If you’ve been saving your pennies for the latest and greatest Pioneer home entertainment products, including their awesome Kuro plasmas, you’ll probably need to save a bit longer. The company has just announced via press release that the weak Australian dollar has forced them to increase the RRP on their home entertainment range, effective immediately.This of course follows on from Panasonic’s announcement a couple of days ago, and NEC deciding to pull out of Australia all together. And considering that the Pioneer products (well, their TVs, anyway) had a pretty premium price tag attached already, any price increase is going to push them even further out of reach of most consumers.
The price increases will be about 10% for plasmas, 10% for Blu-ray products, 4% for DVD players, 10% for DVD recorders, 15% for home theatre and 11% for Pro DJ. Not all products will be effected however, with Pioneer stating that their entry level Blu-ray player (the BDP51FD) and some of their entry-level home theatre systems will remain at the same price.
The real question here is whether all these companies will lower their pricing again once the Aussie dollar eventually bounces back. Fingers are crossed.