Blu-ray Tips

Sony has slashed the price of it’s new BDP-300 Blu-ray player by $100 to give it a price tag of $499.

In just six months, the price of a Blu-ray player has fallen by 50% (not counting PS3s which Sony sells at a loss) from $1000 to $500.

One advantage that Sony has in being able to make these price cuts is that they produce their own blue laser diodes. While they were initially having trouble producing a sufficient supply of the diodes, they now have an ample supply to cut prices on their blu-ray players.

A Price Cut For The PS3?

The big question now is if Sony will also be reducing the price of its Playstation 3. At $599, it’s still substantially more expensive than the Xbox 360 and more than twice as much as the $250 Nintendo Wii. The high price tag of the PS3 has been blamed for its sluggish sales thus far.

Sony Still Losing The Price War to Toshiba’s HDDVD Format

Although they’ve reduced the price of their blu-ray player, Toshiba still offers their players for less money. There’s a special deal on Amazon right now where you can get a Toshiba HD-DVD player for $250 - half the price of Sony’s BDP-300.

In an effort to compete with HD-DVD players, Sony announced that their BDP-S3000 Blu-ray player will be priced at $599, a $400 drop from the BDP-S1.

Their current price is not more in line with HD-DVD players.

However, the PS3 is already priced at $599 for the premium version, and $499 for the 20gb version, meaning that customers can already get a Blu-ray player and a game system for the price of the BDP-S3000.  And all reports are that the PS3’s Blu-ray player is just as good as the standalone players, so why not get a game system with your player if you’re going to spend that much?

Now that both formats are out, and some reviews have come on both, I’ve started really thinking that it might not be a question of which format will beat out the other, but if either format can become mainstream.

I started thinking about the challenges it’s facing, and here’s some I came up with during a discussion I was having a with a friend.

1) What the heck is it? I know what the difference between 780p, 1080i, and 1080p - you probably do too, but does the average consumer - well, not the ones I talked to. All the average consumer wants is something that is convenient, easy to use, and that they can mostly understand. But a Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc looks like a DVD, gets inserted into something that looks like a DVD player, yet costs a heck of a lot more. I think people have a hard time understanding just what the heck it is.
2) Not a Leap Forward. In 1982 when CDs were released - they were a leap forward. In 1997, DVDs were released - they were a leap forward as well. You no longer had to rewind the movie when you were done viewing - and the heavens rejoiced. The DVD and VHS look nothing alike. You can see the improvement in video quality and hear better audio on a regular TV with regular surround sound.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD I don’t really see as being a leap forward. They look like DVDs. The average consumer probably couldn’t tell the difference on a reguar TV - they’d need to buy entirely new equipment.
3) Expensive Equipment. The cost of the equipment is enourmous. I’m know we’re still talking about first generation devices here, but 1080p televisions that can take full advantage of the new formats cost as much as luxury cars. And High definition audio equipment is hardly a drop in the bucket.

This technology is out of the reach of most households - even with no payments, no interest for a year deals.

The one feature I do see the benefit of is the fact that these formats hold a lot of data - 25gb for Blu-ray (50gb coming out in October) and 30gb for HD-DVD. So these devices may be very useful for backing up large amounts of data. Blu-ray and HD-DVD may never make it in the mainstream home theater market, but I do see them becoming a common drive on a computer for burning large amounts of data to disc.

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The Pioneer BDR-101A Blu-ray burner is now shipping. The BDR-101A is an internal drive for the PC. This is the first Blu-ray recorder on the market - currently the competing HD-DVD format has no recorder.

The BDR-101A is a 2x recorder, and is also capable of burning DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW discs.

However, don’t buy this drive is you’d like to burn CDs with it. It will not burn to a CD or even read any type of CD.

There are definitley limitations to this drive - although for a first generation device - the $999 price dag isn’t all that bad. However, for most people this would really be just another expensive toy rather than a useful tool.

Currently, this drive will only record to single layer Blu-ray discs. Currently dual layer discs are available although nothing can record to them at this time. However, the 25GB capacity of a single layer disc still leaves a lot of room for storing data.

One other thing to note - if you buy this recorder, you still won’t be able to watch Blu-ray movies as the drive does not come with the software to watch movies - that software is has not been released yet either.

Pioneer Blu-ray BDR-101A Burner Recorder Drive

Pioneer Blu-ray Burner BDR-101A Recorder Drive

The first Blu-ray movies have been released today by Sony.

The list:

50 First Dates
Hitch
House of Flying Daggars
Terminator
The Fifth Element
Underworld Evolution
XXX (with Vin Diesel)

Being released Tuesday:

Ultraviolet
Crash
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Saw
Lord of War
The Punisher

Running down to the store to pick up these latest release might not do much good, however, since there are currently no Blu-ray players available (there’s not supposed to be anyway, but there have been a few reports of Blu-ray players being on Best Buy shelves early).  But that’ll be fixed on Sunday with the release of the Samsung BD-P1000.  It’ll set you back about $1k.  Since it doesn’t even support the dual layer Blu-ray discs being released later this year, I think I’ll wait.