When do you think the price of Blu-ray players will drop?

Question

A lot of the studios are going to Blu-ray exclusivley, so should that drive the price down? or up? or will it stay the same?

Answer 1

I wouldn't expect the price to go any lower than $350 anytime sooner than the end of 2008 or early 2009....but that's just my best guestimate.

Answer 2

With Sony you could be waiting a while.  They feel they have already won the format 'war' and have no incentive to lower prices now.  I remember when they came out with their beloved Betamax trying to dominate the industry.  We see where that got them...

Answer 3

I believe that they will come down soon... If the news is true that Toshiba is about to stop making HD-DVDs and Blu-ray wins the format war then Blu-ray players will become a common thing.

The big players will drop the prise to get you money.... give it a few more weeks and HD-DVD should be no more.

Answer 4

Prices will come down eventually.

It may happen sooner because there is now a decision about which format has won the war -- Toshiba just "threw in the towel" and announced they would stop production of HD-DVD players:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080216...

What this means is that the second tier manufacturers now don't have to worry about spending money on licensing agreements with the wrong technology format.  They only have one to worry about.  When they come on the seen and start flooding the market, the prices will have lots of pressure to drop.

Also, the Blu-ray camp is going to have to come down in price to convert the people who bought HD-DVD.

I gave myself a budget of $400 and bought an HD-DVD player for $185 at Christmas.  That means that I won't buy a Blu-ray player until the price comes down to about $200-$250.  Especially since, as nice as HD is, plain old DVD upscaled with an HD player looks pretty darn good on my 42" plasma.  For me to to get really hot and heavy on Blu-ray, the price of players and media needs to come down about 50% for me to get really excited about forking over more money.  I suspect that some my fellow "burned"  HD-DVD sisters and brethern may feel the same way.

And, btw, when Amazon and TiVo figure out how to download HD through Unbox, I might just bypass Blu-ray all together.

I suspect that the real price drops will start to happen next fall and Christmas time and you'll begin to see sub $300 by then.