Take this with a grain of salt, but according to Blu-ray.com Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 USD Blu-ray player in select stores, a price over $100 USD lower than current entry-level players.
The site says that the cheaper players are showing up on Wal-Mart store shelves under brand names such as Magnavox and Sylvania but that they are in reality coming from Japanese manufacturer Funai ... [ read the full article ]
Please read the original article before posting your comments.
Originally posted by mspurloc: So you're paying $300 for a player worth about $15 to the manufacturer and about $40 in a market based in reality. There's nothing that special about a high-def player, so this is a rip-off. I'm waiting until the prices get real.
To be honest even with cheaper Asian production this probably still costs $180 or so to produce...
I'm curious; what do you base that on? Remember it's a player, not a burner. Economy of scale, 80 to 90 percent off-the-shelf components, etc. So it's got a different diode and a conversion board. So that justifies a $300 player? Nope. Not buying it.
Originally posted by mspurloc: So you're paying $300 for a player worth about $15 to the manufacturer and about $40 in a market based in reality. There's nothing that special about a high-def player, so this is a rip-off. I'm waiting until the prices get real.
So based on your version of reality, the $99 Toshiba HD-A2HD DVD player was still $60 overpriced and was also a rip-off.
1. Don't tell me my version of reality.
2. That would not be a rip-off. It's called reasonable markup, and is proof that not all companies are as corrupt as Sony has become.
Originally posted by mspurloc: 1. Don't tell me my version of reality.
2. That would not be a rip-off. It's called reasonable markup, and is proof that not all companies are as corrupt as Sony has become.
Your $99 BluRay player should become reality next year once the Chinese manufacturers get in the game.
The fact remains that my next BluRay player purchase will be less expensive than the $700 I paid for my Toshiba HD-XA2HD DVD player (original MSRP $999).
Originally posted by mspurloc: So you're paying $300 for a player worth about $15 to the manufacturer and about $40 in a market based in reality. There's nothing that special about a high-def player, so this is a rip-off. I'm waiting until the prices get real.
To be honest even with cheaper Asian production this probably still costs $180 or so to produce...
DVDBack23: you're very likely right on target there. This article is from 2 years ago but I'll post it just to give you an idea of how much it costs to manufacture an HD player:
Quote:with the servo chipset, optical pick-up, H.264 decoder and royalties making up the majority of the cost, the initial estimates for the bill of materials for blue-laser disc players is over $400, according to In-Stat. Most of the costs are forecasted to decline considerably by 2010, except for royalties.
Quote:the first HD-A1 HD DVD player cost Toshiba $674 in parts alone (Says iSuppli, 2006). So are they losing ~$500 bucks on these newer player selling for less than a C-note?
Prices may have come down since then but it's unrealistic to say that these players only cost $15 to manufacture.
