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Sub-$200 BD Players...or Bust!
April 23, 2008
For the Blu-ray format to hit critical mass, players must fall below $200 pricing, according to a new report by Bernstein Research, as reported by Reuters.
Although studios are angling for this fourth quarter to be BD's coming out party, Bernstein Research doesn't anticipate mainstream format adoption until 2009.
The company says that current $399 pricing on set-tops is pushing people to buy Playstation 3s. For many consumers it's a no-duh way to get high-def entertainment. The PS3 includes a comprehensive gaming system plus Blu-ray player at the same $399 price as most straight BD set-tops.
Michael Nathanson says that a problem with a PS3 core hardware foundation is that many users are gobbling up the games more so than the BD titles. At the end of the 2007, there were 3.5 million BD players in U.S. homes. Roughly 3 million of that base was PS3s.
Nathanson said that at best, each of these BD households purchased three BD titles that year. At the comparable point in standard definition DVD's lifetime, each DVD household had purchased as many as 30 titles that year.
To close that software gap, Nathanson says more people need to buy hardware expressly to view movies on Blu-ray. In order to goose purchasing, BD set-tops need to fall below $200.
Sony manufacturers have predicted their set-tops will slide in price through the end of the year. But new upcoming advanced Web-enabled BD models from Sony and Panasonic are expected to launch at, or even above, the current $399 standard.
Yet if Nathanson and Bernstein Research score enough industry notice, we might see a wider range of BD devices quickly decline in price.
Posted by Susanne Ault on April 23, 2008 | Comments (0)
