No ‘Premium’ Being Charged for Netflix Feature on LG Blu-ray Deck
LG expects to price its new BD300 Blu-ray player with Netflix streaming capability (CED Aug 1 p6) “somewhere under $500” when it ships next month in wide retail distribution, Vice President Allan Jason told a New York news conference late Thursday.
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“We're essentially not charging a premium” for the Netflix feature, Jason said. The BD300 “will be priced with other premium Blu-ray players.” Quoting no definitive price point on the BD300 suggests LG wants to be able to react flexibly to Blu-ray pricing trends as it makes the Netflix decks a cornerstone of its Q4 marketing strategy. Netflix and LG will throw in a two-week Netflix trial subscription for BD300 buyers who aren’t Netflix customers, Jason said.
LG sees the BD300 as “a true convergence device,” melding the playback of “traditional” physical media like DVDs and Blu-ray movies with Internet content, Jason said. The deck is “a perfect marriage between content and hardware,” he said. “This is a premium Blu-ray player,” with 1080p playback and BD Live, among other features, he said.
LG put Netflix “instant streaming” in the BD300 because it sess the feature as “a great consumer benefit,” he said. The means of bringing “that feature from Netflix direct to our TV” drove BD300 development, a six- to eight-month process, Jason said: “We think we're doing this in a very easy and seamless way.” An icon-based on-screen menu includes pause, fast-forward and rewind functions with which viewers are so comfortable on PVRs, he said.
Industry will ship 3 million Blu-ray decks this year, 4.5 million in 2009 and 13.1 million in 2012, Jason said. He said retailers that LG briefed think those forecasts too conservative. Within five years, LG thinks that at least half of all U.S. households will have Blu-ray playback capability, via standalone decks or PS3 consoles, he said. “Well over half” of HDTV sets sold this year will be 1080p, a “proliferation” helping to drive “this tremendous adoption” of Blu-ray, Jason said. To “maximize the viewing experience” of a 1080p set, “there needs to be a Blu-ray driving that engine,” Jason said.
Other LG introductions: (1) New “LGX” LCD TVs, in 42W ($2,699) and 47W ($2,999) sizes, are only 1.8 inches deep, said executive Tim Alessi. “This is the thinnest integrated LCD on the market today,” he said. “We think that LGX is going to be a real flagship of the line,” he said. (2) The LG 90 is the company’s first LCD TV with LED backlighting, he said. The 47W set is priced at $3,599, he said. Its screen is divided into 128 segments, “each with its own set of LEDs that are individually controllable,” Alessi said. “So you can customize the lighting intensity for that area of the picture.”