Apex Digital DVD player - what should it cots?

[nightflier]

I just purchased a new Apex Digital DVD player. It was only $20 after the rebate. Granted, it doesn't feel very sturdy, the remote uses strange batteries, and I haven't a clue where I would send it for repairs, but for $20, who really cares. It sounds OK (we use it mostly for music ion our work room), it has all the right connections, and because it's Apex Digital, it plays all the read-only, writable and rewritable formats (except SACD); no copyright or format restrictions.

I did a little research and found that this player cost about $2 to make. I believe it's made in Vietnam where college grad engineers make $400 a year, so yes, things are a lot cheaper there. I'm just wondering when DVD players will be free. After all, there seems to be little money to be made with the actual units, because it's really only a vehicle for selling movies and music, at least as far as the mass-market is concerned.

Now if only Plasma TV's came down to $20....

[eisforelectronic]

You don't repair something like that. It'll cost 3x's as much just to have a tech open it up to see what's wrong. If someone offers you an extended warranty on an Apex, you say "no thank you, I'll take three instead."

[nightflier]

Which begs the original question: Why aren't DVD players, the wallmart-type, free?

Which brings up another interesting point. I remember when DVD players were over $1000, and now they have come down to ~$30, 1/30th of the price. Receivers, speakers, and TV's have not followed the same trend. I would even venture to say that TV's, even if considering the falling dollar, have gone up in price.

My original argument was that the reason DVD players came down is because they were geared towards the sale & rental of another comodity, ie DVD's. Shouldn't the same hold true for TV's? These are essentially a way for people to get hoodwinked into some type of subscription-based service such as cable, Tivo, and also by extention, DVD's.

[MomurdA]

My original argument was that the reason DVD players came down is because they were geared towards the sale & rental of another comodity, ie DVD's. Shouldn't the same hold true for TV's? These are essentially a way for people to get hoodwinked into some type of subscription-based service such as cable, Tivo, and also by extention, DVD's.

I think that tvs have gone down in price the last few years, just like dvd players. thnk of the type of tv you could get 5 years ago for say 800. Now look what you can get today for the same price. I think you are right about the dvd players tho. I tend to think of microsoft and its xbox in the same category. Microsoft still loses plenty of money for each piece of hardware it sells(the xbox) but makes huge money off of the software titles. I believe dvd players are the same way. Perhaps with a little research you could find that apex digital is owned by a subsidiary of Mega-omni-electronics-record-movie-publishing company. Or maybe not.