Blu-ray Update

[Jason Lowe]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

i hear ya Heath, but its a really hard thing to accept that one company "influenced" prices of DVD-r media... I just dont believe it, and from what ive seen and from what ive been exposed to within the market itself, is not purely factual.
Maybe they sent a request or made a comment about prices... ... but one company cannot influence a global media which has been dominated by windows users. Then u also have the fact that this media is manufactured by literally thousands of different prodcution companies... i really dont see how they contact each and every manufacturer asking to drop prices simply so Appla could sell more DVD authoring tools..
This is the impression im gettin from this anyway.. either way, its not important to what were discussing.. ... coz the fact remains, i realy do fail to see apple influencing anything Sony does with regard to pricing..

I think you missed the "2001" portion of this line of thought. In early 2001, Apple released DVD Studio Pro and the first computer with a modern DVD burner, using Pioneers then-new DVD-R drives. Prior to this, DVD burners were incredibly expensive units that were strictly for professional use. What little software there was had many limitations and was not commercially viable. Apple also sold branded media, $50 for 5 discs, which was a breakthrough price. Blank DVD discs were hard to come by back then . There were not thousands of different production companies. Pioneer kick started affordable DVD recording, and Apple played a large part in getting it into the hands of users.

[Peter Jefferson]

i hear where ur coming from jason, but the thing is, is that if apple didnt do it, someone else would have, and most likely were already in the process of doing it...

Simply being the first to offer a solution doesnt necesarily make it a foundation for a beviour of trends within a market so big....considering how quiet apple have been from that time of launching these burners and i think at the time it was the G3?? (not sure.. maybe even the G2)
Through to the advent of the Ipod, apple were almost an afterthought in between those times apart from buying out Emagic and making a rackus in the music realm we didnt really hear al that much from them... and it was within these times where the market grew so big that DVD-5 pricing is now at under 50c a piece... i trully dont believe apple had anything to do with this considering most of this movement was driven by piracy and playstations.. and even if they did start the ball rolling by mass producing these discs, it was only a matter of time before others got in on the act, so to say that theyre "responsible" IMO is a little off the target and is putting tickets on a company which really wasnt responsible for these price drops..

If u really want to give someone kudos for the price drops, i would say it was the reverse engineers who developed the backup/multiregion chips for these gaming consoles. The asian market going nuts with them which in turn bought on demand for pirated software (as these chips could be used to run copied games) drove the market to where it is.. at the same time, the asian pirate market with movies was going ballistic, and that too bought on further market changes to media prices..
Im not saying that what theyre doing is a good thing hell no, but it did in fact create a demand for a product. Irrespective of how legitimate it is, this demand, as with any market, creates competition which in turn forces prices to drop. during most of this time, apple were nowhere to be seen... not in asia or australia anyway...

[Jason Lowe]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

i hear where ur coming from jason, but the thing is, is that if apple didnt do it, someone else would have, and most likely were already in the process of doing it...

Simply being the first to offer a solution doesnt necesarily make it a foundation for a beviour of trends within a market so big....considering how quiet apple have been from that time of launching these burners and i think at the time it was the G3?? (not sure.. maybe even the G2)
Through to the advent of the Ipod, apple were almost an afterthought in between those times apart from buying out Emagic and making a rackus in the music realm we didnt really hear al that much from them... and it was within these times where the market grew so big that DVD-5 pricing is now at under 50c a piece... i trully dont believe apple had anything to do with this considering most of this movement was driven by piracy and playstations.. and even if they did start the ball rolling by mass producing these discs, it was only a matter of time before others got in on the act, so to say that theyre "responsible" IMO is a little off the target and is putting tickets on a company which really wasnt responsible for these price drops..

If u really want to give someone kudos for the price drops, i would say it was the reverse engineers who developed the backup/multiregion chips for these gaming consoles. The asian market going nuts with them which in turn bought on demand for pirated software (as these chips could be used to run copied games) drove the market to where it is.. at the same time, the asian pirate market with movies was going ballistic, and that too bought on further market changes to media prices..
Im not saying that what theyre doing is a good thing hell no, but it did in fact create a demand for a product. Irrespective of how legitimate it is, this demand, as with any market, creates competition which in turn forces prices to drop. during most of this time, apple were nowhere to be seen... not in asia or australia anyway...

I see your point. You're probably right that the we can "thank" pirates for the truly dirt cheap media prices. It's disheartening how many people think of DVD recording only as a way to get free movies. If I wasn't self producing DVDS of my own content to sell, I'd probably go through less than a dozen a year.

[Peter Jefferson]

mate, youd be surprised how much piracy has done to the market.. there are people out ther ewith THOUSANDS of movies music and games and theyre trading them or seling them.. the market for blanks is absolutely HUGE.. its really quite scary
With apps like DVD Shrink and P2P its gotten nuts. Mp3 has also always been around but it was never what it is today. Thats one u can thank apple for though.. lol
Moving on at $22 a spindle of 50, the discs are less than 50c, then they bought out printable discs and that just drive it insane as peoples movie collections"looked" real enough for them (were talking consumer mentalities here.. )

From here sticking to the topic.. i trully think that when PS3 comes out, is when bluray will really hit it.. simply becuae of this automatic penetration of a market (gaming) which exceeds EVERY vehicular market on the planet. (i cant remember where i saw the figures, but they took all the profits from each manufacturer an compared them to car makers and gaming was almost triple that... )
Also with Sony (and microsoft) they make some heavy losses on the sale of these consoles, but make ALOT back on accessories, licensing and media sales. THis is where they make their money back.
Buy 5 games and the money they lost on the console is returned, on top of that the fact you have the machine in your home dictates that sales will continue so long as the unit remains in the home..
Hell, when Nintendo launched the SNES, Nintendo has made more money than toyota... the gaming industry is another factor which is always overlooked, but in essence, the gaming and PC industry will also be a direct influence as the need to archive in bulk will now be alot faster and more reliable than tape based systems. Hard drive systems are good, and i agree with Dan that fr now, its cheaper and faster to go with a HDD, but big corporations dont care about cost, they care about security and integrity and "idiot proof" work routines which anyone can manage without too much trouble.

For now until BD playback devices come to the fore, i see BD starting off as an archiving solution. Its already used for XDCam and its a great workflow. Noone can deny that the format has its merits and its uses but for the consumer, i still think its way off their mental capabilites considering we already have so many consumers confused about what HD is and what its capable of, its limiitations and its benefits.
Once the consumer is educated, thats when things will pick up.

[Heath McKnight]

The guy running the DVD Studio Pro project in 2000/2001 states on his site that Apple, who were the first to put DVD-r in their systems over five years ago, that the company was able to get prices down on the media from around $15 - $20 to $10 USD. (Of course, as of right now, when I need to pull up the link, his site is down. D'oh!)

When it's up, do a search at:

www.writersblocklive.com

heath