Electronics Makers Find DVD Success Bittersweet
from the high-volume,-low-margins dept
For all the articles about how rapidly DVDs have been adopted and how much money its made Hollywood, there's another side that's been left out. As happy as consumer electronics makers are that DVD players are being bought at record paces, it also means that margins have been squeezed and there's very little profit to be had in selling DVD players. Some companies are trying to sell "premium" DVD players, but consumers have figured out that a DVD player is a DVD player and aren't willing to spend too much more on extras. Of course, this is just basic economics at work. Competition drives down the price to a point where margins are minimal.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
You get what you pay for
The replacement worked but it would routinely lock up for no apparent reason when loading a DVD and would have to be unplugged and plugged back in.
I finally got frustrated enough I went out and bought a 'brand name' Magnavox DVD player for about 1/2 of what I paid for the Apex and it works perfectly.
Apex DVD players originally sold really well as they were the first with a widely disclosed hidden menu that enabled you to disable region encoding, CSS encryption, Macrovision, etc. Even though Apex removed that menu from the player, plenty of hacked BIOS's are available for download to restore the hidden menu. That coupled with their low price is the primary reason for the success of the Apex players. Imagine that - give people what they want (all the quality of DVD without the 'mandatory' restrictions other brands include) at a dirt cheap price, and they sell more than any other brand.
If they could work on increasing their quality a small amount they could easily take over the market, but as long as they continue to make them as cheaply/poorly as they do, I won't buy another Apex.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why such a fast drop compared to VCRs
[ link to this | view in chronology ]