HD-DVD and the Early Adopter Premium 230
Hodejo1 writes "The early adopter premium is the difference between the cost of buying the latest greatest techno-toy today and the cost of buying an equal or better unit a couple of years later for much less. That Blu-ray unit you buy today for $300 will cost $80 two years from now. The premium is the $220 you pay to get the starter Blu-ray unit now as opposed to waiting. The same applied for HD-DVD until the axe finally fell and this is where it gets interesting. MP3 Newswire has been tracking post-mortem HD-DVD sales on eBay and surprisingly found that there are many takers. And why are people flocking to buy this decade's Betamax? Simple, they did the math. The demise of HD-DVD format creates "an option where the consumer can get his high-def player NOW without paying the $220 early adopter premium. That savings pays for the player and more. New sealed boxes of the Toshiba HD-A3, which shipped last fall for $300, are now drawing on average about $75 on eBay, where plummeting HD-DVD movie prices are averaging between $6 and $10. "Take a consumer with a 42" plasma set who needs to replace a broken standard definition DVD player. He can a) replace it with another standard definition DVD for about $60. b) He can buy a Blu-Ray player for between $300-$1000. c) He can buy an HD-DVD unit for under $80 and then buy ten $10 or sixteen $6 HD-DVD videos for a total of $180". What really drives this is Blu-ray's skimpy catalog, which will take a couple of years to pump up. Rather than blow the $220 on the early adopter premium just to have access to a limited number of movies the post mortem HD-DVD buyers can enjoy cheap Hi-Def players, cheap Hi-Def videos, and pay less. These users can shift to Blu-ray when players are less expensive and the catalog is robust. Actually, the early adopter premium is more like $320. With the win, Blu-ray manufacturers have raised prices."
The did the math? (Score:5, Funny)
What? The summary does a good job of describing why HD-DVD is a good buy, although they have to make up facts to do it, such as pricing a DVD player at $60. However, I think it is more likely that most of the people buying HD-DVD players don't know that it is dead. Never attribute to average people doing math that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
John Titor is on his way ... (Score:0, Funny)
Re:you missed the most important factor. (Score:3, Funny)
That only interests a small segment of the audiophile population, which is itself a small segment of the consumer population in general. If that truly was a major deciding factor in the purchase, then the MPAA's piracy numbers are accurate. You can't have it both ways.
Of course, I'd wager you also foresaw the failure of Apple's iTunes because of its DRM format and still wonder how the Virtual Console can possibly make money with ZSNES available for free.
Re:boy is this getting old... (Score:3, Funny)
> It does not make sense to buy an HD-DVD player at any price.
You're assuming that many people buying HD-DVD players TODAY are primarily motivated by desire to watch NEW movies in HD, as opposed to picking up a cool new disposable toy because it was cheap enough to say 'Fuck it' and buy just to enjoy the novelty of, and have a future player for HD camcorder videos burned to DVD+R media.
The fact that Blockbuster still has HD-DVDs available to rent helps. As long as they don't try to pull a Netflix and pre-emptively convert my queue to regular DVD on the perverse assumption that I care more about the movie itself than the fact that it's HD, I'll remain a Blockbuster subscriber. The moment I find a non-HD DVD from Blockbuster in the mailbox, and no option for my queue that says, "Delete queued movies no longer available on HD-DVD (or at least move them to the very end, and don't even THINK about sending one unless there's absolutely nothing else in my queue that's available on HD-DVD)", I'll do what I did before -- set the HD-DVR to record anything that looks interesting on a HD premium movie channel, and keep it around until I feel like watching it.
Furthermore, it'll be a cold, snowy July day in downtown Miami before I voluntarily spend more than a pittance on anything touched by the tentacles of Sony -- a company so thoroughly evil, they make the DVD Forum look saintly and benevolent by comparison.
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"One down, Blu to go..."
Re:Don't forget about D-VHS!!! (Score:3, Funny)