Pricewatch - Sony, Sharp and Panasonic Blu-ray players continue to climb an upward price slope as demand has increased and competition decreased in the high definition video market, TG Daily found.  Samsung's BD-P1400 and LG's combo player, however, have settled down and are moving back into more favorable price territory.

For the majority of players, though, prices are higher than they have been all year and it seems as though there is really no way to stop the prices from spiraling out of control.  How far will they continue to rise and set themselves out of the mainstream target market?



Sony's BDP-S300, Shar's BD-HP20U and Panasonic's DMP-BD30K are all at or around new price highs for 2008.  This chart shows the priceline of all major Blu-ray players from the beginning of the year to now, based on average e-tailer data from Pricegrabber.com.



For the most part, prices were the lowest on these products at the beginning of January, when the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray was still raging on.  Shortly thereafter, however, the cards began to fall and HD DVD was resoundingly defeated.

By the end of February, prices began to climb.  This is just around the time that Toshiba announced it would stop producing HD DVD players and format pioneer Universal decided to jump ship to Blu-ray.  It is a very interesting trend and a lesson in price competition.  To this date, it remains solid that those who bought Blu-ray players in the heat of battle between the two formats made the best deal.

In an interesting twist, LG's combo Blu-ray/HD DVD player has continued to go against the trend of other Blu-ray players and actually come down in price.  At $585 it is now nearly the same price as Panasonic's Blu-ray-specific player.



Prices of HD DVD players, meanwhile, seem to have hit a plateau, with the 1080i HD-A3 model hovering at around $100 and the 1080p HD-A30 unit at around $130.  These prices continue to be comparable to upconvert DVD players, and it will be interesting to see if they manage some kind of second life for that use only.  Obviously, though, there is no chance of any sort of HD DVD comeback.

Later this month, Blu-ray movies will carry a new slate of advanced features, most notable being the ability to connect to the Internet.  However, the only Blu-ray player that will be able to access these features is the Playstation 3.  This means that not only will they be unable to access Web-enabled features in the future but they also cannot receive firmware upgrades.

Again, although Blu-ray has been declared the winner, it is right now about the worst time to invest in a standalone Blu-ray player.  If prices do not come down quickly, these Blu-ray manufacturers may end up with a tough situation when the current models are shoved out of the way for new devices capable of playing back newer enhanced BD movies.

This is good news.

Apr 02, 2008 09:36     

CDs and DVDs need to go away. The technology is way out dated, too slow, and too big. Seeing Sony choke on billions of dollars won't make me shed a tear either. Why anyone would buy products from a company that forces bad copy protection schemes onto our systems is beyond me. Extended Copy Protection, MediaMax CD-3, and SecuROM were all brought to you by Sony.
Scratchy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

title change

Apr 02, 2008 10:55     

it should really say blu-ray players.
john(J.D.) report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

go get a ps3.

Apr 02, 2008 11:58     

price on those hasn't went up.
wmcgritt report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Figures

Apr 02, 2008 12:09     

Looks like blu-ray is still going to bomb out. I'm just going to wait for UV-ray players. Too bad HD-DVD didn't win because their price is alot cheaper than blu-ray.
Headward report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Surprising...

Apr 02, 2008 12:19     

Honestly, I am not one to point the finger and say,"I told you so" However, I had made agruements last year that Blu-Ray would win the format war simply because of the PS3. This does not mean that I'm partial to the Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. Honestly, I would have gone for HD-DVD based on current features and the fact that they were cheaper. It's really a shame that they are taking this route after winning the HD market war, it's really not going to help them beat out DVD's however.

JackCrackerMan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Well knock me over with a feather

Apr 02, 2008 13:06     

Sony proprietary formats are always worse for the consumer in both copy protection and price. Look at the price of SD cards vs Sony memory stick. If Sony wants to make a proprietary HD movie format, go ahead! Call it Playstation 3 DVD. Don't call it Blu Ray and force it down the throats of the consumer to try and make it mainstream.
Gerardo report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

What did you expect?

Apr 02, 2008 13:14     

Competition drives prices down. When Toshiba waved the white flag and through in the towel, they opened the gates for Sony to jack up the prices of BD players.
Bob report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Why player prices have gone up

Apr 02, 2008 19:06     

After the war is over, these companies no longer need to sell the players at a loss to compete. With raw material and labor cost all going up including the price for kitchen sink, no one can stay in business selling products at a loss. It's not like the player companies can benefit much from strong software sales like the gaming industry. There just has not been enough technological advances to drive down the cost of producing these players. Of course those who made the decision to go Blu before the war was over benefitted. The risk was factored into the pricing. They took a risk and are now promptly rewarded. What's interesting is that while Sony's player price did have gone up, Panasonic seems to be pushing the pricing up the most, yet consumers do not seem to know that Panasonic is also the initial founders of Blu-ray, and stands to gain just as much as Sony. Get a PS3 if you want a BD player. It's still the same price (who knows how long that will last), and it's BD-Live ready.

