Samsung Blu-ray pricing at CompUsa

Jerry1808 · 06-11-2006, 11:35 AM

The Seattle Sunday CompUsa Ad has the following preorder pricing for the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray player, $999.99 (geez why can't they just round it out to 1K). No specific release date is given. Three film titles also listed are: The Fifth Element and Resident Evil both $28.95 and Underworld: Evolution, $38.95. Seems like a lot of money for movies that except for Fifth Element were box office bombs. At least bd fans will finally have some hardware/software to compare to hd.

tvine2000 · 06-11-2006, 12:32 PM

dont suck in to the bluray rip off. less features then hd players for more money. at least hd is taking a loss by selling there players cheaper,and they have fix its to down load or get a cd rom fix. the point is hd camp is trying to get common people to buy there hd players. 499.00 is not bad on a first gen player,and is why hd will win in the end. sony and the bluray camp lerned noting from the beta vs vhs war. greed is what drives sony and it will again. they have always been over priced and always will. this format war is different,we live in a world that moves fast and if the bluray camp doesnt move fast there going to be making hd players real soon well see

drock912001 · 06-11-2006, 01:49 PM

$499 won't move with the common consumer in no country.The average joe can't justify $119 for a dvd player let alone $499.Evidently Toshiba didn't learn either.People crying about the Blu-Ray price,go into any retail outlet that sells hddvd and ask a few customers would they buy a $499 dollar player and see the responses you get.

LordGamer · 06-11-2006, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drock912001

$499 won't move with the common consumer in no country.The average joe can't justify $119 for a dvd player let alone $499.Evidently Toshiba didn't learn either.People crying about the Blu-Ray price,go into any retail outlet that sells hddvd and ask a few customers would they buy a $499 dollar player and see the responses you get.

/clap

Neither $500 or $1,000 is mainstream friendly. The launch prices don't mean anything. The people picking up the players now are video or tech-philes. Mr. Joe Walmart is going to walk by both players just as fast.

Mainstream adoption by HDTV owners (because HD in general is still very far from mainstream) isn't happening anytime soon. By then, the prices for the hardware from both camps should be about the same. Furthermore, I expect the price of BR players to drop significantly fairly soon.

**PFC5** · 06-11-2006, 02:59 PM

LordGamer:

Why do you think prices on BD players will drop significantly fairly soon?

Sony gave a press release that we all read that said pricing will remain high and units will be in short supply because of severe component shortages (from cellular phone components no less).

I do think either prices will drop and all mfg will have to take a loss or else I think the BD format will fail as a movie player. I imagine that the HD-DVD players will drop in price around the time BD players come out or shortly thereafter if those BD players sell well. Toshiba would be smart to do this to undercut them even more. I think it will be 2-3 years before BD players could be on a price parody with HD-DVD players, so a lot of HDTV owners could already be accounted for by then.

CE companies will not take several years of losses on a machine without some added incentive. Sony has that incentive being a studio too, and their licensing revenue gives them an incentive to take a loss but other CE companies do not have that incentive to take the hit. IMO

Jerry1808 · 06-11-2006, 04:18 PM

LordGamer, I also wonder on what you're basing this drop in blu-ray prices. Every machine I've seen data on starts at one grand and goes up from there. There is the PS3 but video quality as a movie player remains a question mark.

The Blu-ray camp has more development costs to recoup, more license fees to pay (Java for one), and disc manufacturers have new equipment and retooling to amortize.
No doubt costs will drop over time but hd will also come down so it may be that Blu-ray never attains parity without taking big losses on their product.
The software price ($39 for Underworld) is more than double the std dvd price which probably won't have them flying out the door.

Rent 'em from NetFlix or Blockbuster you say. I'm a NetFlix user and they're already showing both hd-dvd and blu-ray rentals as they become available. This presents another problem for both formats. I have over 300 dvd's in my library but since signing up for NetFlix rarely buy them anymore at $15 or $20 let alone 30 or 40.
Since disc sales are where the real profits are rentals at the expense of sales could drag down the introduction of both players and more importantly a good flow of movie titles.

drock912001 · 06-11-2006, 04:57 PM

LordGamer is saying when hd sets are heavily adopted the prices of the players will come down.Right now neither format can lower prices because of supply and demand.If Toshiba and RCA could ship out 1,000's of a players a month they probably would lower the price.As long as you have shortages it doesn't make since to lower your price point.Remember bluray has more hardware manufacturers so they can lower prices sooner after launch.How soon?Not this calender year but it will go back to supply and demand,if stores are loaded with either player then prices will come down.In my are Cinn.-Dayton,OH hasn't had 50 hddvd players yet so there's no need to declare a winner just yet.So if blu-ray launched first and still has shortages Toshiba wouldn't worry either.A 10,000 player lead doesn't dictate a winner or loser.

