Red Herring has a story on the forthcoming price of Sony Blu-Ray HD DVDs. At $23.45 wholesale, they aren't cheap. From the article: 'Some of the movies to be released in the first batch by Sony are The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator. Sony's wholesale price of $23.45 for Blu-ray discs is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com. A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.' Another reader suggested a link to an Ars Technica article with more information
slashdot.org
Red Herring Article:
Blu-ray Discs Won?t Be Cheap
Consumers will likely pay lots more than the $23.45 wholesale price Sony Pictures will charge for its high-definition DVDs.
February 8, 2006
High-definition DVDs may promise better picture and sound quality but consumers will have to pay dearly for it, with Sony Pictures saying Wednesday new releases in the format will cost $23.45 wholesale?or more than 50 percent higher than today?s retail price for regular DVDs.
Sony Pictures is the first Hollywood studio to release pricing on its high-definition DVDs expected to be introduced early this summer. The discs will be issued in Sony?s Blu-ray format, which is competing with the HD-DVD format for control of the next-generation DVD market (see HD-DVD vs Blu-ray War Still On). HD-DVD is backed by Toshiba.
Some of the movies to be released in the first batch by Sony are The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator. Sony?s wholesale price of $23.45 for Blu-ray discs is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com. A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.
Sony said it will be up to retailers to settle on a retail price for Blu-ray discs, according to Reuters, but retail prices are typically much higher than wholesale prices.
The company said catalog titles, or older titles, will have a wholesale price of $17.95, which the company said was the wholesale price of DVDs when they were first released in 1997.
?Our intent is to create a critical mass of movies and displays at retail that will showcase the escalating availability and abundance of both BD software and hardware in the marketplace,? said Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, in a statement.
Three-Year Duel
So far, there haven?t been any details on pricing of discs by Toshiba?s rival HD-DVD format. Sony and Toshiba have been dueling for three years regarding which format will emerge as the dominant one in the high-definition DVD market, estimated to eventually be worth some $40 billion.
Sony is expected to release four catalog titles per month starting this summer. By the fourth quarter of 2006, the company is expected to speed up its release schedule to 10 titles per month.
At least one analyst believes the pricing for Blu-ray discs is fair.
?It seems to be pretty much how much DVDs cost when they first came out and if you look back to the DVD, it was well-accepted [by consumers],? said Wolfgang Schlichting, an analyst with research firm IDC.
Hardware for the Blu-ray format is expected to launch sometime between spring and summer. Hardware manufacturers announced timing and prices of their players at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January.
Pioneer said it plans to market its Blu-ray player in June for about $1,800. Samsung plans a similar machine in the spring for about $1,000. Toshiba, meanwhile, promised to have two HD-DVD-based models out by March at prices of $500 and $800.
slashdot.org
Red Herring Article:
Blu-ray Discs Won?t Be Cheap
Consumers will likely pay lots more than the $23.45 wholesale price Sony Pictures will charge for its high-definition DVDs.
February 8, 2006
High-definition DVDs may promise better picture and sound quality but consumers will have to pay dearly for it, with Sony Pictures saying Wednesday new releases in the format will cost $23.45 wholesale?or more than 50 percent higher than today?s retail price for regular DVDs.
Sony Pictures is the first Hollywood studio to release pricing on its high-definition DVDs expected to be introduced early this summer. The discs will be issued in Sony?s Blu-ray format, which is competing with the HD-DVD format for control of the next-generation DVD market (see HD-DVD vs Blu-ray War Still On). HD-DVD is backed by Toshiba.
Some of the movies to be released in the first batch by Sony are The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator. Sony?s wholesale price of $23.45 for Blu-ray discs is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com. A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.
Sony said it will be up to retailers to settle on a retail price for Blu-ray discs, according to Reuters, but retail prices are typically much higher than wholesale prices.
The company said catalog titles, or older titles, will have a wholesale price of $17.95, which the company said was the wholesale price of DVDs when they were first released in 1997.
?Our intent is to create a critical mass of movies and displays at retail that will showcase the escalating availability and abundance of both BD software and hardware in the marketplace,? said Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, in a statement.
Three-Year Duel
So far, there haven?t been any details on pricing of discs by Toshiba?s rival HD-DVD format. Sony and Toshiba have been dueling for three years regarding which format will emerge as the dominant one in the high-definition DVD market, estimated to eventually be worth some $40 billion.
Sony is expected to release four catalog titles per month starting this summer. By the fourth quarter of 2006, the company is expected to speed up its release schedule to 10 titles per month.
At least one analyst believes the pricing for Blu-ray discs is fair.
?It seems to be pretty much how much DVDs cost when they first came out and if you look back to the DVD, it was well-accepted [by consumers],? said Wolfgang Schlichting, an analyst with research firm IDC.
Hardware for the Blu-ray format is expected to launch sometime between spring and summer. Hardware manufacturers announced timing and prices of their players at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January.
Pioneer said it plans to market its Blu-ray player in June for about $1,800. Samsung plans a similar machine in the spring for about $1,000. Toshiba, meanwhile, promised to have two HD-DVD-based models out by March at prices of $500 and $800.
