Posted by Jeff Rife on 09/27/05 03:13

Jay G. (Jay@tmbg.rg) wrote in alt.video.dvd:
> >Remember that the $100 is *cost* to the manufacturer. The rule of thumb
> >is that the end-user price is around 3x the manufacturer cost.
>
> That seems like a lousy rule of thumb, especially for electronics.

It's actually quite accurate for parts going into a CE device.

> I know
> on the retail end that a fair number of electronics are sold at a much
> smaller profit margin, often only a few percent above cost.

Correct, but by the time the get it, the original parts cost is 2x to 3x
inflated already by the manufacturer's profit and any middleman profit
(like shippers).

> >Correct, so with $300 the end-user price for the *drive*, there just won't
> >be any players less than $500.
>
> Except for the PS3.

There is no way to know if the PS3 will play BluRay movies without some
additional hardware. It might just have the drive so that game makers
can put HD content (or lots of SD content) into the games. Additional
hardware to play back BluRay would be an additional reason that Sony would
be willing to eat the cost of the drive at first sale. Sony wants to
sell $500+ standalone BluRay players, too, so I suspect that they will
pull a stunt like this. Otherwise, everybody would just buy a PS3 (and
no games, which is where Sony makes their money) instead of any other
BluRay player.

> >With that cost, the need for a new display,
> >and the lack of titles (even if they manage to release 1000 titles in
> >the first year, that's nothing compared to DVD),
>
> Nothing compared to what DVD has now, or when it was first released?

Now, which is what counts, because unless you have an HD display, the
new format won't be any better than DVD. This is exactly unlike DVD, where
even on relatively crappy displays it was far better than VHS.

> People always seem to forget that DVD has DRM too.

No, it doesn't. Every player can decode the encryption with no check of
whether it is allowed to or not. Likewise, there is no way to make a
"pay for play" model for DVD. So, although DVD has copy-protection, it
doesn't have DRM any more than a Macrovision encoded VHS tape has DRM.

--
Jeff Rife |
| http://www.nabs.net/Cartoons/TiVoAndBeer.gif

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