John report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

PS3 is a no-go

Apr 03, 2008 04:12     

For all you people saying to buy a PS3 because its price is stable, you don't know what you are talking about! What is the advantage of Blu-Ray (hence why one should buy it), well now, HD vision and HD sound. Now coming to the HD sound: you need at least a VERY EXPENSIVE HDMI1.3 receiver to fully enjoy HD sound. Besides that, you have to wait a long time for firmware update so the PS3 could decode full HD sound eventually. To truly experience Blu-Ray, PS3 is a NO-GO! But wait, there are lots of people having a 10-year old high-quality kick-ass receiver with at least 6 discrete analogue channel which passes the decoded incoming HD sound directly to the speakers. REAL HD sound! For around 400 dollars, stand-alone Blu-Ray players that decode true HD sound are already available. Although it doesn't have BD2.0 spec, but PiP etc. isn't worth that much. Voila!

DingieM report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

invest?

Apr 03, 2008 06:52     

this is something I dont understand. How is buying something that is only going to go down in value the moment you open the box considered an 'investment'? This is like people saying a car is an 'investment' or a computer is an 'investment'. These are consumable items, and if you were really investing in them you would love the fact that their prices are going up because it means your share of the company producing them is worth more. I'm glad the price is going up because it is keeping idiots out of the market for a little while. BD still isnt feature full, they are still developing what they want to do with it. In annother year, when they have finished standardizing it and it is really ready for mass market then it will drop down to the amazingly low prices we see HDDVD at now. But with technology (including CD and DVD players when they were new) usuially 1/2ing in price every year and a half we are still way ahead of the game. And just think, when the price goes down again HDTVs will be much lower in price as well so we wont have to break the bank for either. In the meantime, if you cant afford it then you can afford to work while you wait, and you'll get a better product int he end anyways.

Caeden report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Supply and Demand

Apr 04, 2008 12:13     

It's simple supply and demand at work - the demand has increased, but the supply has not. The war ended so quickly that the Blu-Ray manufacturers haven't had much chance to gear up their production to keep up with the increased demand.
Eric report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Re: Supply and Demand

Apr 06, 2008 15:46     

The supply and demand doesn't work here. The supply is more than enough. Go to any store and ask for a stand alone Blu-Ray player or a PS3. All of them are in stock and have been sitting there for months. I don't see Blu-ray going main stream anytime soon unless they get a player under $200 and new movies under $30.
Headward report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Lots of errors.

Apr 08, 2008 16:00     

These prices are being compared to sale prices. The MSRP has NOT gone up on ANY players. There's also a lot of wrong information in some of the comments. You do not need a "VERY EXPENSIVE" HDMI 1.3 reciever to enjoy HD sound. You need a reciever that accepts PCM 5.1 over HDMI. Even HDMI 1.1 recievers are capable of doing that. Then the PS3 actually decodes the "HD" sound (not DTS-HD though) and sends it to the reciever as PCM. Also you can get one of your "VERY EXPENSIVE" HDMI 1.3 players for around $400 or less. Also, new movies are under $30. I paid $24.99 for Walk Hard which is a 2 disc set. There are however some studios... well, one actually, Fox, that feels the need to ask $39.99 for catalog titles. And that is hurting Blu-Ray. Especially considering a lot of these titles do not have any features on them or no where near the features that the regular DVD has on it.

Clayton report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

You have errors as well...

Apr 08, 2008 18:14     

Clayton - "The MSRP has NOT gone up on ANY players. " That's funny the MSRP of a product did change. It had a set MSRP up until Toshiba couldn't pay enough of a bribe to swing the pendulum. www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36476/93 Clayton - "You do not need a "VERY EXPENSIVE" HDMI 1.3 reciever to enjoy HD sound." LOL, you don't need a 1080P high def TV. Last time I checked you could use a 720P display. Clayton - "These prices are being compared to sale prices." You pointed out how the article was looking at the sales price. As if it shouldn't, and then end your post doing what? yep posting sales prices... On the prices of movies, I have seem some very high prices. But through online purchase I've seen some reasonable SALE prices. But I think you are incorrectly pointing out the ultimate sale price to say movies are low. When the MSRP prices is in many cases over 50% greater. If you want to have an equal argument then please speak on those over inflated MSRP prices. It's like sax fifth avenue saying "We have a 500% off sale". And then you go into the store and see the MSRP for jogging pants was $450 but they'll sell it now for $75.

Enlighten report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0