Yet Josh Martin, senior analyst of entertainment and media devices at Yankee Group, says a price range of $250 to $300 is more likely. "Once DVD players got below $200, sales really started to pick up," he noted. Phillip Swann, who runs the popular Website, believes Blu-ray players could drop to the key price point of $200 by next Christmas. Industry analysts say prices will come down as manufacturers try to boost sales, though they disagree over how much and how fast.
They aren't much cheaper at online sites, either. Most households still don't own HDTVs, while current owners still balk at the high prices of next-generation technology.įor instance, the least expensive Blu-ray player sells for $400 - though some promotional prices came down near $300 briefly during the holidays. The heyday of Blu-ray is well off in the future, however. "Those folks didn't do anything wrong," said Gary Yocoubian, president of the Myer Emco retail chain in the Washington area. It's a high price to pay for early adopters, retail executives acknowledge. If that doesn't work out, HD players can still handle regular DVDs and up-convert them. There's talk that some might offer Blu-ray players at a discounted price to HD-DVD owners. A better solution might be to check with the retailer who sold the product. Soon enough, they'll disappear from retail shelves. Like Betamax owners in the 1970s, that's the fate that awaits the roughly 600,000 buyers of HD-DVD players who shelled out hundreds of dollars early in the cycle and are now sitting on obsolete technology.Ĭlearly those consumers shouldn't invest any more money in those types of discs.
What the victory of Blu-ray also assures is that consumers won't have to risk cash on a product headed for the dustbin of history. Consumers no longer have to pick between two incompatible technologies. Toshiba said this week it would abandon its HD-DVD format, leaving Sony's Blu-Ray as the sole survivor. The end of the format war between Sony and Toshiba certainly provides extra incentive, though. "Is there going to be a massive wave of purchases? I don't think so," said Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research at DisplaySearch. What's more, regular DVD players are dirt cheap and look perfectly fine. Newer models will include features not found on older ones, such as picture in picture and Internet access. High price-tags of next-generation home entertainment generally fall over time, and the new players are no exception.
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