How Long Will It Be Before The Price Of Blu Ray Discs Is Reduced?

[thatguy]

Looking in Woolworths (admittedly the more expensive of the retailers) i found the spiderman trilogy for £43, and the other blu ray discs at an average £23!

i dont remember DVDs being that high when they first came out.

Superbad may be an alrght film but its not worth 23 quid of anyones money. And even at an online price of £18 it still seems too much

And that would be the same for quite a lot of blu ray discs. Goodfellas on DVD is 4 quid from tescos, blue ray its £23.

People seem to be buying blu ray discs just for the sake of buying them. So that they have a Blu Ray collection, or just to see what its like on Blu Ray.

Im pretty sure if Blu Ray had the full library the DVD format has, we wouldnt be seeing such great titles as Black Hawk Down in the top 10.

What do you guys think? Have we been spoilt by the extraordinarily low prices of DVDs and at what point will we get tired of shelling out so much?

And are people buying for the sake of buying or have people really been eagerly waiting for a high defintion version of Ghost Rider?

[chrissyman]

Yes i agree m8 people must have money to burn, yes Blu ray looks good and so did Hddvd but no way is it worth those sort of price's , they really need to be roughly the same price for Joe public to take it seriously .

[Helicon]

Originally, DVD's were £20/25, and i remember being excited when WHS did their buy one get one free offer! The Spiderman Trilogy is a trilogy, so will be a little more.....

I agree with Superbad - it's not likely to be one i'll buy on Blu-ray unless it's dirt cheap.

But comparing current DVD prices against current Blu-Ray prices is a little pointless. Many would argue that Goodfellas is worth spending £23 on for a full HD experience, even if you can get it on DVD for £4 - which in comparison would be like comparing DVD to VHS.

I am only going to buy Blu-Rays of films i can watch a couple of times, or films i really like. I'll happily pay £20/25 for Donnie Darko and Hot Fuzz - after all, i've bought Donnie Darko 3 times already for various versions, and they're all SD. At the current in store prices, i don't think many people are buying for the sake of it, even at the online prices.

Yes, we've been spoilt by cheap DVD releases, although new releases are still £15+ in stores, so i'd happily pay a few more quid for the Blu-Ray. Discs will come down in price, hell, they already have! You can buy 3 for 2, which is worth it, and you can buy some for less than a tenner. Things are looking up, but give it a little time.

Anybody waiting for any version of Ghost Rider needs a labotomy........

[Junglist]

I was in HMV on friday and couldnt believe the price of the BD in store. Thats what i call a rip off. But worst of all i actually saw people buying them!!!

I have set myself a maximum limit of £15...not cos i'm a tight git but because i dont believe the BD are worth more than that. Currently i have <20 BD in my collection compared to 500+dvds. I dont mind double dipping if i get a bargain but to be honest theres not really much out there on BD these days that i would class as a must have.

Now that the HD war is over i can see my collection growing immensly soon but again i will stick to my limit and wait for prices to come down before i buy.

[Helicon]

I agree, stores are holding the format back at the moment. I don't mind paying £20 for stuff like Hot Fuzz, The Thing, The Descent, Fight Club.....stuff i know i'll get my money's worth from, but as i said, other stuff would need to be cheap, about £10/12 really.

[thatguy]

my first dvd was Speed and i only bought that because i was determined to buy a dvd and Speed was the best of a bad bunch

And in the first few months a lot of my dvd releases were bought because of this philosophy.

I think people are following that train of thought with Blu Ray.

Theyre determined to buy a blu ray disc for their shiny new tv and player and its just a case of choosing the best of a bad bunch

it wasnt until dvd players and discs came down to not just affordable levels but "bargain" levels that it was commonly accepted by the great unwashed

if blu ray is to also be accepted and not seen as just another "laserdisc" then the discs need to be at least the same price as DVDs

i dont think these companies realise how complacent and happy the average person is with DVD. A lot of people dont see the need to upgrade to blu ray especially so soon after they just bought into DVD

A new dvd at tescos or online is about 12 quid,

convincing them to not only upgrade but upgrade to a format whereby they would have to pay twice as much for the discs is going to be a heck of a job

even im not convinced. Ill be renting all my blu ray discs until one comes along that i want to purchase

[Lezman]

I was at Bluewater on Friday and I saw quite a few people buying blurays on the 3 for 2 offer in HMV. Do they not look online?!

