HD DVD's demise seems to push Blu-ray prices up

well ive been blu since the word go
but(and this is a big but) yesterday i purchased a 1 month old hd-a35 with two free films(still wrapped) and the voucher for seven more.for a measley £50(most decent upscalers cost more)

i will now wait out this price hike period by purchasing some VERY CHEAP hd-dvds to fill in the gaps on my collection.and the A35? well that sits great on the spare shelf of my tv/dvd stand and will make a good bedroom player in the future

i must point out that adopting blu WAS the right thing.i would be gutted if i had paid £200+ for a A35 and then would have to fork out another £200+ for a blu-ray player

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[Post edited by mr_p-ness on Mar 5, 2008 - CST 8:43 AM]

Not a surprise to me. Blu is already starting to screw.

I don't think this is a surprise to anyone. If HD DVD has won the same thing would probably be happening. Thats why in my opinion it would have been better to keep both formats alive. Competition has always been good for the consumer but I guess confusion about two formats isn't a good thing either.

All I have to say to all those people (you know who you are) who talked crap to some of us who tried to tell you this would happen is:

WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!

Ditto. We discussed this months ago on several threads. I was of the opinion then, as I am still, that the entire BD win strategy was intended to ultimately raise the price of home entertainment hardware and software across the board. They won. Prices are going up.

I can't wait to see what the prices are for the "Optional" profile 2.0 bd-live players are.

Please tell me that they aren't saying that BD Profile 2.0 is going to be optional? That just takes the cake. Do they even know what the hell they are doing? I would like to see a survey of Blu-Ray employees in Sony to ask what are the BD profiles and what differences they have. Might be interesting.

They are really screwing the pooch on this one. Screwing and kicking a dead pooch. Poor pooch.

I am not surprised either. Less competition means prices will go up, at least in the short term, which is bad for consumers. I still think that both camps could have survived if both had the same studios support. However, I guess the studios would rather kill one format in order to manufacture one format instead of two and cut manufacturing costs to maximize profits. In my opinion, in the end, WB decided the winner not us the consumers. As soon as they so that the HD DVD camp was wounded they went for the kill and sided for the Blue Ray camp and the rest is history. By the way, I did not find any confusion about the two formats. In fact, the combined marketing campaign of both camps just helped people being more aware of the existence of the HD formats. It was more an issue of buying into the looser format more than confusion between the two formats. Maybe things would have been different if there were assurances that both formats would be supported by all studios so that consumer would be confident that buying either format was a sure bet.

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[Post edited by PerfectBlue on Mar 5, 2008 - CST 10:46 AM]

Can't say I'm surprised at all about the price increase (not to say that I'm comfortable with it), but Sony now has the market share and can pretty much set any player price trend that they want. The best bet for most would be to simply wait for the holiday season to come around and then get a Profile 2.0 player at a reduced cost (while also waiting for some of the kinks to get worked out in the Profile). The hardest part would be waiting the extra months to justify the price.

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[Post edited by kevinokev on Mar 5, 2008 - CST 2:55 PM]