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.
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RSSWhat's sad is that the newer more expensive Blu-Ray players still don't have the cool features like PIP commentaries/extras and integrated internet content that HD-DVD has (it's incredible how many ways the extends the viewing life of the film!).
But seriously, who can actually be surprised at Sony and their partners raising prices now that the immediate competition has stepped away? Blu-Ray was a consumer rip-off from it's conception and will continue to be so...