There's ways around it. Just ask my XBOX.

Best Buy doesn't seem to hold the Blu-Ray player in high regard:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....ssDriven&h=488

:lol:

That was funny.

Thanks partially to this thread I engaged in some more research and decided to order a Sony player. And with the relatively low price of their new 1080P input capable sets, reserved one of those as well, one of the forthcoming 60" XBR sets.

Now I just don't know if I should sell my Pioneer plasma in order to get the new 1080P set due out?

jesus, i don't understand how sony is gonna sell ps3 atleast at $500 when this thing is $1,000, plus it's gonna be a next-gen system? crazyness.

I don't follow what this player's price has to do with the PS3's price.

Sony never said that this BluRay player was an economy player nor that this was as cheap as they can sell it for without taking a loss. At $1,000, I would guess the margains are pretty high on these players.

eh i don't know.

how much were dvd players when ps2 came out?

around the same price as a PS2 (unless you count the Apex which was $99)

D

Like today, there was a whole range. On average, maybe similiar pricing to the PS2. But there were also $3,500 DVD players, like there are today.

It appears (to me) that Sony is not targeting this player as a budget one. Rather, they are choosing to compete in the niche high-end market (just like Denon does today with some of the DVD players). Whether this is a smart move (to enter the market without a budget player while your competitor has one) is another question.

All this said, I have no guess at the PS3's price. I just don't think the cost of this player means anything one way or the other.

I've been on the fence regarding HD-DVD and Blu Ray but some of the pro Blu Ray people in this forum have almost turned me off of it.

Actually, I find myself coming to this forum less and less because of it. At least the videogame forums have a solid stance on format bashing.

You're right it doesn't mean much right now. The Samsung, Pioneer and Sony are all pretty expensive. The prices indicate to me that Sony isn't even taking Hd-dvd's chance of success seriously. Considering how crippled certain features will be on first gen players the Toshiba starts looking much more interesting a $450, rather than spending 1K to watch MPEG 2 for who knows how long.

Might as well wait it out a bit.

However, you said a while ago that if Toshiba launches "with only support from W-B then the writings on the wall." Is it or isn't it?

With only WB at launch? IMO If no other studio takes the launch serious enough to release titles on day 1 then yes I'd say the writings on the wall for Hd-dvd.

That doesn't mean I think Blu-Ray is taking over the video industry though. They still have to sell expensive hardware to the public, convince people to buy 25GB discs using MPEG 2 and non-lossless audio. If BR does take off, we all know that 50GB discs with a newer codec and lossless audio is going to become common place. That doesn't make me want to jump at the chance to pay for the launch titles for Blu-Ray. Chance of failure for BR is pretty high as well IMO.

Looking at the risks for both formats I'd prefer to either wait it out or put my money on the one that will cost me less money if they both fail. At least I'll have a pretty cheap upconverting player for my dvds. I never said I was against buying something that I thought was going to fail. Hey, I bought into D-VHS knowing it was a failure.

Sony's first DVD player, DVP-S7000, retailed for $1000. Looks like the only thing that has changed is the technology. There were also several dvd players, RCA and others, for around $500 back in 1997.

Charging a high price for new technology has always been the case, whether it's $5000 Pentium-33 systems, $1000 D-VHS players, or Blu-Ray players. By fall, prices should be more reasonable and by fall next year everyone who will want one will be able to afford one.

Those poor D-VHS owners. They really deserve some sympathy. Talk about getting screwed royally.

Though I never had much faith in the format to begin with. I just didn't see the public going back to tapes.

In fairness, DVD had next-to-nothing in its earliest days too.

From the DVD Demystified FAQ:

DVD seemed to do alright after its uneventful launch. :)

Absolutely true, but let's be honest and say DIVX wasn't quite the contender to DVD that Blu-Ray is to HD-dvd and vice versa. The software adoption rate is going to have to be a lot quicker if Hd-dvd wants to stay in the game over the next year. Unlike DVD and Divx, both HD camps are fighting to winover a much smaller population of customers with HD displays, not a mass market for quite some time.

In the very least it sounds like Warner expects huge sales next holiday season of HD optical discs, it's only a question of what format sells more over time. With the PS3 coming next holiday season Hd-dvd has their work cut out for them. This would be my guess as to why Sony is pricing players higher. Maybe they don't expect this to be over until the PS3 comes out?

It's anybody's guess at this point what will happen and who knows who will win, if anyone. The best studio response that sums this up is Paramount IMO. They admitted they will launch small and go whatever way the wind blows.

Just imagine, many years from now, even Joe Bob and his wife, Big Bertha, will be able to stomp and shove people at Wal-Mart on a cold Black Friday morning in hopes of getting one of them high definition movie disc players for $50.

I don't think anyone is really questioning the price so much since $1K is what most of us were expecting all along. The $500 HD player is the monkeywrench in the works. Sony could be making a very arrogant mistake not marketing a model to compete at the same price level. It just seems like a strange strategy to me.

Sony is the only studio which has said they are using MPEG-2 but they are using uncompressed PCM, so I'm not sure what company you are referring to?

AFAIK Sony is the only company that has said anything about what codec they plan on using for Blu-Ray. Pretty important fact when they are releasing the bulk of the content.

Considering the cost of encoding, I'd think the studios supporting both formats would carry over to Blu-ray the MPEG-4/VC-1/whatever encode they're using for HD-DVD.

While I really don't want to be labeled with the Sony fanatics here, the BD players are FAR less crippled than the $500 Tosh HD-DVD player everyone wants to hold up as the pricing standard. It is a joke. Every new detail I find makes me laugh. I wouldn't buy one at $100 this month. And MPEG2 is just fine. Storage space is the only issue here. If they've covered that with the 25GB BD discs for normal length movies, who cares?

My current DVD player was $1000, it's successor is $1500. Today, on the shelf, not 8 years ago. I'm not sure why all the pricing discussion is going on. As many have said, this is the first generation of a completely new technology. Both formats. And they are both expensive.

"Crippled" how?