HD DVD Dies, Blu-ray Prices Rise

As HD DVD bit the dust, the average prices on Blu-ray players rose last month.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. Just last month Toshiba gave up the good fight on behalf of HD DVD. Since then the average price of Blu-ray high definition DVD players – now the only gamein town – have risen between $20-50.   Information Week checked prices on comparison site PriceGrabber and discovered that in January the average price of the top 10 Blu-ray players stood at $467. A month later it was $604. Whoa! What’s going on there?   It tunrs out that someof it is a blip, due to new players with better features arriving on the market. But even factoring those out, the average price on Blu-ray players still rose between $20 and $50 last month.  Darren Davis, VP of marketing for Price Grabber, suggested that manufacturers would do themselves a favor by keeping prices low.   "Consumers are not going to jump into the market yet. Thedemise of HD DVD, if anything, is going to delay Blu-ray adoption, given the increase in prices."   That statement echoes the finding of a survey the company carried out, where 56% ofrespondents said they’d buy a Blu-ray player if prices were lower.