Blu-ray On Ebay, and Other Ruminations

A Gizmodo post from earlier today reminded me to tell you that I was up on Ebay last night. I was curious to see how prices for PlayStation 3's are trending, and I noticed something interesting. PS3's are only selling for ~$100 above their (sales tax not included) original retail prices now (although admittedly some folks are tacking on ridiculous shipping charges), versus the 2x multipliers I heard about in the first few days of the console's life….in spite of titillating sales tactics (and their amusing spoofs).

If you go into completed auctions you can scroll back and see how the prices have declined over time. The other notable thing that struck me from last night's Ebay voyeuring is the incredible volume of PS3s for sale; clearly a whole lot of folks stood in line with no intention of keeping the systems they succeeded in snagging.

I wonder what increased supply, if indeed Sony's recent statements are true, will do…might it actually raise resale prices, at least in the near term, as folks who previously found it easy to ignore their desire for a PS3 get their appetites whetted? And I wonder what percentage, if any, of the increased supply will hit far enough ahead of Christmas to influence potential purchasers' plans?

Another observation; the HD DVD folks seem to have no problem getting blue laser diodes, which is what Sony keeps blaming for its shipment shortfalls. My take is that Blu-ray's problem is not with the diode, it's with the focus lens, which must be much more precise for Blu-ray as compared to HD DVD. What's your theory?

Which reminds me to remind you that we're a long way from the Universal Player that so-called pundits are claiming will solve this format war, as they bridged past format battles like DVD-Audio vs SACD and DVD '+" vs '-'. Remember, folks, this time around things are much more complicated. HD DVD and Blu-ray are completely different physical formats. I too have seen the recent do-it-all processor announcements from companies like Broadcom, LSI Logic and NEC. But don't forget about the optics.

Final thought (or maybe not); if you're curious to see how the Blu-ray vs HD DVD war is trending at this (or any) moment, check out the aptly-named The DVD Wars site (thanks again to Gizmodo for the reminder), which pulls its data from Amazon.com. Right now the only category where Blu-ray's number is higher is on sales price….which isn't a good thing, by the way. However, kudos go out to the Blu-ray gang for unveiling yet another PC with format support. Blu-ray's in the lead when it comes to computers at the moment; systems are available from Acer, Dell, Panasonic and Sony, notably with writeable drives, and standalone writeable drives are shipping from Pioneer, Plextor, Sony and others.

Meanwhile, HP's the only company shipping systems with HD DVD support right now (that is, unless you count the Xbox 360 peripheral hack), and that in a read-only configuration. HD DVD seems near-term to have prioritized consumer electronics market penetration over PC presence. With that said, I don't think that writeable blue laser drives are going to take off big-time until high def camcorders become pervasive, anyway. Who's got the right strategy, Blu-ray or HD DVD? Who knows?

Thus concludes today's optical disc pontifications….

Followup: Here's another cut at the Blu-ray vs HD DVD retail data….warning, it's from a Microsoft guy, so consider the source when you peruse it.