Broken Hive Mind

So I’ve had a PS3 for a couple of years now and have been very happy with it not just as a game system but as a media server, up-scaling DVD player, and Blue-Ray player as well. I paid $500 for my PS3. Now the new PS3′s are only $300 and they can stream Netflix content as well, which is pretty awesome. So since my old, trusty, Toshiba DVD player is starting to show signs of wear, aka going back to the main menu unexpectedly during playback, I thought to myself, well maybe when it goes I’ll just upgrade, sure I could just use the PS3, but that’s a lot of wear on the drive just to watch movies. I found that up-scaling DVD players were very reasonably priced around $80 for a decent one. So I said to myself, well maybe you should spend a bit more and just get a blue-ray player already, but then I found out that the players started on average at $220 and went up for decent ones. Most of the nice blue-ray players are around $300. So I said to myself, why would anyone get a blue-ray player at $300 when for $320 (a slim designed PS3 and a Sony PS3 blue ray remote) when they could just get a PS3 which does so much more? I still can’t figure this one out. It’s always annoying when companies hold up the advancement of new technology because they want to charge a ton for a player. Sure this is a complex problem because the manufacturers of the players make money on the hardware directly, but not on every movie sold unless they’re say Sony and have a movie studio, etc. Still these players have been around for a couple of years now, meaning that the initial window when you can charge high prices is over, and it should have become the default replacement for DVD players now.  Considering that DVDs are good, cheap, and up-scaling players are also cheap Blue-Ray can miss it’s mark and become another Beta or Mini-Disc if it’s not careful. I mean the movies are like $30 and up as well. I think that the whole “quick nickle is better than a slow dime” philosophy would work out better here for manufacturers than this high priced scheme. Blue-Ray is doing ok as a format, but what would really give it dominance is for it to be an affordable replacement for those of us, like me, who are looking to replace worn out equipment. Anyway, that’s my 2 cents on that.