Both Sony Electronics president
Stan Glasgow and consumer sales president
Jay Vandenbree were caught opening their mouths lately, with one uttering somewhat more respectable statements than the other. Put the two of 'em in a room together, and this is what you get. At a recent media roundtable at the Sony Building, Glasgow confessed that Blu-ray had not met sales expectations, but he still felt confident that there "would be growth this holiday season." Interestingly, he also noted that Sony's low-end price on a Blu-ray deck would remain "stable" at $299 (for now, we presume), though "it might be less in promotional bundling of HD products at retail." The two also felt that Blu-ray Discs and digital downloads could live happily together, pointing out that bandwidth restrictions / caps / etc. would hurt the latter's chances at existing exclusively. Finally, we're told that Sony is toiling away in an attempt to deliver big screen OLED TVs, though (sadly) no time frames were mentioned. Check the read link for the full interview, but don't expect any big surprises.
posted Dec 2nd 2008 3:47PM
299.00 is stable? He's only fooling himself.
Wake me up when profile 2.0 Blu-Ray players reach $100.
They are not stable. They need to come down big guy. Profile 2.0 for $179.99 was a great deal on Black Friday. By next XMAS, BD will be at $100 if the BDA knows whats good for them.
It was obvious there would be $200 players this Christmas and it should be just as obvious that there will be $100 players next Christmas. In between is where it gets interesting. I expect January - April will see a return to MSRP accompanied by the usual whining and then the deals will start reappearing for notable calendar dates just like they do every year for consumer electronics kit.
Time to wake up LonnieDVD. My Samsung BD-P1500 1080p Blu-ray Player is upgradable to 2.0 with free software from Samsung and a 1 gig USB stick. The stick costs less than $4. I bought the Blu-ray player from Amazon along with a Samsung LCD HDTV. The player cost me $199 less a $200 Amazon DVD player credit or a negative $1 cost for the Blu-Ray.
Including the memory stick the total cost for a 2.0 Blu-Ray Samsung player right now is less than $4 if you buy it at the same time as a Samsung HDTV. The Samsung HDTV cost is the same regardless.
Are you awake now?
And it cost you how much to get that Blu-ray player for nearly free? Lonnie was referring to the SRP not some convoluted deal you get for buying a certain group of items which in the long run is an attempt to get a new HDTV buyer to buy Blu-ray movies at $10 more than DVD, which is the entire purpose of giving the rebates.
of course there will be growth this holiday says all they have to do is sell one player and there was growth.... sorry had to be a smart @$$
There will be growth in Spring.
If the guy from sony has a pulse and his lips moved, he's lying!