Blu-ray slow in Korea

[Ectoplasm]

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/cult...006000315.HTML

You can fault the Korean manufacturers (chaebols) and the Korean gov't for this. It wasn't until before the summer that most blu-ray players were under $1,000 each. The PS3 was the only near-affordable player. You still pay double what you'd pay for most players in the USA. The newest Samsung models are still nearly twice the price of what they cost in the USA. We also have far fewer releases, and imports are now sky-high due to shipping fees and the poor won/dollar ratio.

A frustrating thing is that there is a very high penetration of HDTV's here. Maybe the highest in the world next to Japan. Also, there are problems with unpoliced downloading of rips on a massive scale. That's part of the reason why all of the big USA movie companies have left Korea this year.

Market penetration of Blu-ray DVDs very slow in S. Korea

By Kim Young-gyo
SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Yonhpa) -- Less than 0.6 percent of South Korean households have Blu-ray Disc players, which were thought to be next generation alternatives to DVD players, said a head of a home distributor on Wednesday.

"There are only a handful of South Korean films in the Blu-ray Disc format, most of which are released by a company called 'KD Media'," said Yu Seok-dong, CEO of the Art Service at a forum held at central Seoul.