Re: [OT] To****ba climbs on 'HD DVD exit'

In article <o8adnX-gJM1WHFnanZ2dnUVZ_ryqnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Ned Ludd
<andy.block@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Gnomus wrote:
> > In article <7dqdnU3KAJ3G1l7anZ2dnUVZ_oaonZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Ned Ludd
> > <andy.block@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
> > HD-DVD is a new product, which should also be reflected in the retail
> > price of the machines.  And yet, somehow, To****ba was selling them at
> > greatly reduced prices.  So do Blu-Ray discs have to be more
expensive? 
> > I don't know.
> 
> HD DVD (officially, no dash) is (or was, since it's now dead) an 
> evolutionary product -- it leveraged against what was already known 
> about DVD, and it used as much as possible from the DVD specification.
> 
> That means lower manufacturing costs both in the player, and producing 
> disks.

And then they went with the blue laser...

> 
> But a big part of pricing is trying to figure out what the consumer is 
> willing to pay, and a big part of marketing is trying to make the 
> consumer think that what you have is going to change their life.  It's 
> the "technological cocaine" that they've been missing.

Which is more difficult when you're also positioning your product as
another version of DVD...

> 
> That it's somehow worth more.
> 
> For HiDef media, one way is to simply make sure that there are more 
> movies on your format than the other one -- even if it doesn't cost that

> much for the studio to go format-neutral.

That might be where the HD-DVD people went wrong.  They discounted the
players, while the Blu-Ray people were discounting the discs with
buy-one-get-one-free promotions, and buy a player and get five free
discs, etc.  When you get right down to it, most cinephiles have a lot
more money tied up in the media than the player.