Only possible in today’s crazy world: Chinese OEMs who planned to steal Blu-ray marketshare with sub-$US200 players are being bloodied by name brands like Sony and Samsung selling their players at that price.
Despite Sony’s Stan Glasgow stating their firm intention not to dip below a $US299 MSRP on their Blu-ray players, you can easily find their BDP-S350 for $US250, or even less. And there were loads of $US200ish deals on name-brand players around and after Black Friday—if they weren’t literally giving them away.
And $US199 is exactly the pricepoint that the Chinese OEMs—i.e., Walmart Blu-ray players—wanted to waltz in at, given the tough talk from Sony and others about sticking to $US300, $US250 at the worst. Instead, Walmart—and every other retailer—is smartly playing up these super-cheap players from brands you’ve actually heard of before. So, the Chinese OEMs, those classy undercutters and free-market propellants, are on the receiving end of the pain they usually dish out, assaulted by the very people they usually assault.
Here’s the question: Is it because Blu-ray is failing? Or just another anomaly only possible today’s world? [Digitimes]
maltwhiskman
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 at 8:46 PMAnything that beats and bloodies Chinamen about the head is a good thing in my book.
Duke
Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 5:09 PMI purchased a Samsung BD-P1600 here in Australia from JB Hi FI [West Aust] for circa $US280 [below RRP].
It is a very basic unit and very under appointed feature-wise and very slow and sluggish with IR-R commands. Doesn’t even have functions like zoom. At least the recent firmware upgrade can access You Tube. However in Australia still advertise the ‘Netflix Streaming’ able feature even tho [1] Netflix is not available form Australia and [2] Netflix isn’t even on the system menu. And they trick the buyer with thinking that any old USB wifi doingle will work [must use Samsung]. Samsung customer service is incredibly pathetic here in Australia too. Very poor. Customer dis-service.
Summary:
i] You need to be spending upward from $US300 MIN for a decent BD player with fruit.
ii] BD Live, Netflix, YouTube, WiFi should be a minimum spec.
iii] Who cares if Cheaper foreign units flood teh market? As long as they are legal, they support the warranty, and have some form of customer service.
It won’t be any different to some of the cheap rubbish that the so-called big brands are peddling these days and at least the Chinese will be able to load up features and access etc to their versions so the consumer wins out.
Big Brands need to clean their act up and this is a great wake up call! Start by sacking the
product managers.