Cheap Blu-Ray Alternative: Sony BDP-S300 (USD $599)
- Scribbled on February 27th, 2007 by Derrick Schommer
- Filed in Industry News, Sony PlayStation 3
Sony’s talking about a summer release for the next blue-ray stand-alone player model BDP-S300. The product is the same price as the high end PlayStation 3 (in the United States anyway) and will give you a BluRay experience without the gaming “getting in the way.”
Huh? How is that good? Well, the way we see it, why would you buy this BDP-S300 with half the features of a PS3 for the same price? You wouldn’t.
Perhaps Sony is using this new product as a strategy to boost PlayStation 3 sales. Showing customers the alternative to the PlayStation 3 in a bleak light. Same price, less features.
Seems to us the goal to selling a device that, in essence, competes against your own product would be to lower the cost or raise the cost to keep them out of the same market. Why put two products in the market when one is clearly lacking the features?
The only reason we can gather… the thing must be cheaper to build than the PS3. Perhaps, Sony just wants to make money on a BluRay product rather then bleed hundreds of dollars an hour.
(Thanks, 2old2play.com)
February 27th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Many of the same questions are being asked over on AVSforum. But it should be known that there are many unsophisticated buyers of new technology who don’t care about the fact that the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player. They hear the name “Playstation” and think video games. The fact that it can play Blu-Ray discs is no different than buying a microwave that also tells time.
I can guarantee you my parents would never choose the PS3 over a stand alone Blu-Ray player at an equal price. It’s not about features. It’s about perception.
This is also an important news item in the format war since the Blu-Ray association can now claim that the price difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is much smaller now (a factor that has no doubt been hurting Blu-Ray’s adoption). People may not spend $400-600 more on a Blu-Ray player, but may spend $100-200 more if they believe they are buying the eventual winner of the format war.
So now the pressure is on HD-DVD to introduce a new player or drop the price of an existing player to maintain the price gap. HD-DVD people have been claiming for a while that low cost Chinese HD-DVD players are coming soon. This is the time for them to show up if HD-DVD wants to avoid losing any more ground to Blu-Ray.