nmr1723

I think Toshiba should and will honor the current rebates up until the final date. It's one of the reasons many people buy the player and as Gizmo said earlier (when talking about the BD 5 Free) it offsets the price of the player and makes you feel a little bit rosier about your purchase.

If they don't honor rebates up until the stated date, they are really pissing in the faces of their customers...We all know we could potentially be screwed as early adopters...but I think this is different.

Bob330i

No one is answering because we don't work for either Toshiba or the fullfillment house. Obviously, I'm hoping they will since I haven't received my movies yet e

Just like the speculation going on here whether the OVERALL COST of owning BluRay will be higher or lower this year. It's all speculation.

matome

Exactly. Even without the "format lifeline" BOGO's, BD has sold more discs in the first six weeks of 2008, than the first seven MONTHS of 2007.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6532685.html

tonymontana313

Some of you guys can sit here and complain about lack of BOGO and MSRPs but you need to realize that hi-def is a premium product and is not meant for everyone or for price slashing sales.

Chanster in another thread made a great analogy to vehicles and used Toyota and Lexus. When was the last time you saw Lexus slash their prices? It's a luxury item and not everyone is able to afford it and it caters to a different audience just like BD caters to the HT enthusiasts that wants more than what standard dvd can offer and of course have no problem paying a little more.

Prices will eventually come down but to sit here and complain about BOGO sales or the lack of at this point is just silly.

Deftones

Why don't you work for them? Then I would have my answer.

candyrocket786

HDM = Luxury?

I'm going to pay double the price because I get 6-8X better resolution and (if I'm lucky) some extras?

No thanks. I'll stick with the BOGOs, Sales and Used HDM

TheMovieman

Using that analogy, Lexus is perfectly content with being a the luxury car for the market. It's been this way for years and will remain so. Only people making X amount per year will be able to afford one. They know this. Can the same be said for Sony and the BDA? Do you honestly believe they want to remain a niche product or do they want the controlling share (51%) of the market. In order to do so, they cannot keep prices up for both players and the discs themselves.

That said, this is electronics we're talking about. How long has BD been around? 2 or 3 years? We're an impatient society (look at credit card debts for people buying items they cannot afford- not to mention the housing market) and we want results now, not tomorrow. Just like any "new" electronic technology, it's going to take time for prices to come down for the regular folks. The fact you can get a solid BD player for $400 is kind of amazing.

Personally, I'm glad for the high prices as it'll keep me away from BD until all the kinks are worked out of the players/discs...

Jericho

That seems like an exageration of the BOGOs. I've been a Blu-Ray owner since May of 2007. I certainly don't recall that many BOGOs (if so I would have bought more) and certainly not that far back. I haven't searched the archives, and my memory may be erroneous, but I think you're remembering it better than it was. If there were that many BOGOs back then, it was probably of the same 20 Sony titles in all these BOGOs. Most of the real deals didn't come until Q4 of 2007 (or the holiday shopping times).

If you're going to compare prices in 2007 to 2008, you have to wait until the end of 2008 when the holiday deals roll around. And no one knows what those will be right now.

I do know that Blu-Ray started their 5 Free disc promotion in the summer, I believe July of 2007. HD DVD had started the 5 free discer well before that (maybe March as you said), and did have a free 3 discer before that. But Blu-Ray had been out a year before going with the five disc promo.

I just don't think these promotions and deals were as widespread as they're made out to be.

Hokeyboy

Sorry if I'm late to the party here, but some thoughts.


The assumption that *MANY* have here -- that without HD-DVD, Blu-Ray will not offer competitive pricing, price cuts, promotions, etc -- is absolutely ludicrous and pretty much ignorant of how an organization should position itself when launching new products in a competitive environment.

Competing formats that enter the marketplace simultaneously and immediately engage in a PRICE WAR results in absolute disaster for both parties involved (or, like Vicksburg, a battle of attrition that neither side's shareholders would allow them to win). What Sony IMO failed to do -- and would have ended this idiotic "format war" sooner -- is if they stabilized and/or enhanced the Blu-Ray platform earlier and hyped their product as the "superior" product due to storage capacity, innovations, capabilities, anything that would have made BD seem like it was *worth* the extra $$. Simply cutting costs to "keep up" with Toshiba's poison-pill maneuverings would not have made for smart business, but not making empirical cases for "more bang for the buck" is almost as weak.

But with HD-DVD out of the picture, now's the time to bring in further adopters by cutting costs on hardware, software, and promoting the holy hell out of the format. Sony has made a lot of bonheaded moves in the past, but anyone with about 3 seconds of business school -- even at an *American* university -- would consider the act of NOT making the price point of Blu-Ray adoption more competitive in response to the defeat of HD-DVD to be akin to eating your own face to spite your nose.

Sony did half the right thing; they DIDN'T engage in a price war. However, they screwed up royally by not positioning themselves as the "beau monde" product of choice. You can't have it both ways. But now the game has changed, and as such so must their strategy.

And those are my thoughts. More to come at 6:30, but right now here's Herb Dunlap with the weather...

namja

Hence, having only one HD format may be good for the manufacturers but bad for the consumers. We can argue about MSRP or sales or promotions, but the bottom line is this: How much is it going to cost the consumer to buy a player and say 20 movies? If it's more in June '08 than it was in December '07, then clearly, we have a problem.

