Tech Shout!

The Blu-ray disc titles were assigned their prices by Sony Pictures on Wednesday. The titles which will available by late 2006 will be marketed by packing in different formats together.

For instance, Sony plans to bundle DVD-UMD combo packs of the same movie together starting in the end of March, priced at $28.95 USD. The cost would be over 40 percent less than buying the discs separately, and the studio plans to do the same for Blu-ray discs.

But, there is yet not much clarity whether the bundling would come in the form of the same disc or in a physical sense with the combo packs.

As for Blu-ray disc pricing, Sony said older titles would sell wholesale for $17.95 USD, while new release titles would sell for $23.45 USD. Since the company believes in a free market, the studio has decided to not offer a suggested retail price, saying retailers could choose their own price structure

The prices are not far off from the prices of DVDs when they first were released in 1997; however the new release titles are at a 15 to 20 percent premium to what was charged for new-release DVDs.