Another casualty of the format war?

[radagast]

I believe that so much money has been spent by the BD side fighting this stupid format war, that there hasn't been R&D funds available to develop a relatively inexpensive Blu-ray recorder.

[drjuicee]

I think it was 1997 when I bought my first DVD player. It was, and still is because I still use it, a Sony and I paid 700 bucks for it and I got a deal through my work. So with inflation and considering the deal I got it is about the same as spending a grand today. I think that if you're in the market for a BluRay player this early in it's development and you can get a PS3 for 400 bucks that comes with a movie and while the promotion is still on get another 5 for free aswell as 40 gb of memory and have the ability to have it improved via the internet for free you're not doing so bad. R and D may bring down the price but nothing brings down the price more than having every company producing product and competing for you dollars on the store shelves. It took years to get dirt cheap DVD players. Winning the format war should bring down the price because there is far more money to be made getting people to switch from DVD and to bring everyone in to that market requires inexpensive product.

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by radagast

I believe that so much money has been spent by the BD side fighting this stupid format war, that there hasn't been R&D funds available to develop a relatively inexpensive Blu-ray recorder.

I disagree. The original BD format, released in Japan in 2003, was a recordable device. Although the format changed, and the cartridge was removed from the BD format, it's still designed from the ground up as a recordable format. In Japan, most of the standalone BD devices are recorders.

I DO agree, though, that part of the reason those devices have been largely limited to the Japanese marketplace, though, is because Toshiba was pushing ultra-cheap HD DVD players... and no one wanted to release a (more expensive) recorder in that market.

Even now, though, there are still a lot of problems with releasing BD recorders (except PC drives) on a wider scale. Most people in the U.S. would want PVR and digital cable support on a BD recorder... not just over the air signals. Add to that the whole issues surrounding copy protection of recorded broadcasts, etc, and we may still have to wait a bit before BD recorders are released in the rest of the world.

[Clark Kent]

I think the content providers are scared to death about BD recorders. They didn't like the idea of dvd recorders and are afraid we'll stop buying packaged media if we can record digital copies. I foresee many hurdles until we get BD recorders here in the US.