Blu-ray Discs Go On Sale In China
Posted by Mehar Gill on August 12, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD, Retailers
Blu-ray discs have officially gone on sale in China via Amazon China this week in limited quantities, for 175 Yuan which is about $25.53USD according to 022 Net. We thought this would be a good time to compare the cost of Blu-ray and CBHD to see how the “performance to price ratio” stacks up.
Blu-ray
Production Facility: $3,000,000 USD
Average Cost of Movie: $25-32 USD
Average Cost of Player: $729.54 USD
CBHD (Formerly known has CH DVD)
Production Facility: 800K USD
Average Cost of Movie: $8 USD
Average Cost of Player: $437.72 USD
The numbers above are courtesy of Z-Park (Who’s site was down so I had to use a cached page, a .gov.cn site down, never!). Another interesting fact is that according to the Z-Park article 400-500 CBHD movies are expected to be available.
I assume the BDP-LX-70 is the Rolls Royce of Blu-ray players since it will sell for $2,039.82USD (13980 Yuan) while the Sony BDP-S300 will retail for about $720.00USD (4890 Yuan).
A Sony rep then goes on to say that they will use this as a test for a undetermined amount of time to see what Blu-ray’s future in China will be.
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$700 for an S300?
Is there some kind of Blu-ray tax that doubles the price of things?
Though $400 for a CBHD player doesn’t bode well for that format either… when people here with much greater incomes than the Chinese think $300 is too much for BD players…
@Dave Cowl – Theirs a possibility it could be a mistake, then again electronics usually do cost more internationally depending on the market.
I doubt BD will sell in china, at least the nonpirated form of Blu Ray.
@Ryan –
Thats true, if any one of these formats do succed then as a High Def Forum member said:
“The pirated discs won’t be HD, instead they’d be 30-40 SD movies on a single disk” or something like that.
“While many hope and pray that the DVD system will be an unqualified success, others see DVD as being a colossal failure and a system that will wreck companies and the consumer video market and take its place in history as the biggest failure of a product in the history of consumer electronics. It may even take several electronic companies down with it.”
“This will result in even a bigger cost for companies because the less they sell, the more each feature costs to implement on each title.”
“DVD is just a bad idea. It is being forced upon a uncaring and unwanted public and is an inferior product that simply isn’t needed or desired.”
http://www.robertsdvd.com/failure.html
every format at it’s beginning has people that will speak out against the new format, TBH I don’t really think China will be that much different than the rest of the world when it comes to Blu-ray… perhaps CBHD wins in China will that become a validation for supporting HD DVD, or is it just more arguments on internet than needed?
Need I point out that “There are some similarities between CBHD and Toshiba’s HD DVD format, however the video compression and copy protection will be different.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBHD
This means that CBHD will not be compatible with HD DVD players so I fail to understand the eagerness to bring up the old HD DVD arguments in favor of CBHD.
I’m glad Blu-ray is now being sold in China, the market for HD movies will grow, and ultimately that what we are all in this for out interest in movies being shown the best way possible.