News Corp (Fox) president: player SCARCITY holding back Blu-ray adoption

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by saprano

These are the same steps DVD took before it reached mass market price, i dont know why people dont see or get that.

DVD players were pretty expensive in mid 1997 and 1998. Entry level players were going for $700 or more. A few may have been slightly less expensive, but I can't remember seeing any under $600.

By Spring, 1999 more affordable, full featured models were arriving on store shelves. In the $400 to $500 price range a number of companies were selling players with built in DD decoding and 5.1 analog outputs, DTS output, dual layer capability, etc. Basic players with DTS output were selling for a little over $300. That was at the 2 year mark after the introduction of DVD.

We getting past the 2 year mark on the introduction of Blu-ray. A little too much time has passed for manufacturers to keep charging pretty high prices. Those high prices are going to keep Blu-ray stuck as a high end niche market item. The market needs at least a couple or so Blu-ray player models below the $300 price level right now. By this fall/holiday season I think the magic number to get lots of people to buy is going to be $249.99 or under.

That doesn't mean all Blu-ray players need to be priced cheap. However, there has to be at least a few affordable stand alone models that cost less than a 40GB PS3.