sony were to suddenly undercut their competitors when HD medium is such an unstable market, the other manufacturers would have a hard time justifying making players. Prices will go down, but naturally, unlike HD-DVD. Sure the tech was originally cheaper, but the pricing was so aggressive that it didn't reflect the cost of the hardware.
This slow price drop curve is better for the industry. You have 8 major companies and countless smaller companies trying to reduce manufacturing costs and increase reliability. Eventually those savings will be passed onto the consumer, at the same time providing higher margins for the companies themselves, further incentive for driving down the costs of manufacturing.
I agree that Toshiba made a bunch of mistakes in this "format war", from securing studio support, having msft price the HD DVD add on at $199, not teaming up with more CE companies, not lowering prices sooner, and the list goes on and on. But I don't really care about that. I just like most of you, are HD enthusiasts, and will follow the HD content. While I was hoping the HD DVD won out, I knew that they had the chips stacked against them. I did think that HD DVD was a much more consumer friendly format in terms of price.
I do however disagree that a slow price drop is better for the industry. With the slew of competitors that BD faces now(AppleTV, HD VOD, VUDU, Internet D/L & streaming content), it has a short window of opportunity to establish it self as the format of choice. The longer it waits to complete its product (profile 2.0) and lower its price to a reasonable range($199), its chances of succeeding SD DVD dwindles. And according to recent reports, Sony is making a profit off of PS3 or very close to it. So instead of giving us shit we don't want or need, like a bigger HDD, Motorstorm (I would have bought it if i really wanted it thank you) and keeping the price out of reach for the majority of consumers, just lower the damn price. Stop dragging your feet! Lower the price and get the install base first before thinking of getting in the black.
While I do see a difference in BD vs up converted DVDs, you won't find me dropping $400+ for a BD player anytime soon. With HDTV adoption still at 25-35% depending on who you ask (and this is in the US, I bet it is lowering in every other country). People are still watching analog cable here! So to thinking that the consumer will jump in and pay extra money for a BD player, when it took them all these years to throw down the $$ for an HDTV, you are dreaming. Not to mention that the difference in a lot of BD movies to its SD up-converted is still not night and day to most people. You get the biggest difference in CGI(Pixar, Dreamworks), special effects heavy movies(10,000 BC, Transformers), but not so much on your average movie ( mostly comedies, chick flicks, dramas, etc.) does not benefit so much. I'm not saying that I can't see the difference, but is price tag worth the difference? Not now, not yet. And for the majority of people SD DVD is good enough.
So hurry the F*** up and lower the prices, and complete the spec. You can count the boatloads of money from royalties in the years to come.
While I'll agree that prices need to drop for Blu-Ray to be competitive, I'll stick with my original post in the fact that the current progression is sufficient for the time being. If you are simply talking about the PS3 price, sure, they could probably afford to drop it right now. But the PS3 sales are actually very high. The 80GB Motorstorm bundle DOES sell very well, as does the 40GB Spider man Blu pack. But it would only be more losses to Sony, and not necessarily higher sales in the long term. But like I said, you don't want to undercut your competitors to the point at which they lose the motivation to compete. The PlayStation is probably the only player that could get away with such an undercut without adversely affecting the rest of the industry, but you're forgetting something. As much as people like to call the PS3 a game console, it isn't. It is designed as a multimedia computer, not as a Blu-Ray player, not as a game console. In order for the PlayStation business to be successful, Blu-Ray AND PS3 games have to sell. Blu-Ray gets the device into people's homes, but thats it. The games are what make Sony money. Taking another $50 or $100 out of the price when Sony has -just- broken even on the units in terms of manufacturing costs is an unnecessary cost for the company.
I understand that Sony doesn't want to undercut other manufacturers too much, but the fact of the matter is that they are. And when the PS3 is the only 2.0 BD player out there now, AND it is cheaper than most non 2.0 BD players out there now!
The 80GB DOES sell well, but believe you me, it is most definitely not because people want Motorstorm. And the 40gb doesn't sell because of Spiderman 3. If Sony can pack in a super computer Cell processor, multimedia center, with a HDD, Spiderman 3 (or Motorstorm), 5 free BD movies (titles which suck) and wifi for $399, then surely Sony and all the other BD manufacturers can make a BD player for $199 or less. How about don't give us 5 free BD movies from a selection of crappy movies and lower the price. Or how about give us our choice of ANY 5 BD movies. Don't pack in extra crap and make it seem like you gave us a great deal. If it was such a great deal, then you wouldn't have to pack in all this extra junk in the first place. And now with their biggest competitor out of the picture, they have a cartel/monopoly for HDM, and have less incentive to bring prices down. i just hope that that isn't the case.
I know that Sony isn't the only company behind BD, but they are one of the biggest (30% with 4-5 more companies splitting the remaining 70%)), if not the biggest. player behind BD.