LordGamer · 06-11-2006, 05:11 PM

The software price ($39 for Underworld) is more than double the std dvd price which probably won't have them flying out the door.

That's a CompUSA price (which is generally higher on product of that nature than other stores). The same movie is priced at Best Buy for $29.99. In regards to movie costs, they should be about the same for both camps.
-----

I'm not expecting them to drop by much...say $100-250 cheaper around this holiday season. Though, I wouldn't be too surprised if they dropped a tad more.

Why? Well, for starters, we've already seen it happen. Pioneer recently announced a drop of $300. Granted, the player was expensive to begin with (and still is), but a drop is a drop.

As it stands, why would Sony need to drop the price of their players now? Neither camp is going to actually sell that many units anytime soon to mean much of anything. The people wanting to buy BR players now, don't mind the $1,000 price tag, so why not get a bit of profit. Some people are going by an assumption that if Average Joe walks into a store now and sees a $500 HD player and a $1,000 player, he's going to walk out with the $500 one. Well, he's not. He's going to walk with the latest version of "Girls Gone Wild." Until "HDTV owner mainstream adoption" happens, price isn't as big of deal as some would make it seem.

Next, we go with the competition factor. The BR camp has more hardware makers, so they all have an incentive to keep their prices low. By September, we should see three different BR players, from three different companies. Now, I could of missed something, but I haven't read of any general street date announced HD DVD players coming soon. So, the competition factor doesn't work for Toshiba.

Finally... *drum roll* ...PS3. We know by the end of the year; regardless of how one feels toward it, there will be a $500 Blu-ray player on shelves. Samsung and Pioneer (among other player manufacturers) are on the BR board of directors. Now, I'm sure neither one of them would be too thrilled if they felt they were losing player sales to someone else in their team at $500 cheaper. Which is why I believe Sony probably has some deal in place to compensate its partners, i.e. cutting their tech costs or taking a partial loss for them.

LordGamer · 06-11-2006, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drock912001

Right now neither format can lower prices because of supply and demand.If Toshiba and RCA could ship out 1,000's of a players a month they probably would lower the price.As long as you have shortages it doesn't make since to lower your price point.

Very true.

Honestly, I don't even know why Toshiba felt the need to drop the cost of their players so much (if you remember, I believe everyone was shocked at the $500 price tag).

The demand isn't there to warrant taking such a loss. If this battle was going to last a set six months, starting May 1st, then I imagine we wouldn't even be having this conversation. We all be too busy watching HD DVD movies and having our pizza delivered by a former Sony exec.

But until the demand (from mainstream consumers) and available technology is there, there is no need to focus so much on pricing.

iserum · 06-11-2006, 05:53 PM

the reason for prices higher are these are pc based dvd player according to HT magzine, it is like dvd ROM drive on P4 2.2 Ghz Processor withone 1 GB Ram. this is why prices are higher, PS3 is high in price for same reason as well as Xbox 360. i thought that price will come down very soon but after looking nto details of hrardware it looks like prices will stay on higher side. i piceked my HDDVD player because my Denon upconverting player died and i got full money back because of extended warranty. if that not be the case i would have waited the format war to settle, my first impression on toshiba HD DVD player is very good, after updating the firmware via ethernet cable, player is awesome even old DVD upconverts very good. i hope HD DVD survives I i have two plasmas 720P res., i do not see any reason to pay for BR 1K for 1080P. i would have 2 HD DVD player for same price.
I will get some movies from Netflix to try HD DVD, i bought only one at store looks very good price was $24.99 at CC. I have BR moviews for $38.99 that is insane.

