No doubt in a build up to a Christmas format war unlike any other we have ever seen, Sony have announced an ‘exclusive’ deal with Target and I quote …
Beginning this fall and continuing at least through the holiday season, Target will feature Sony® Blu-ray Disc® players as the exclusive product in the emerging category of high-definition home video systems, as well as an expanded assortment of Blu-ray Disc movies.
Sounds like a good win for Sony? Well you can still purchase a Toshiba HD DVD player at Target through their website and the exclusivity only applies to hi-def players in the retail stores, so presumably you can still get the latest movies on HD DVD in store. The main point from the announcement (full version) is that Sony Blu-ray players will be featured on aisle-end displays. Sony would have played a pretty penny for this but still a good move in the build up to the spending holiday season ahead.
So, to keep the military metaphors flowing, it’s more of an outflanking manoeuvre than a battle won.
If the coolness of ads were directly linked to sales of the product (and some people in marketing think it is) then Blu-ray would be wiping the floor with HD DVD after this Sony ad. With imagery of warriors, wolves and sports cars and with its blue laser effects no-one can help it but watch the ad the whole way through. I wasn’t too convinced by the falling sports cars myself, a metaphor of who knows what but I’m a sucker for piano background music and I was expecting to hear Amy Lee’s beautiful haunting vocals start up at any time.
However most consumers are not swayed by bright lights and smoke and are more concerned about the bottom line, so until Blu-ray players drop in price to match the equivalent HD-DVD players then expect more of these funky ads!
The guys at Sony unleashed a new range of Bravia HDTVs on Wednesday. The range starts with a 50 inch ‘baby’, the KDS-50A3000 and stretches up to a 70 inch ‘big boy’, the KDS-Z70XBR5. The cabinets on these suckers are at least 20% thinner than last year’s offering according to Sony’s press release.
“Going bigger is not a compromise with Sony SXRD micro-displays,” said Randy Waynick, senior vice president of Sony Electronics’ Home Products Division. “With slim cabinets, advanced features like high frame rate and full HD 1080p resolution, SXRD TVs give consumers who want big picture impact exactly what they have been looking for.”
All models include Sony’s Motionflow 120Hz high frame rate tech, boast 1920×1080 res, and using Sony’s Digital Reality Creation-Multifunction tech can upconvert ordinary TV signals into ‘near-HD’ quality. How much of a dent in your wallet will one of these babies cause, or should I say how big will your personal loan be?
The KDS-50A3000, KDS-55A3000 and KDS-60A3000 models debut in August for about $3,000, $3,300 and $3,500, respectively. The KDS-Z60XBR5 and KDS-Z70XBR5 ship this fall for about $5,000 and $6,000 respectively.
With September bringing the Rugby World Cup and the NFL to our screens looks like these suckers will arrive just in time for the dedicated sports fan!
Sony have slashed $100 off the price of their Blu-ray player the BDP-S300. This price cut makes the BDP-S300 cheaper than a PS3, which was the cheapest device to view Blu-ray movies on. It’s possible that Sony were losing too much money to customers purchasing PS3s just to watch movies as the PS3 was being sold at a loss. They will be hoping that those customers will now purchase the player rather than the game console.
However at $500 the player is still more expensive than an HD DVD equivalent. For instance the Toshiba HD-A2 is available at Amazon for a mere $250 although this offer runs out mid June. But even after the offer it’s list price should be $400.
So the BR vs HDDVD war is heating up with player manufacturers and movie studios divided. The loss-making PS3 was obviously a brave gamble by Sony and they are now trying to re-coup their losses, but it still looks as if HD DVD has a slight advantage.
According to InfoWorld, Ritek, a Taiwanese disc manufacturer has started production of Blu-ray re-writable discs (BD-RE) as well as HD DVD-RE discs. A small step for disc manufacturing may be, but an important one for the end user - you and me - this dual format production will eventually force down the price of these suckers.
At the moment you’re looking at around US$10 per disc, not a small amount to extract from anyone’s wallet and perhaps even harder to swallow when you’re told the production costs are only US$5. I’m obviously in the wrong business. However as other disc manufacturers start to produce both formats the US$10 price tag will fall.
How much can these suckers handle? Well, the BD-REs have a capacity of 25GB which equates to 3 hours of high-def TV, where as the HD DVD-REs hold 20GB.
As for recording devices, the Sony BWU100A is still an expensive addition to your PC at around the US$700 mark, but as with all tech gear this price will drop and one day the terms BD-RE and HD DVD-RE will be as common as DVD-RW.
Sony fans in Europe may want to find another way other than selling their aging PS2 systems if they need a little extra cash to buy a PlayStation 3 when it’s released on March 23rd. Sony recently made news when it was revealed that a chip responsible for PlayStation 2 compatibility has been removed from the European version of the PS3, in favor of a somewhat less-compatible software solution. Sony Corp noted that the change will make mass production of the console quicker and easier, cutting costs in the process.
It’s no secret that Sony has been losing money on every console they sell, all in the hopes of covering their losses and turning a profit off of add-ons, third-party licenses, etc. Anyone that ever purchased a dirt-cheap printer and then paid five times more than that just for the ink will know this tactic is nothing new. But with the amount lost on every PS3 sold (the words ‘hemorrhaging cash’ come to mind here,) it would be in Sony’s best interest to save any pennies they can on their current console war offering – A war where the chief competition costs half as much and has three times the interactivity.
Is this a subtle sign that the console giant may be losing a little faith in its masterpiece’s marketability? Or are choices like this just simple economics, a typical effort to streamline production, maybe learning from past mistakes made in the US and Japan at product launch, making sure there’s actual product on the shelves? That’s an unknown to me at this point, as well as if Sony plans the same schematic update in future US and Japan PS3s, but hey, that’s why the readers here get to reply, isn’t it? What’s your insight?
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