Blu-ray Prices Holding Things Back?

It's sometimes hard to know where the price of something should be.  When home video first came to market, and the choice was between VHS and Betamax, the films were really expensive in the early 80's, like over $50 each, as I recall.  Hence, out of this, video rental stores came into existence, and a new model of acquiring entertainment content was born.

Fast fowarding (to continue our videotape theme) a quarter of a century, and we now have a situation of Blu-ray films often commanding a hefty premium over DVD's.  Sure, the quality is better, and the larger capacity disc can hold plenty more bonus content.  However, faced with such a price difference, consumers are often choosing the DVD format when it is time to bring the disc home.  I've got to say that I don't blame them.  By me, Blockbuster is charging $5 for a rental, and the big block retailers like Wal-Mart often have the DVD for $15 when it is first released making ownership a reasonable competitor to renting.

However, Blu-ray, as the new kid on the block, is squeezed in the middle.  On the one hand, they are charging more for the discs, and many consumers can't clearly tell the difference in quality.  In fact, for the 75% standard def households, (which should change this holiday season and into the digital transition in February as more HD sets get sold), the DVD and Blu-ray will appear the same.  On the other end of things, for those with enough bandwidth, digital downloads are a real possibility.  While this fledgling segment is only on the beachhead, services like NetFlix's streaming service will likely grow over the next few years.

In the end, Blu-ray beat out HD DVD in the great format war, but that will not insure its success beyond a niche product.  I'm not sure that cutting Blu-ray disc prices will solve the problem, but it would be a good step.  It will likely take years of marketing, and wider rental availability to make Blu-ray the de facto movie standard that DVD is today.

Comments

[Pia Sarkar]

Jonas -- I am a journalist working on a story regarding Blu-ray. Would you be available for an interview? If so, please send me your contact info. Best, Pia.

[What Haveyou]

"When home video first came to market, and the choice was between VHS and Betamax, the films were really expensive in the early 80's, like over $50 each, as I recall."

Try $100. Back then, tapes were priced for rental, not sale. The idea was that rental places would pay that much because they'd eventually make the money back in rental fees.

At the same time, LaserDiscs were only $35. A far better medium with a pristine picture and stereo sound (long before Beta and VHS Hi-Fi came out), which never wore out.

"But you can't record on it," people complained, overlooking the fact that you couldn't record on CDs either, but those were selling in droves. Come to find out that 90% of VCR owners have never recorded anything on them anyway.

The issue is that people don't care about quality. If they did, we wouldn't have the best TVs ever but nothing to play on them; every medium we have now is compressed into garbage, looking worse than a good VHS recording of 20 years ago.

[Ray]

I think that many people are happy with the upconversion quality of regular DVDs to their 1080i/p sets - I know I am.

I do however buy the hi-def versions if the photography of the movies warrant it, and that they aren't priced too crazy. A $5 price difference between a regular DVD and Blueray movie seems reasonable.

Titles such BBC's Planet Earth are spectacular in hi-def - and worth every penny of the extra cost.