In Reply to: A fair assessment for sure, but he misses one important fact: posted by Audiophilander on January 5, 2008 at 01:44:59:
And the $98 firesales probably reinforced the principle: inexpensive = sales. Toshiba's advantage was they were quicker to bring economies of scales to their HD DVD players quicker than any of the BDA manufacturers. This was a temporary advantage, perhaps augmented by loss/low profit pricing strategies in an attempt to steal the market. There was a surge in Sony Blu-ray SA player sales when they dropped to $300. At the moment, there is actually price parity between the lowest priced Sonys and the Toshibas in the B&Ms I've visited recently.CES 2008 will be interesting to see what new profile 1.1/2.0 Blu-ray players will be released. Will we see the "cheap" Funai players ? I will admit I suspect the BDA new player MSRPs are being "massaged" (i.e. increased) after the fallout from the Warner decision. CE manufacturer competition and economies of scale will probably lead to sub-$100 Blu-ray players, maybe even by Christmas 2008.
BTW, I almost bought a PS3 to watch movies, not play games. The PQ was stellar. There are quite a few PS3 owners who use it strictly for movie watching. It's arguably still the most capable Blu-ray player out there. I needed the 5.1 analog outputs so I went with a different player.
Edits: 01/05/08
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Follow Ups
- I believe the CE manufacturers understand the pricing issues. - oscar 06:01:56 01/05/08 (3)
- "There are quite a few PS3 owners who use it strictly for movie watching." - I'd like to see actual figures. - Audiophilander 12:21:58 01/05/08 (2)
- About 80% use PS3 for movies - Ole Lund Christensen 15:04:22 01/05/08 (1)
- Well I'll take the article at face value, but that number seems conspicuously high. - Audiophilander 22:48:04 01/05/08 (0)