Jerry1808 · 06-11-2006, 08:30 PM

30 or 40, they still probably won't be flying off the shelves especially if they're titles that weren't even very popular on dvd.

If the Netflix and download business models continue to gain traction cannibalizing sales, studios will be loath to re-release films in both hd formats. I say both because if you look at title lists on HiDef DVD digest, they're more alike than different.

Again Pioneer's spokesman along with announcing their delay said the PS3 will not equal their players vq and how many non-gamers want to fit a game machine form factor into their equipment racks.

I see a lot more posts from the early adopters willing to risk 500 bucks on hd-dvd but balk at a thousand. I agree completely that the bb and cc buyers aren't going to be getting either format now but it's a lot shorter fall from $500 than $1000 to the joe average price point.

Iserum is absolutely right these things are computers not a/v machines. One guy on the web bought the Toshiba and made a cool vid taking it apart and for all intents it's a pentium pc with an hd drive. (no wonder it takes forever to boot and occasionally crashes) Point is don't expect dramatic price drops given the components.

Toshiba is probably loosing money per unit but willing to do it for relatively rapid market penetration. Only question is how much they can afford to put into the fight. Sony, if you've checked Wall Street, is loosing money as a company so it's not an unlimited cash cow to subsidize its partners.

Sony's own arrogrance may also be a factor in holding back Blu-ray if it continues its past tradition of charging extortionary license fees to partner companies especially those that develop for pc's.

It's going to be interesting to see Samsung hit the shelves, hopefully this month, and see some reviews and comparisons with hd-dvd. Probably will generate more questions than answers but should be great fun!

µCOM-4 · 06-15-2006, 01:08 AM

Betaray will bomb.

06-11-2006, 11:35 AM	#1
Jerry1808 Home Theater Fan Join Date: May 2006 Location: seattle Posts: 831	Samsung Blu-ray pricing at CompUsa The Seattle Sunday CompUsa Ad has the following preorder pricing for the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray player, $999.99 (geez why can't they just round it out to 1K). No specific release date is given. Three film titles also listed are: The Fifth Element and Resident Evil both $28.95 and Underworld: Evolution, $38.95. Seems like a lot of money for movies that except for Fifth Element were box office bombs. At least bd fans will finally have some hardware/software to compare to hd.

06-11-2006, 01:49 PM	#3
drock912001 NFL in HD nothing else Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Charlotte,NC Posts: 1,570	$499 won't move with the common consumer in no country.The average joe can't justify $119 for a dvd player let alone $499.Evidently Toshiba didn't learn either.People crying about the Blu-Ray price,go into any retail outlet that sells hddvd and ask a few customers would they buy a $499 dollar player and see the responses you get. __________________ Samsung HL-R5667W Toshiba HD-XA1 Directv HR12-100S IXOS audio & video connectors Monster Power HTS2500 HD DVD 58? Mover's hustled most of my collection last year!

06-11-2006, 02:59 PM	#5
PFC5 Super Moderator Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 28,410	LordGamer: Why do you think prices on BD players will drop significantly fairly soon? Sony gave a press release that we all read that said pricing will remain high and units will be in short supply because of severe component shortages (from cellular phone components no less). I do think either prices will drop and all mfg will have to take a loss or else I think the BD format will fail as a movie player. I imagine that the HD-DVD players will drop in price around the time BD players come out or shortly thereafter if those BD players sell well. Toshiba would be smart to do this to undercut them even more. I think it will be 2-3 years before BD players could be on a price parody with HD-DVD players, so a lot of HDTV owners could already be accounted for by then. CE companies will not take several years of losses on a machine without some added incentive. Sony has that incentive being a studio too, and their licensing revenue gives them an incentive to take a loss but other CE companies do not have that incentive to take the hit. IMO __________________ Denon AVR-887 Klipsch RP-5 Pwred Towers (mains) (525 watts peak each 12"Subs) All Klipsch RC-25(ctr),(2)SS1(surr),(2)SS1(rearSurr) Toshiba (2)HD-A20,PS3,BD35 For SACD/DVD-A Samsung HD-841 Panny 50pz80u plasma SETTINGS RCA HD50LPW162 50"DLP w/HD2+ SA 3250HD 47" LCD+Yamaha5790+HD-A1(bedroom) Harmony 680 + (2) 670s (amazing remote/support) Game room with Onkyo receiver & B&W Speakers The_Cable_Game Take the high ground and be happier

