Blu-ray and HD DVD will, without doubt, be an expensive venture to begin with and we have earlier pointed out that both movies and players will be almost ridiculously expensive. This will in turn mean that the DVD format will keep growing according to analysts at In-Stat. They expect the DVD market to expand until 2010 to 176.6 million sold units worldwide, from 140.8 million in 2005. The reason is simply the prices of the new technologies, due to the high manufacturing costs. According to In-Stat’s calculations solely the components in a Blu-ray or HD DVD player will cost over $400. The major portion of the costs will be reduced until 2010, but the license fees will still be there.
“It is generally believed that the HD DVD devices are less expensive to build than Blu-ray players, which seems to be correct, as the most affordable HD DVD announced so far is a $499 product from Toshiba, while the least expensive Blu-ray rival from Samsung costs $999. Nevertheless, as a result of cost-efficiency and availability, the market of DVD players and content will still have significant share.”
In other words, it looks like a rought start for the blue laser formats and things haven’t started all that well either, with constant delays and setbacks.
Source: X-Bit Labs
