Bring home the movies

If your family is juggling between watching a movie and going to a restaurant over the weekend, it has reason to.

Going to a movie for a family of four in any metro will not cost less than Rs700-800 along with cola and popcorn, and probably Rs 200 less in a smaller town.

And with 900 movies releasing every month (including English, Hindi and regional films) you can't ignore this expenditure.

Well, the consumer electronics majors may have a solution for you. Philips India, for instance, worked on these statistics and slashed the price of its toploading DVD players from Rs 5,990 to Rs 3,990, making a paradigm shift in home entertainment.

Philips is perceived to have waged a price war in the DVD player segment, forcing others to follow suit. "We did not wage a price war; we simply saw the opportunity in the market and cut prices to reach a particular scale," counters D Shivakumar, vice president-consumer electronics, Philips India Ltd.

And once the right scales were achieved, other players like Sony, Samsung and LG started selling entry-level DVD players from Rs 4000-10,000, as a result of which DVD players became the household gadget of middle to low income group families.

Philips claims that it has seen a more than 1,000 per cent growth in sales of its DVD players since then.

That's not all. To further enjoy watching movies at home you can get a brand new flat colour television from LG, Samsung or Philips in the range of Rs 9,000-12,000.

"Flat TVs are products with a future and in three years time they will overtake conventional TVs," says Deba Ghoshal, head-brand management and product planning (CE) LG Electronics India.

And if you want a combination of picture, sound and aesthetics, you can have a mini-home theatre with woofers and five speakers for as low as Rs 15,000 (inclusive of TV and DVD player).

"These days customers don't want plain vanilla TVs and we have different solutions to suit different pockets," says Ghoshal.

For the upmarket DINK (double income no kids) couples, LG and Samsung have a range of value-added products.

Subrotah Biswas, assistant general manager, Samsung India says: "Samsung is leading the drive on flat TVs with a 15-inch flat TV at lowest end. Also, its high-end range includes CRT projection, plasma, LCD and DLP TVs."

Again, for home theatres, Samsung's range starts from as low as Rs 15,990.

Cheaper imports, especially from China, and the lowering of customs duties have both played their roles.

"More than 80 per cent of the global supply of DVD players are through China," says Shivakumar.

Sony India is hoping to garner a substantial chunk in DVDs and hi-fi music systems with a vast range. "Our home theatres start at Rs 21,990 with five speakers and a sub-woofer, and the high-end models go up to Rs 1 lakh," says Akash Agrawal, product head-audio, Sony India.

Further, Agrawal feels there is something for everyone. "You give your specification and budget and we give you the best solution," he says.

So can the players bank on a replacement market for all these products against the earlier trend of having a lifetime gadget? "Not really," feel most players.

In the case of flat TVs, while LG's Ghoshal feels it will be more of a second-buy (the old TV will be relegated to another room), Philip's Shivakumar says in most cases it will totally replace the one bought in the early 1980s.

Again, Sony's Agrawal feels that consumer electronics players cannot bank much on the replacement market.

"With DVD players, it is mostly the customers of VCD players graduating and this trend will continue for some time."

While consumers seem to be making the most of it, one wonders whether prices have bottomed out. Biswas of Samsung feels that prices of most consumer electronics have fallen by more than 50 per cent in five years.

And to woo customers Samsung has got in special consumer finance schemes.

According to market estimates, DVD players are dearer by Rs 200 in Singapore than in India when compared in the same currency.

For once, the customer is the king in India.