Software prices... Do they really matter?

[kennyt]

I know all you have been griping about paying $25 for a Blu-ray disc. Myself and most of the internet savvy folks here have been averaging closer to $18.

I have been shopping for a good turntable to get back into vinyl lately, and noticed that all the vinyl I see in shops on line runs $30+ yet no one gripes about this.

I am willing to pay extra for a better fpormat, but was surprised to see how much extra analog runs, and it made me realize we are a group of wimps for complaining for the price difference between Blu-ray and SD DVD.

A new release SD DVD often run $18. If you buy from Amazon, you can often get the Blu-ray version for ~$18, or the same cost.

Why are we all whining?

I think we need to stop griping and start buying discs to make our format grow as best as possible.

thoughts?

[faberryman]

Vinyl guys are a different breed and the market is tiny. I think they are grateful that they can find anything on vinyl and don't complain about the price. You can't exactly go to Walmart and pick up a 180 gram vinyl pressing. I also think there is a certain cachet with vinyl and vinyl guys don't mind paying extra to be the member of a very exclusive club.

The first movie I would get if I got a Blu-ray player would be "Live Free or Die Hard". I checked Amazon and the DVD is $16.49 and the Blu-ray is $24.99 - a 50% premium. I'm sure you could find both of them cheaper, but the point is Blu-rays are rarely the same price as DVDs. That and $500 for a player is an impediment to many.

Divide the cost of a Bluray player by the number of Bluray discs you have to get the real premium. For example, if you have a 100 Bluray discs, the additional premium is $5.00. So the cost of a DVD is $16.49 and the cost of a Bluray disc is now $29.99 - almost double. Obviously the additional premium will go up or down depending on how many Blu-ray discs you have.

Given the economics, people might replace a broken DVD player with a Blu-ray player, but it's a tough sell to go out and buy a player when you already have a DVD player and a small screen - say 42" or less - particularly if you have a good upscaling DVD player. This is particularly true since there are no Profile 2.0 players on the market yet. Why buy a Profile 1.1 player for big bucks now? You ought to at least wait until the Profile 2.0 players hit the market and come down in price.

Thanksgiving-Christmas looks like a rational time to jump in. By then several Profile 2.0 players will be out and prices will have dropped. Hopefully the price of Bluray discs will have dropped by then as well.

Unless of course you have a front projector and big screen. If I were in that situation, I would buy the first Profile 2.0 player that comes out. The Panasonic BP50 is suppose to hit the streets in a couple of weeks and would be a good choice.

Just one man's opinion.

[TheMoose]

I think most of the complaining on price comes from people shopping at Brick & Mortar stores.
Best Buy's prices are way out of line ($25-$35!!), I bought almost all of my DVD's from BB but only a couple out of the 100 or so Blu-Ray movies have come from BB, all the rest were bought on-line.

That's not to say on-line prices are a lot better but, by shopping a lot of sales I'd guess I'm averaging around $18 each on Blu-ray movies.

[TheMoose]

On the plus side sales are continuing to rise,


A 27% increase isn't bad on a week where no big movies were released, I think Jumper & the Bucket List were the biggest releases.