Just curious what your thoughts are on how long it will be before these burners are within the 150 dollar range. Also the media is still pretty expensive isn't it? 20 bucks a disc or so?
2-3 years from now. I remember DVD burners that would burn at 4x were around 240 bucks. now you can get some good ones for 60 bucks.
I would expect that this will depend a great deal on how well the PS3 does, and then the subsequent sales of films and games on BR-DVD. If it helps to make BR the media of choice over HD-DVD then that will bring the price down quite significantly. As a combined games console and player the PS3 is still cheaper than any stand alone player, so if BR is the media of choice, and standalone players will have to drop prices to make them a serious choice. Obviously a fact that also plays into it, is the volume of sales, the higher the volume and demand then the cheaper the cost per unit is, as the high costs of development and manufacturing setup can be returned over a higher number of units. If however the HD-DVD becomes the media of choice or there is no clear font runner, then the BR burners will always be a niche market and so the prices will remain over inflated. Another factor in the media prices is always going to be the cost of making the media. Double layer DVD's are far more expensive than single layer disks to produce, and BR disks are more expensive still. BR burners are now available for £430 in the UK, that’s already a drop over first adopter prices of about £600, so if the trend carries on, then I would expect a £200 burner be on the market with 18 months, possibly quicker if the media starts to win the battle of the big 2.
Man I was hoping for a big price drop in a year or so. Probably won't happen that soon. Do you think that if a strong competition between HD-DVD and BR exists for a year or two, that the competition will help drive prices down? Is that possible?
