After Blu-ray won the format war some thought it was the beginning of a better age. Now that we are a few months further we see that the high-def format is getting more competition than estimated before. To ensure consumer adoption wholesalers and retailers want a stable and good price for Blu-ray movies, but the same parties don't want these prices to get into somekind of "free-fall", says Video Business.
Don Rood, director at wholesaler VPD, said he thinks the studios didn't find the right price yet. He believes this won't happen until there is a solid demand from the customer, but these are not running to the shops yet. "I don't think they will until the demand is there for the format. More consumers will need to adopt before studios can see what really is working. We just don't want to see a race to the bottom," Rood said to Video Business.
Sometimes a new Blu-ray release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment costs $14 more than its standard-def brother. In other cases we saw high-def movies from Sony that only costed five dollars more, which shows that studios aren't pricing format-wise, but movie-wise. Currently we see that standard-DVDs generally cost the same per release and this is exactly what should happen to the Blu-ray market.
Until the consumer can't make a calculation and answer to itself how much it would cost to build a new movie collection, we shouldn't expect major consumer adoption.
