HD DVD Dies, Blu-ray Prices Rise
By Christopher Nickson
March 14, 2008
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 game in town – have risen between $20-50.
Information Week checked prices on comparison site Price Grabber 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 some of 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. The demise 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% of respondents said they’d buy a Blu-ray player if prices were lower.