Again, I don't see Sony being that greedy or that stupid. I fully expect prices to be lower in June '08. But then, I've been wrong many times before.

RoboDad

And once again, why is there this assumption that Sony controls everything here? Don't you think that Matsushita, Sharp, Warner, Disney, Fox, et al, have a say?

Music

Blu-ray = Sony

Sony = Blu-ray

Right or wrong, that is how it is perceived, whether that is/was Sony's intent (which if we are talking about competition among the BDA, then it would have to be) or not.

Gizmo

Look through this thread. How many of these "HD DVD is dead" articles clearly say "Sonys Blu-ray" or "Sony" in them? The public perceives Blu-ray as Sony. Sony, the only and only. Thats how people see it.

pro-bassoonist

Coupés bien net et bien carré!

Where is my obligatory punch?

Pro-B

Gizmo

If it wasn't for the fact I just moved, I could show you dozens of receipts from Frys and Best Buy from Blu-ray BOGOs. Most of the time they were 20 old titles with 3-4 new ones added in, and then the next week removed 3-4 older titles and put 3-4 newer ones in. Sure, its not like they had the whole 400+ movie collection on BOGO, but a good chunk. Fry's even had a month long Fox BOGO with 30 or so titles. EVERY studio in 2007 on the Blu-ray side had a BOGO with the exception of Warner, until the last week of December for both formats on Amazon. That includes Sony, Fox/MGM, Disney and IIRC, LionsGates once or twice.

jiggawhat

Most of the BOGOs were during the holiday season right? How many were there before then?

I don't remember many until after the price cut in July for the PS3.

Gizmo

Without HD DVD (and we will go with the same studios only supporting Blu-ray, lets exclude Universal from the whole thing), we right now would be looking at $600+ Profile 1.0 players, no free movies, little to no BOGOs, and 25GB discs.

If it was not for HD DVD, the Samsung 1000 would have launched with a $1,200 (!) MSRP, vs. the $1,000 it did. We might have never gotten BD50 discs so soon (December of 06 IIRC with Click on Blu-ray), and there would be little to no reason for any Blu-ray CE to ever make a Profile 1.1/2.0 player at the moment since PiP wouldn't really be needed as it was a huge talking point of "look what I can do!" on HD DVD. PS3 may or may not have ever had a price cut.

Do I expect prices of Blu-ray SA to be more in June of 08 then right now? No. I expect them to be pretty much the same. I expect to see Profile 1.0 players dropping to $299-$399 levels while the 1.1 players replace them in the same price category ($399-$499). As long as they have cheaper SA for the un-informed people, they will continue to sell the higher priced "Bonus View" 1.1 players at a premium.

RoboDad

So, are you saying that you DO believe that Sony sets the prices charged by all of the Blu-ray vendors? If not, then what was your point,again? I don't care at all about "public perception". Maybe that's how uninformed people see it, but not me.

Gizmo

I clearly remember buying Hellboy and Cruel Intentions (another copy, I got one early from Beatboy77 on AVS) days after their release on BOGO at Frys. That puts it as early as June. Way before any holiday shopping season. They continued up until around October or so and then stalled out a bit.

Gizmo

It really does not matter if you care or not if the public perceives Sony as Blu-ray. They do. Sony = Betamax to many people. The same Beta Max that failed. Regardless if it means anything today, people may not stand behind something that failed 20 years ago, especially something that sound very close to the name.

Walk into a Best Buy or Circuit City, asks who makes Blu-ray. 4/5 will say Sony. 4/5 will also tell customers Sony. Who sold the most Blu-ray stand alones? Sony. Who makes and sell the PS3, the major (maybe only) reason Blu-ray even made it past December of 2006, Sony. Read all the HD DVD death articles, all call it Sony's Blu-ray.

Its essentially useless for us to argue about this, because we know its not just Sony, but many other backers as well. But were clearly not the norm.

Qui Gon Jim

Coincidentally, that coincides with the exact time frame that Matome referenced in his post.

I think the jury is out on price increases, but I agree with Namja that I doubt Sony et all would be foolish do do something like that, and that they are not foolish.

Gizmo

I just want a really good, reliable, $299 or so Profile 2.0 player not made by Sony. C'mon Panasonic or Sharp (or Toshiba!)! I want to get rid of the PS3.

vlad

The difference this time is that Sony is throwing money at the studios to go their way, it isn't about choice.. they are buying the war. and winning. sadly.

I didn't want Blu to win because I don't think it is good for one company to control the spec. They can change it when they want to and not an industry choice.

Qui Gon Jim

I don't think he's saying that the competition did not have an effect on the pricing, but that going forward BD will still price competitively even without HD DVD's competition.

RoboDad

Agreed, but what I was trying to say is that wasn't my point to begin with. My question really had nothing to do with whether the public perceives Sony as being synonymous with Blu-ray, it was why anyone in this discussion would believe that Sony would be the calling the shots for all of the other vendors with respect to Blu-ray product prices. That makes no sense to me at all, and I have come to expect more than that from the people here, especially someone like namja.