Audio Video News

While the good news is that we now apparently know when Blu-ray is going to launch, a pair of news stories from last week dovetail to paint a fairly ugly picture for the Blu-ray Disc. If the reports of the delay of PlayStation3 hold, that means there will not be a single BD player available at launch for less than $1000. Add to that the uninspiring list of titles announced to accompany Blu-ray’s May 23rd launch and you’ve got to wonder, who’s going to bother?

Toshiba is touring the country as I write this promoting HD DVD and telling consumers they can cut their risks on the format war to just $500. The advanced features that make Blu-ray so technologically formidable- Java-based interactivity, extensive security, and 1080/24p video to name a few- require that the players be highly advanced, and therefore expensive to manufacture. It's been surmised that the BD disc drives that will be used in PS3 have a raw parts cost as high as $350. Given all that, can we expect Sony, in the wake of PS3's apparently imminent delay, to try and bring a cheaper standalone player to market sooner? I don't know if Sony will, but I think Sony should.

In a news story last week, I jokingly asked if it helped anyone choking on the costs of the new formats to remember that VCRs and especially stereo VCRs were hideously expensive when they were introduced in early 1980's. Of course, it doesn't. Times have changed too much. Playing back movies at your leisure, without commercials, in your favorite chair was a new and unprecedented phenomenon back then. Cable TV wasn't anything like it is now.

Today, watching movies at home is a right we've enjoyed for nearly three decades now, and it gets cheaper all the time for hardware and software. The downside of selling progressive scan DVD players for $30-$40 and DVDs at $15 or less by the truckload is that when it comes time for the studios to launch a new format, it's a lot harder to convince people that it's worth more money than they're already paying just to get the same movie on a better 5" silver disc. And then there's the old conundrum of how to select launch titles- studios don't want to release their biggest hits on a format until there are enough players out there to do huge numbers. On the other hand, if studios don't offer exciting titles on the new formats, people aren't going to want to run right out and buy the new players no matter what the price. You'd think Blu-ray would have a big advantage here given its broader studio support, but the titles announced so far aren't exactly scintillating.

UAV Editor Tom Norton reported on Sony/MGM's announced Blu-ray titles in his Blog this week. To recap, the two most recent titles in the first batch of Sony/MGM titles, Hitch and 50 First Dates, were new releases on DVD in the summer of 2005. The catalog titles include such golden moldies as Fifth Element, which was released on DVD no fewer than three times, including a two-disc “Ultimate Edition” just last year. Kung Fu Hustle was a wild, funny and brave parody, and House of Flying Daggers is a film that will enthrall anyone who loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but these are hardly the kind of titles that will by themselves launch a format. And as far as first catalog titles go, Robocop and Species would have been a little off the wall had they been included in DVD's first wave of titles back in 1997. Sony's only committed day and date with DVD title, this summer's Underworld: Evolution, is underwhelming as well.

Lion's Gate stepped up and announced that their first titles will include Crash and the more recent Lord of War, which will carry premium $39.99 suggested retail prices, and The Punisher, Saw, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day at $29.99 SRP. Official suggested retail pricing for the Sony titles hasn't been announced yet.

These prices will elicit gasps from some, and have been bandied about many news outlets in reports designed to impress upon people how much more expensive the next-gen discs are going to be compared to current DVD. While next-gen discs will almost certainly be more expensive than current DVD initially, the premium might not be as high as you think. It's not like anyone actually pays full retail anyway, and I think you'll be surprised to know how high the suggested retail prices of current DVDs actually are.

Looking at several new releases at DVDPlanet.com, I found that the two-disc special editions of Walk the Line and Jarhead that will hit stores this Tuesday are actually $39.95 each before sale pricing kicks in. The stripped down single-disc editions of these that will sell at $20 and under at Best Buy carry a retail price of $29.95 each.

HD DVD titles are already up for pre-order on Walmart.com for $25.48, and the ads cite full-boat retail as being $29.98. How soon we will see the kind of deep discount pricing we've come to expect with DVDs, no one yet knows. While HD DVD is hampered by only having three studios supporting the format, the price of Toshiba's entry level HD-A1 player is friendlier at $500. And while HD DVD also has its share of tired catalog titles that were used to launch the original DVD format, recent blockbusters and critically acclaimed films such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Batman Begins, Million Dollar Baby, Jarhead, Serenity, The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, and even The Matrix are scheduled to be among the first wave of titles released between March and early June.

Both of these formats have an uphill battle with average consumers to begin with. With a $300-$400 PS3 out of the mix, Blu-ray's apparent strategy of selling a more advanced product to early adopters at a premium price is eerily similar to the way SACD was launched, and that was a complete failure in the marketplace. If PlayStation3 is really going to be late, a price competitive standalone Blu-ray player is imperative. And one can only hope that Warner and some of the other Blu-ray studios come to the rescue by launch date with more compelling software titles. Better specs are fine, but consumers watch movies not spec sheets. Let's not forget that Betamax was technically superior to VHS.