I also saw the SD DVD of T2 for £25 in HMV- but that's beside the point

[thatguy]

i cant remember the last time i bought a new full price disc from woolworths, hmv or wh smiths

theyre just too expensive compared to online. Why anyone buys from them is a mystery.


i occasionally pop in to see the bargains but even now DVD offers seem to be a permenant fixture

they come out at about 12 quid and then after 6 months are reduced to about 6 quid

[Pecker]

The store prices are generally poor, but the online prices are often fairly reasonable. Many catalogue titles are available for between £10 & £15 online, so we're not getting a bad deal.

The supermarkets can stick things out at rock bottom prices, but only if they buy huge quantities. That's why your local Sainsbury will probably have the top 20 DVDs + some old titles the studios are trying to shift for a fiver.

So I don't think we'll see a lot of cheap titles in the supermarkets until Blu-ray Disc is a lot bigger, which I don't think will be for a while. HMV won't feel pressure to reduce prices until the supermarkets force them.

Steve W

[amd mad]

Asda has a few bargains now and then most bd's are £20 but i saw 300 for £11 yesterday

[elicash73]

Blu-ray discs cost more than DVD? No sh*t. How can people expect it to be any other way?

Christmas. Blu-ray will be pushed big-time.

Meanwhile, everyone buys discs online for little more than the DVD in a lot of cases. Especially new releases which work out about the same price.

[Pincho Paxton]

You have to be patient with these prices. If Goodfellas is so much better than the DVD version, it is just a matter of time before the price drops, you may as well watch the DVD version if you are a fan of the film, and replace it when the price is right.

The price drops for Blu Ray should follow a similar graph as DVD price drops.

I have a sort of synopsis, which might be what is happening........
The burning facilities for movies might be quite limited at the moment, and so £12 Blu Ray movies could actually sell out of stock, which is a pointless exercise for a profit making business plan. You never want to sell a product out of stock when you have not the facilities to burn more of that product. So the prices hold the stock in place whilst other movies are being burned/pressed.

[DeadKenny]

Can't see that big a demand for them though. Vast majority of the UK has no idea what Blu-Ray is, or really understand HD. The majority still have SD CRTs in fact together with a humble DVD player (I wouldn't judge what people have by what's on sale in Currys either).

DVD has taken quite a long time anyway to get to the bargain prices that they are now, and that's considering DVD has achieved a saturation point that Blu-Ray just maybe never will (or not for a very long time). DVD had a clear advantage to the consumer. Replace big ugly tapes that took up space and got chewed up. Second to that a decent improvement in picture quality. HD formats however are the same kind of disc and a picture improvement that for the majority is only really relevant if you have a 40" or bigger HD telly. Yeah, I know you can tell the difference with smaller TVs, but for mass adoption it really needs to be gob smacking, and to be frank for most DVD is just fine.

It also needs to be an ultra cheap investment. I mean, £20 for a player in ASDA, and £200 for a Bush or Alba branded bargain HD telly in Argos or wherever

Can't see that happening any time soon with Blu-Ray.

More so now the cheaper competition has gone (ducks )

[amd mad]

currys have 3for2 on at the mo not new films but the ones they have are only £12.97 free delivery

[Wedlock]

People need to be more realistic about this.
I still am amazed that many people are comparing today's dvd prices to the blu-ray prices and think it is the right way to compare it.

Blu-ray is only 2 years old now and if you compare dvd to the same time-frame you find that blu-ray has already matured more than dvd, thanks in some way to the formatwar.
Now that the war is over studio's and electronics companies will focus their efforts to the public with education on blu-ray and by the time the holidays are here prices will be down just to make it more interesting for the public.

I still remember the day's when dvd was only a small corner in the stores and people looked at it with a face like : what the hell is this then ??
Prices for Titanic on dvd at that time where around 50 euro's then compared to around 20-30 euro's per blu-ray disc today.

So you see there is not so much difference, give it time to get settled in the market some more and then prices will fall for software and hardware.