06-11-2006, 04:18 PM	#6
Jerry1808 Home Theater Fan Join Date: May 2006 Location: seattle Posts: 831	LordGamer, I also wonder on what you're basing this drop in blu-ray prices. Every machine I've seen data on starts at one grand and goes up from there. There is the PS3 but video quality as a movie player remains a question mark. The Blu-ray camp has more development costs to recoup, more license fees to pay (Java for one), and disc manufacturers have new equipment and retooling to amortize. No doubt costs will drop over time but hd will also come down so it may be that Blu-ray never attains parity without taking big losses on their product. The software price ($39 for Underworld) is more than double the std dvd price which probably won't have them flying out the door. Rent 'em from NetFlix or Blockbuster you say. I'm a NetFlix user and they're already showing both hd-dvd and blu-ray rentals as they become available. This presents another problem for both formats. I have over 300 dvd's in my library but since signing up for NetFlix rarely buy them anymore at $15 or $20 let alone 30 or 40. Since disc sales are where the real profits are rentals at the expense of sales could drag down the introduction of both players and more importantly a good flow of movie titles. Last edited by Jerry1808; 06-11-2006 at 04:20 PM.

06-11-2006, 04:57 PM	#7
drock912001 NFL in HD nothing else Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Charlotte,NC Posts: 1,570	LordGamer is saying when hd sets are heavily adopted the prices of the players will come down.Right now neither format can lower prices because of supply and demand.If Toshiba and RCA could ship out 1,000's of a players a month they probably would lower the price.As long as you have shortages it doesn't make since to lower your price point.Remember bluray has more hardware manufacturers so they can lower prices sooner after launch.How soon?Not this calender year but it will go back to supply and demand,if stores are loaded with either player then prices will come down.In my are Cinn.-Dayton,OH hasn't had 50 hddvd players yet so there's no need to declare a winner just yet.So if blu-ray launched first and still has shortages Toshiba wouldn't worry either.A 10,000 player lead doesn't dictate a winner or loser. __________________ Samsung HL-R5667W Toshiba HD-XA1 Directv HR12-100S IXOS audio & video connectors Monster Power HTS2500 HD DVD 58? Mover's hustled most of my collection last year!

06-11-2006, 12:32 PM	#2
tvine2000 High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: vermont Posts: 904	dont suck in to the bluray rip off. less features then hd players for more money. at least hd is taking a loss by selling there players cheaper,and they have fix its to down load or get a cd rom fix. the point is hd camp is trying to get common people to buy there hd players. 499.00 is not bad on a first gen player,and is why hd will win in the end. sony and the bluray camp lerned noting from the beta vs vhs war. greed is what drives sony and it will again. they have always been over priced and always will. this format war is different,we live in a world that moves fast and if the bluray camp doesnt move fast there going to be making hd players real soon well see

06-11-2006, 05:11 PM	#8
LordGamer Lord of Gaming Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Posts: 1,788	The software price ($39 for Underworld) is more than double the std dvd price which probably won't have them flying out the door. That's a CompUSA price (which is generally higher on product of that nature than other stores). The same movie is priced at Best Buy for $29.99. In regards to movie costs, they should be about the same for both camps. ----- I'm not expecting them to drop by much...say $100-250 cheaper around this holiday season. Though, I wouldn't be too surprised if they dropped a tad more. Why? Well, for starters, we've already seen it happen. Pioneer recently announced a drop of $300. Granted, the player was expensive to begin with (and still is), but a drop is a drop. As it stands, why would Sony need to drop the price of their players now? Neither camp is going to actually sell that many units anytime soon to mean much of anything. The people wanting to buy BR players now, don't mind the $1,000 price tag, so why not get a bit of profit. Some people are going by an assumption that if Average Joe walks into a store now and sees a $500 HD player and a $1,000 player, he's going to walk out with the $500 one. Well, he's not. He's going to walk with the latest version of "Girls Gone Wild." Until "HDTV owner mainstream adoption" happens, price isn't as big of deal as some would make it seem. Next, we go with the competition factor. The BR camp has more hardware makers, so they all have an incentive to keep their prices low. By September, we should see three different BR players, from three different companies. Now, I could of missed something, but I haven't read of any general street date announced HD DVD players coming soon. So, the competition factor doesn't work for Toshiba. Finally... drum roll ...PS3. We know by the end of the year; regardless of how one feels toward it, there will be a $500 Blu-ray player on shelves. Samsung and Pioneer (among other player manufacturers) are on the BR board of directors. Now, I'm sure neither one of them would be too thrilled if they felt they were losing player sales to someone else in their team at $500 cheaper. Which is why I believe Sony probably has some deal in place to compensate its partners, i.e. cutting their tech costs or taking a partial loss for them. __________________ LordGamer Profile - George Carlin, R.I.P. 06.22.08 HD Qualifications... -- Westinghouse 47" 1080p LCD (LVM-47w1) -- Scientific Atlanta HD Receiver & DVR (8300HD), Comcast -- Sony Playstation 3 -- Microsoft Xbox 360