It doesn't matter. There is already Funai to make cheap BR players. Since they are Japanese, they are not covered in this blanket statement. The players from Funai are supposed to be out in their second quarter (Spring) for less than $300. If the manufacturer is expecting the price to be under $300, that could mean that the actual retailers will sell it for close to $200. That will get the BR price wars going. Considering Funai makes the Sylvania and Emerson brands and does the manufacturing on the cheap Magnavox DVD players, I'm sure this player will be a staple in any Wal-Mart.
http://www.funai.us/bluRayDiscFunai.aspx
Oops, it would have been bad form for me to make claims without a source.
So much for mass adoption. WB, lol!!!
Too bad blu-ray doesn't want to increase the market share and get the players headed toward some fair prices.....
I hope Blu-RAY dies in the end. Let DVD live on for another 10 years. Deal with Blu-Ray a unfinished rushed to the marketplace DRM infested format that you can play on only your 1 Blu-Ray player, that really isn't much better then a DVD, a bit better picture and sound, No real Next Gen features that work like on HD DVD so it's really just a little better version of a DVD with lots of restrictions on overpriced Disc's and Hardware. Where as I can play a DVD on hardware everywhere. From a Home system, to a Portable, to a Car Deck, and just as easily rip the Movie and throw it on a bunch of other devices. IPOD, ZUNE, PocketPC, whatever. DVD's are getting so cheap you can pretty much buy a new copy or used copy for the price of renting the disc.
I for one as many others, could care less about Blu-Ray. HDMI came out not for a better picture really, but for DRM. Do you really think Movie Studio's want to release movies in HD? No, but to get people to move to the DRM infested Blu-Ray to have much better control on what you can do with what you buy they would. Their wish is for everyone to make the move to Blu-Ray and DVD to die. They can then keep prices HIGHER as it's HD! and people can't just pirate it like they can with DVD's. Hell they screwed up big time when they released CD's without any sort of DRM and hoped the whole SACD & DVD Audio would be a big hit to get people to make the switch over to those. I haven't heard of anyone pirating SACD or DVD Audio disc's, and even though the sound is better, that alone makes it not worth it. It's the same with Blu-Ray. A little better Video and sound is just not worth it. DVD is good enough for the majority of people out there. The Population with 100+" screens where it can really make a HUGE difference is pretty small.
For most, a Upconverting DVD player works great. More then good enough. Hell it took a lot of people a long time to make the switch from VHS to DVD and that was a huge change. DVD to Blu-Ray? Not really. I don't even know anyone right now with a Blu-Ray player, not even a PS3. I know people with PS2, Wii, 360's. Blu-Ray just isn't that important to get for most.
The complaints about DRM are old. Wake up call: Your DVDs have DRM too by the way! They were never designed with the functionality you speak of in mind (ripping to portable devices) as that circumvents the DRM on the disc. It took DVD software years to accomplish the conveniences you speak of and not only are they unsupported by the DVD industry, they are extremely discouraged (and often illegal). Blu-Ray has the managed copy at least in its road map, so that it can provide its customer base with that convenience, but under their terms.
As for "incomplete format" I'll make this paragraph very short: I never cared about any of the features but being able to watch the movie, save the occasional alternate language choice.
HDMI wasn't only designed for DRM either, it was to simplify the entire process of hooking up your A/V equipment by requiring only one cable. Ever think of that, genius? 5-11 cables to hook up a TV and amplifier? Color coding? Joe was clueless when hooking up his A/V equipment. Look at all the people using composite video with HD sources and TVs! It was getting ridiculous, and it was a step backwards anyway. Why take a DIGITAL SOURCE and output to a DIGITAL TV by using an analog cable? Why not just throw decoded digital signal over the cable and eliminate all signal loss through it? Eliminate the whole problem, use digital signal and throw audio / video over one cable (the customer motivation for using the standard) and hey studios, you can encrypt the connection too (the motivation for the industry to use the standard). Makes a lot of sense and makes everyone happy.
On a side note, pretty much everyone I know has a PS3, and they love the BD playback on the unit. If over 6 times the picture clarity and lossless audio are your idea of "not that big of a leap" then thats just you. My TV only does 720p, but even then I can see a huge difference between Blu-Ray and (upscaled) DVDs. This is the first time I've used TOSLINK (an old tech) for audio, and if my $200 5.1 system can sound this good then I can only imagine what a decent setup at $600-$3000 sounds like.
$2000 TV, check. $800 Sound system, check.
....$40 DVD player. Check.
Am I the only one that sees an imbalance in that little equation?
LOL. As if the suckers who bought a $1500 profile 1.0 Pioneer Blu-Ray player could even see the difference or even enjoy the ultra-hyped new features from profile 2.0.
BDA is laughing all the way to the bank and you morons are pumping cash into it like flies on shit.