Optical Drive Cartel Accused of Keeping Prices High

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You have to admit that this article is kinda funny considering optical drives are one of the most inexpensive items you can buy for your PC.

EU antitrust regulators told 13 optical disk drive producers on Tuesday that they may have breached EU rules by rigging bids over a five-year period as part of a worldwide cartel that may lead to fines for the companies involved.
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I'm a bit torn on this.

1) The EU has proven that their socialist policies have bankrupted them, and so they are just trying to make ends meet by suing every foreign company that does business in Europe.

2) If they do have legitimate emails or other hard evidence of price fixing, this is unfortunately not something new and does need to be punished and in a way that exceeds revenues generated from the price-fixing. The US government is unfortunately owned by big business (that lobbies and contributes to campaigns to get the officials in place to begin with), and almost always looks the other way.

3) I wish instead that they'd go after big-oil price fixing, but I understand that with the current laws on day-traders that speculation can't really be addressed, nor the OPEC cartel that owns 80% of the world's oil reserves.
 
Oh noes I should feel bad about paying too much for an optical drive that I buy one of every four years. And every single time the price has been lower.

Around 1995: Pinnicale 2X SCSI external CDR ~$1200
Today: Samsung multi evrything DVDRW $13
 
EU economic strategy:

1: Sue as many companies as possible for money
2: ???
3: Profit
 
gunbust3r said:
Oh noes I should feel bad about paying too much for an optical drive that I buy one of every four years. And every single time the price has been lower.

Around 1995: Pinnicale 2X SCSI external CDR ~$1200
Today: Samsung multi evrything DVDRW $13
Click to expand...

EU: They've been colluding, it should be $12!!!! The consumer is being raped and murdered by these evil swine! They cannot live without their critical optical drive technology! Its a human right!
 
gunbust3r said:
Oh noes I should feel bad about paying too much for an optical drive that I buy one of every four years. And every single time the price has been lower.

Around 1995: Pinnicale 2X SCSI external CDR ~$1200
Today: Samsung multi evrything DVDRW $13
Click to expand...

Strange that you would compare a top of the line item from 1995 to a bottom of the barrel item from now. ;)

Still, prices have dropped significantly. Even a good Oppo Blu-ray player is $500.

More to the point, price fixing does need to be dealt with.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
More to the point, price fixing does need to be dealt with.
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Price fixing is price fixing. Though I doubt it pertains towards DVD drives. Most likely Blu-Ray is being price fixed. Blu-Ray was introduced in 2003-2004 to the consumer market and it's still fairly expensive to own a drive or the media for one. A burner averages $100 in cost, and the media for them is still outrageous. In this day in age you can't use BR disks as a viable method for backing up. You'd be better off buying a whole bunch of cheap usb memory sticks in place of a rewritable BR disk.

Blu-Ray came and has nearly left, but the prices of such devices and media are still too damn high.
 
Ashbringer said:
Blu-Ray came and has nearly left, but the prices of such devices and media are still too damn high.
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Agreed. It is kind of messed up with the price of a Blu-Ray reader is within $5-10 of a burner. They should be sub-$50 by now, yet they are still hovering around $75-100 for the most part. Not to mention the price of blank media.
 
Ashbringer said:
Blu-Ray came and has nearly left, but the prices of such devices and media are still too damn high.
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Meh, other than blu-ray rips, what else provides high quality in the video and audio space like a blu-ray does? I know many people are fine with compressed video and 2 channel audio, but not smart people like on these forums ;)
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Strange that you would compare a top of the line item from 1995 to a bottom of the barrel item from now. ;)

Still, prices have dropped significantly. Even a good Oppo Blu-ray player is $500.

More to the point, price fixing does need to be dealt with.
Click to expand...

What would be a TOTL internal drive? The Oppo isn't an internal drive.
 
people still use optical media? :p
but how much lower could it go really even a good blu-ray writer is only 100 bucks now
 
Ducman69 said:
1) The EU has proven that their socialist policies have bankrupted them, and so they are just trying to make ends meet by suing every foreign company that does business in Europe.

2) If they do have legitimate emails or other hard evidence of price fixing, this is unfortunately not something new and does need to be punished and in a way that exceeds revenues generated from the price-fixing. The US government is unfortunately owned by big business (that lobbies and contributes to campaigns to get the officials in place to begin with), and almost always looks the other way.
Click to expand...

1) because they only sue foreign companies in case of cartels, right ? They fined European companies a lot for cartels. Just because once in a while they fine a non-EU company as well doesn't make them bad. We are still talking about cartels, right ? You know, price fixing across all or major competitors.

2) in 99% of the cases they have superhard evidence, as it's usually one of the cartel members who comes out and names the rest of the cartel. The reason for this is that the one reporting the cartel will get no fines at all or at worst very small fines.
 