06-11-2006, 05:53 PM	#10
iserum High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 1,955	the reason for prices higher are these are pc based dvd player according to HT magzine, it is like dvd ROM drive on P4 2.2 Ghz Processor withone 1 GB Ram. this is why prices are higher, PS3 is high in price for same reason as well as Xbox 360. i thought that price will come down very soon but after looking nto details of hrardware it looks like prices will stay on higher side. i piceked my HDDVD player because my Denon upconverting player died and i got full money back because of extended warranty. if that not be the case i would have waited the format war to settle, my first impression on toshiba HD DVD player is very good, after updating the firmware via ethernet cable, player is awesome even old DVD upconverts very good. i hope HD DVD survives I i have two plasmas 720P res., i do not see any reason to pay for BR 1K for 1080P. i would have 2 HD DVD player for same price. I will get some movies from Netflix to try HD DVD, i bought only one at store looks very good price was $24.99 at CC. I have BR moviews for $38.99 that is insane. __________________ Panasonic 50PX80U/Pioneer BDP-51FD /Toshiba HD A1/Tivo HD SAMSUNG LNT-4661F/ Pioneer BDP-51FD/Dell XPS, Nvidia 9500 GT SONY BRAVIA 40V2500/40 GB PS3, WII, Intel Core 2 Duo with Nvidia 6800 Yamaha RXV1700 Def. Tech. Mythos III, V & Gems, Super Cube III Harmony Remote One Power Conditioner: Belkin PF40 Last edited by iserum; 06-11-2006 at 05:56 PM.

06-11-2006, 08:30 PM	#11
Jerry1808 Home Theater Fan Join Date: May 2006 Location: seattle Posts: 831	30 or 40, they still probably won't be flying off the shelves especially if they're titles that weren't even very popular on dvd. If the Netflix and download business models continue to gain traction cannibalizing sales, studios will be loath to re-release films in both hd formats. I say both because if you look at title lists on HiDef DVD digest, they're more alike than different. Again Pioneer's spokesman along with announcing their delay said the PS3 will not equal their players vq and how many non-gamers want to fit a game machine form factor into their equipment racks. I see a lot more posts from the early adopters willing to risk 500 bucks on hd-dvd but balk at a thousand. I agree completely that the bb and cc buyers aren't going to be getting either format now but it's a lot shorter fall from $500 than $1000 to the joe average price point. Iserum is absolutely right these things are computers not a/v machines. One guy on the web bought the Toshiba and made a cool vid taking it apart and for all intents it's a pentium pc with an hd drive. (no wonder it takes forever to boot and occasionally crashes) Point is don't expect dramatic price drops given the components. Toshiba is probably loosing money per unit but willing to do it for relatively rapid market penetration. Only question is how much they can afford to put into the fight. Sony, if you've checked Wall Street, is loosing money as a company so it's not an unlimited cash cow to subsidize its partners. Sony's own arrogrance may also be a factor in holding back Blu-ray if it continues its past tradition of charging extortionary license fees to partner companies especially those that develop for pc's. It's going to be interesting to see Samsung hit the shelves, hopefully this month, and see some reviews and comparisons with hd-dvd. Probably will generate more questions than answers but should be great fun!

06-15-2006, 01:08 AM	#12
µCOM-4 High Definition is the definition of life. Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 699	Betaray will bomb.