Blu-ray discs to be 50 percent more expensive

Sony says new releases on the Blu-ray format will cost $23.45 in wholesale, or more than 50 percent higher than the current DVD discs.

Sony Pictures is the first Hollywood studio to release pricing on its high-definition DVDs expected to be introduced early this summer. The discs will be issued in Sony’s Blu-ray format, which is competing with the HD-DVD format for control of the next-generation DVD market (see HD-DVD vs Blu-ray War Still On). HD-DVD is backed by Toshiba.

Some of the movies to be released in the first batch by Sony are The Fifth Element, Desperado, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Legends of the Fall, and Terminator. Sony’s wholesale price of $23.45 for Blu-ray discs is 56 percent more than the $14.99 it costs to buy a new DVD of Hitch from BestBuy.com. A Terminator DVD is available for $9.99.

Older titles will be cheaper than new ones, Sony says the catalog titles will have a wholesale price of $17.95.

Blu-ray players will also be expensive at first. Samsung plans to debut one in Spring for $1,000 and Pioneer's first Blu-ray player will sell for $1,800 in June. More details over at Red Herring.