View Full Version : Blu Ray Rom Drives - Why So Expensive?
Hi All
I've had an XBMC system for quite a while now and am moving a lot of my dvd movies over as H264 MKV files. All seems well and I love the convenience. Now I'd like to move to using it for HD files and use handbrake to make 720 / 1080 h264 encodes from Blu_ray (My own, purchased with real money, discs nothing dodgy) but the price of Blu Ray Rom drives seems rather high.
Why, when you can get something like the Foehn & Hirsch Blu-Ray Player for £58 is the cheapest Blu-Ray drive (ROM not writer - I have no need to write to discs as my originals are my backup) around £47
Am I missing something cheaper or is this just a deliberate pricing policy to put people off HTPC usage for movies and toward more "lockable" tabletop players?
Any ideas?
two reasons, economy of scale and supply and demand. simples
dco_chris
30-05-2010, 01:32
two reasons, economy of scale and supply and demand. simples
Chicken and egg scenario to an extent though, there isn't going to be any demand if the costs are unreasonably high for what is being offered. No one is ever going to bother with bluray as a movie format on computers if the drives on their own cost more than an entire stand alone player, therefore the demand will never rise. It's true that DVD was also initially in that position as well, but that was mainly due to the inclusion of decoder cards with early drives.
Also you would think that they would try to get the price of writers down in order to position bluray as a leading data storage medium. This isn't happening and as things stand it is in great danger of being completely ignored in the consumer space in favour of solid state storage devices. Unless things change regarding the price of drives and media in the near future, I wouldn't be surprised if DVD-R outlives BD-R.
Chicken and egg scenario to an extent though, there isn't going to be any demand if the costs are unreasonably high for what is being offered. No one is ever going to bother with bluray as a movie format on computers if the drives on their own cost more than an entire stand alone player, therefore the demand will never rise. It's true that DVD was also initially in that position as well, but that was mainly due to the inclusion of decoder cards with early drives.
Also you would think that they would try to get the price of writers down in order to position bluray as a leading data storage medium. This isn't happening and as things stand it is in great danger of being completely ignored in the consumer space in favour of solid state storage devices. Unless things change regarding the price of drives and media in the near future, I wouldn't be surprised if DVD-R outlives BD-R.
DVD drives got cheap when every computer came with a DVD drive. That's not happened yet.
problem with BD is that 'most' people would find a BD drive overkill for their storage needs and their computers wouldnt be up to playing back a BD movie. That's why they are not replacing DVD drives in computers.
don't expect the BD drives to mirror DVD drives, one was a product that solved a problem for the consumer, the other is for the PC savvy and business.
With CD/DVD it was all about the end product being used in playback devices but for BD it seems to be more about data storage and a HDD is a much more attractive proposition.
Bapapapa
30-05-2010, 12:35
£47 is expensive..?
splobber
30-05-2010, 12:46
£47 is expensive..?
Mad isn't it? It's nothing in the grand scale of things.
Back in the day I paid £250 for a SCSI Yamaha 4x cd writer to give a sense of scale.
£47 for a ROM drive, which isnt expensive however a BD RW is over £150, which is expensive
With CD/DVD it was all about the end product being used in playback devices but for BD it seems to be more about data storage and a HDD is a much more attractive proposition.
i agree, i'd rather use a 2TB hard drive than 40 50gig BD disks :shrug:
marc_angelus
30-05-2010, 13:59
the drives themselves aren't expensive (readers) but to actually play a blu ray on a pc is a fairly ominous prospect. You need software which costs around £100, a monitor that supports HDCP, a cpu or gpu that can handle rendering the movie, and an uber expensive sound card if you want to experience the full quality audio. I gave up on my HTPC and just bought a blu ray player because even after owning all that you're still relying on either PowerDVD or Arcsoft TMT actually working properly and neither do.
It will take software companies to start putting their games/applications on blu ray to cause them to become common parts of a build and i don't think that'll ever happen because everything on pc is installed to HDD, leaving no real reason to use large storage media.
Where it comes to writers, i have a theory that they keep the costs of drives and media up as high as they can for as long as they can to deter piracy. I remember when dual layer dvd-r's first came out and they cost about £8 each which made them uselesss to pirates.
the drives themselves aren't expensive (readers) but to actually play a blu ray on a pc is a fairly ominous prospect. You need software which costs around £100, a monitor that supports HDCP, a cpu or gpu that can handle rendering the movie, and an uber expensive sound card if you want to the full quality audio. I gave up on my HTPC and just bought a blu ray player because even after owning all that you're still relying on either PowerDVD or Arcsoft TMT actually working properly and neither do.
Yup thats my point more than the £47 itself, sorry it wasnt too clear re-reading my original post. Ah well upgrade city for me!
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