I agree. I would actually go one step further to say that all HD DVD's should actually contain the DVD as well. That way there would be no problems with dual disc technology, customers would be happy, and they would be out about $0.35 each package (heck, they could put it in the price and nobody would know). I for one would like this especially for the kids discs, I'd give them the DVD and keep the HD DVD in the basement theater, out of their reach.
Pat
From a consumer point of view- sure... but why would a company do that when they can get people to pay one price for one product and a totally different price for virtually the same product (going on the hypothetical that 99.9% of people cannot tell the difference between HD and SD dvds). In this case you could get a consumer to pay two different prices so they can have 2 copies of the same movie- one for the kids and one for the basement theater. Makes perfect sense from the perspective of the studio.
In fact, it makes even more sense if you think that you can get a consumer to buy an SD disc now and then get the same customer to buy the HD version of the movie later when they finally get their HDDVD player. If you subscribe to that theory (which is how I think Sony is operating) then offering combo discs makes no sense because you'll end up cannibalizing away potential revenue.
In economics there's a concept called price discrimination which states that only in a monopoly/oligopoly situation can you sell the same good for different prices to different customers. Absent the monopoly/oligopoly you have to let the market dictate prices or else consumers will arbitrage away your advantage. While I wouldn't say that this situation perfectly fits- think about it what is the studio doing: It's able to sell a product (a movie), that is virtually identical (see my above caveat), to different consumers who hold a different value of the worth of the movie (HD adopters are willing to pay more), at two different prices, and the incremental cost difference to them (if you discount R&D/new investment) is virtually zero! I admit this is a bit of a stretch, but this is also the way that companies think.
My biggest problem with the whole BD/HD debate is that most audiophile consumers believe that toshiba/sony/studios should be acting in the best interest of the customers. I think that's a load of BS- toshiba/sony/studios will act in the best interests of themselves, and they will only end up acting in the best interest of the customers when their interests converge. CDs are a great example- when did CD prices start to fall? Not when Napster was giving away music for free, but when iTunes and other music services built up huge catalogs and started to threaten the existence of CDs. Finally now I can get a new release on a CD for $9.99 instead of paying the ridiculous $16-20 I used to pay for years. Prices weren't dropped because consumers demanded it, they were dropped because of new competition.
Why did Toshiba really drop the prices on the A2? You could make the argument that they wanted to penetrate the market with lots of players and "win the war"- but that's more of a consumer viewpoint. Toshiba knew that they were coming out with new technology that would make the A2 virtually obsolete. Not only would they have trouble selling the rest of the A2 inventory, but they'd have more trouble selling new products at higher prices with such a large supply of cheaper products on the market. So quite ingeniously they drop the price on the A2 for a couple of days, sell out of inventory, generate a huge buzz, then pull whatever leftover stock exists and offer up new products (and I would say that the A2 & A3 are similar enough to each other) at a higher price. Sony did the exact same thing a few months ago with the PS3.
Consumers see these actions as corporate dumbf*ckery© (Rock & Roll, your $.15 is in the mail for usage of the term
), but as long as the company makes money the board and the stockholders could care less what consumers think.
