Panasonic blu-ray internal writer priced

Graham

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Just spotted this on engadget. Hope I'm not too late

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/21/panasonic-lf-mb121jd-blu-ray-pc-drive-shipping-10-june-for-850/

It's a panasonic 2x blu-ray drive. I had to look twice at the price.. $850 us.
To make matters worse, it would seem they are being sold at a considerable mark-up too, $1100+.
I initally thought it must have been a mistake, however, there is also a samsung (single speed?) drive comming out for 'only' $500 us.

I realise new technology always comes at a premium, but approximatly 10x the price of a current dvd-writer? count me out.

I would wonder what price a blu-ray internal drive would be (non-writing).
Also, does anyone know prices for hd-dvd writers?

With writable media costing upto $100 per disk (although for the much larger sizes), I really can't see anyone but those with more money than sense purchasing these drives.
 
Currently the only available HD-DVD drives are the Toshiba stand-alone movie players which have MSRPs of $500 and $800. The $850 price tag for a DL BD burner seems like a bargain to me in comparison (and to many others as well considering the demand driven mark-up you cite).
 
Tars Tarkus said:
Currently the only available HD-DVD drives are the Toshiba stand-alone movie players which have MSRPs of $500 and $800. The $850 price tag for a DL BD burner seems like a bargain to me in comparison (and to many others as well considering the demand driven mark-up you cite).

$850 for a bare drive is a bargain?
 
This is not a consumer product per se but an alternative to tape back-up in corporate IT enviroments. In that milieu it is definately a bargain.
 
Does nobody remember the prices of the first DVD burners?

They werent as cheap as the CD burners out then, that's for sure =p

What about the price of the first Dual layer DVD burners? Surely they weren't so cheap either (although those didn't come out until well into DVD's life, these burners are DL from the start, iirc).

Not sure why this is in any way surprising. $500+ for a first generation BD burner is actually not bad at all.
 
Well, they're clearly not yet for mass-market consumption, but the point is that this sort of cost with a new storage technology is to be expected.

I'd be willing to bet, though, that the first HD-DVD burners will be a bit cheaper (albeit with somewhat less storage space), if only because the technology is purported to be more similar to DVD. But I'm pretty sure they'll still be in roughly the same price bracket.
 
I remember seeing an ad for CD burners in 1995 I think, there was a 2x one for more than 15000 french francs and a 4x one for 22000 francs.. that's respectively about 2300 and 3350 euros. and not first gen.
the very first DVD burners were extremly expensive too. (and there was a BIG external SCSI one, not even the standard 5"1/4 kind)
 
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