Elios said:
people still use optical media? :p
but how much lower could it go really even a good blu-ray writer is only 100 bucks now
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The issue (for me, anyway) is that cost-wise, Blu Ray is not really a viable backup solution (because, what else would you use it for? "Legit" movie copies? Lol...). For $100 I could buy a 2 TB HDD, whereas with Blu-Ray to get the same amount of storage I'd have to buy a $100 burner and roughly $40-50 worth of media (that's being pretty generous, too).

Hell, even dual-layer DVD-Rs are still almost $1 apiece, how many years later? It's fucked up.
 
Elios said:
people still use optical media? :p
but how much lower could it go really even a good blu-ray writer is only 100 bucks now
Click to expand...

Part of my most recent job title was live-recording audio archiving, and hell yes people still use optical media.
 
MavericK96 said:
Agreed. It is kind of messed up with the price of a Blu-Ray reader is within $5-10 of a burner. They should be sub-$50 by now, yet they are still hovering around $75-100 for the most part. Not to mention the price of blank media.
Click to expand...

The expensive part is the licensing.
 
These optical drives are in everything not just PCs. DVD players, CD players, just imagine everything you can put a CD in. If you can imagine the quantity, it is huge.
 
Ducman69 said:
3) I wish instead that they'd go after big-oil price fixing,
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you don't think that the people who have the most power in the EU council don't happen to be closely related in some indirect or direct way or another with making profits themselves, hmm?

/tinfoil hat off

:D
 
$9.50 for a Blu-ray player or $14 for a Blu-ray recorder are licencing costs to be exact.
 
MavericK96 said:
Agreed. It is kind of messed up with the price of a Blu-Ray reader is within $5-10 of a burner. They should be sub-$50 by now, yet they are still hovering around $75-100 for the most part. Not to mention the price of blank media.
Click to expand...

What's Blu-Ray?
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Meh, other than blu-ray rips, what else provides high quality in the video and audio space like a blu-ray does? I know many people are fine with compressed video and 2 channel audio, but not smart people like on these forums ;)
Click to expand...

Yes. Streamed "HD" media is hardly...HD...:D
 
Mr34727 said:
Exactly.

Either that, or it uses newer technology
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Eh. It uses a higher-frequency laser, and might have slightly tighter motor control for laser placement...that is mechanically all that separates a DVD burner from a Blu-Ray burner. The only real "new technology" is in the disc media itself.

Costs are still incredulously high due to licensing.

Every single format Sony patented and licensed died due to their licensing and proprietary crap...it is anything but surprising to see Blu-Ray going the way of MemoryStick and MiniDisc.
 
SkribbelKat said:
A zombie that hasn't figured out that it died during the war with HD-DVD. :p
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Calling it "dead" is premature in the USA so long as bandwidth rates for most of the USA continue to remain piss poor compared to other developed countries. I'm in my state capitol, and Time Warner only just this year finally got around to rolling out cable modem service faster than 7/1 DSL.
 
Monkey God said:
EU: They've been colluding, it should be $12!!!! The consumer is being raped and murdered by these evil swine! They cannot live without their critical optical drive technology! Its a human right!
Click to expand...

Pretty much. An optical drive is the least expensive part of most builds these days. Even the last Blu-Ray drive I bought wasn't all that expensive. $90 I think.
 
Dan_D said:
Pretty much. An optical drive is the least expensive part of most builds these days. Even the last Blu-Ray drive I bought wasn't all that expensive. $90 I think.
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Cartel is a cartel, even if they fix a $1 price. For example just last weekend, Hungarian government asked every shop to sell watermelons for fixed 99 HUF/kg price ($0.41/kg) instead of current market price of 69 HUF/kg ($0.28/kg) to support local watermelon producers; and many shops agreed to do so. If they don't back out immediately, they will be hit with a cartel fine, even when we talk about sub-1$ items.

The rules are very simple and if you are stupid to be part of cartel, you will have to pay the fine once discovered, even when you make a cartel for cheap optical drives.
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/overview/index_en.html

By the way, the cheapest DVD writers are ~18-20 euros in Europe.
 
Skripka said:
Calling it "dead" is premature in the USA so long as bandwidth rates for most of the USA continue to remain piss poor compared to other developed countries. I'm in my state capitol, and Time Warner only just this year finally got around to rolling out cable modem service faster than 7/1 DSL.
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Netflix and Hulu seem to apathetic to the fact that I dropped by line speed from 7 to 1.5 recently. I don't notice any sort of difference in performance, quality, or the amount of time required to build a buffer before playback starts. *shrug* At this point, I see no reason aside from bragging rights and justification to one's own mind that the home theater was worth the investment to care if about viewing video from an optical disc.
 
Stone Cold said:
Why does a blu-ray drive cost so much more than a DVD drive, if not for collusion?
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For the same reason a GTX 670 costs more than a GTX 640: it does more. I wouldn't say it costs that much more either. A Blu-Ray drive where I work can be had for $64.99 while a DVD drive is around $22.99. That is as small a price difference between the two as there ever has been.
 
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