Does anyone expect the price of the Topfield to drop closer to £200 any time soon.

I have been sitting on the fence for some time, trying to decide whether to purchase, but cant help but feel that the Toppy is still a little too 'buggy'. Dont get me wrong, I suspect that all PVR's have their problems...and hence my preference will be for now the Toppy over all others.

Realistically the price has hardly reduced since it was introduced, and given that the majority of the cost must be the HDD, which has almost halved in cost in that time, one would expect a more significant reduction to have occured than that which has.

i don't knwo if you have seen the recent posts about Empire Direct or not, but they are selling the Topfield for £243 delivered.

Might be the start of gradual downward trend?

Stu.

I kind of doubt this unless (a) they start to dump stock at cost or (b) existing customers have been wildly ripped off.

I think it started at, what, £299 say.

So of that £299 Gordon Brown takes £52.33 in VAT so the retailer is actually receiving £246.68

Of that £246.68 a retailer may be taking 35% - so he makes £74 and is buying it at £172.68

Gordon Brown probably has another 4% off it for import duty. So he get's another £6.90 and it is landed for £165.78

Shipping might be about £10/unit so it's FOB price out of the Far Eastern factory is £155.78

Topfield may be making 30% on this. So they make £46.73

Therefore the Bill of Materials to buy all the components that go into the box ends up being £109.05.

So typically the BOM cost of CE devices is about 1/3rd of the VAT inc retail price.

Now it's true that as time passes and Moores Law applies some of the major components like the HDD will drop in price so there's maybe a little bit of room to manoeuvre there to reduce costs and this would work it's way up the chain. So a £5 drop in components might equate to £15 off the retail cost.

But the only other real room for movement is for Topfield and the retailer to shave their margins - perhaps 35%-30% down to 25%-20% ?

So the fact that the box has already dropped £300 -> £240 - losing £60 off the retail suggest to me that is about as far as it can go.

After that it's just a question of dumping stocks at cost to liquidate assets.

Cliff

PS Did you spot there how much less a manufacturer makes on the sale of a box compared to the distributor/retailer ?!?

Some major retail chains are making over 40% profit on equipment such as this!

Nigel.

Isn't it also true though, that the initial sale price will be set based on projected sales to cover the cost of both production and the the initial design/development costs?

After these targets are met, and the initial development costs are covered, surely there is some leeway in the price as the manufacturer can decide to reduce the cost based on solely the production of the product.

I'm not an economist, but it makes sense as an idea to me

Also, it seems to be a rule that things get cheaper the more you make - so price reductions may occur due to increased sales.

Not say this will happen, or that it relates to the Topfield, just thoughts on the general idea.

Cheers
Stu.

to also include that when the item is produced, "factoring" such as fault rate has to be included; A wild card! the price drop could be a reflection of a low return rate

What about the poor old importer? Turbosat in this case. Or are you considering the £74 being shared between them and the retailer? It's no wonder they're keen to sell direct and price match as they can shift a box without giving a cut to the likes of Satellite Centre et al.

Yup that's exactly what I was considering. In some cases (ours for instance) we are the manufacturer AND the importer so Amstrad sell direct to Dixons who sell to the customer. But sometimes there is a third party in the middle like Turbosat who pay for the freighting and warehousing and therefore get to take their share of the pie.

Cliff

OK,.....I had not seen the Empire Direct posts....

Thats encouraging.
I still think theres room to get this down to a unit price closer to £200
They will make a lot more sales if they do..

Although it has occured to me that maybe they are not too worried about sales as perhaps they have a supply issue which means that they are able to sell all that they have at the current prices and dont need to drop the price to shift boxes...

This is probably the real reason that no big chains are involved.

But what would be their motive for selling lots of units if they made no money in the process?

I think their one concerning factor will be "are we making any money" in fact.

Off hand I cannot think of ONE totally philanthropic consumer electronic manufacturer/retailer.

Cliff

No...I think the reality is not so much whether there is a lot of profit but the ratio to sales.

After all no point in making a huge profit if all you do is sell in single digits and have stock on shelves....better to sell cheaper and move stock....

My suspicion is that they are able to sell all the production at the current price with no stock lying about............hence no need to cut the price

If that changes, ie people stop buying and stock accumulates then the price will come down....likewise if they have an increase in production the same will happen to stimulate demand and prevent stock accumulating

My thoughts were that if they were expanding suppliers ie Euronics etc that perhaps the increase in production etc maybe a reality

Yup there's always a balance to be made between reduced price and increased volume versus increased price and reduced volume to find the place where overall margin is maximized. However I strongly doubt that £200 is it. I think the current £240 may be the bottom of the curve myself.

Cliff

I'm pretty confident that the Toppy is a superior product having benefited from more development compared to anything else currently available. This combined with the extensibility of TAPs and good support (both official and un-official) IMHO make the current price difference immaterial to the discerning buyer.

Dont disagre with the fact that its probably the most superior (techically at least) PVR for freeview.

Am still somewhat concerned that it still seems to be a niche product though. I dont understand why its not being manaufactured and pushed in the same way as say Humax.

I just bought a Toppy for £243 delivered from Empire Direct yesterday afternoon - got an email a couple hours later saying it would be delivered on Monday - not bad I think, esp as I didn't have a high opinion of Empire previously. I've been looking at all the forums, comparison tables, etc, and was leaning toward the Panasonic, as I've got a Panasonic TY and DVR, but since my local Panasonic shop wouldn't recommend it (at least not in its current state), I finally decided on the Topfield. I hope I'm right - can't wait until Monday!! Any advice on the dig opital connection tho would be appreciated. Now, I've got my DVR connected to my receiver via that, but my receiver only has the one slot. Should I keep my DVR connected or swap with the Toppy? Either way, the unit not connected via optical, what's the best way to connect to the receiver to get surround sound play?

Many thanks, Bridget

But there's no 5.1 sound on Freeview anyway - it's only stereo with ProLogic at best. So no point using anything but red/white phonos really.

Cliff

Thanks, Cliff, see how little I know! I used to be so clued up on stereos, etc a few years back but technology has overcome me (not getting old am I???). For sure I'll be back on Monday night asking a lot more idiotic things - but I promise to look at all the previous threads first. I do think that the price I got for the Toppy seems the best, and 2 working days delivery time ain't bad either really, when you think of it.

Bridget

although whenever i have tried to put a DVD onto the toppys hard drive ( after ripping the DVD to my P.C and converting the file) ive only been able to get the audio by using the optical output.

Good choice. Presume your receiver does dolby 5.1 decoding from your DVR ? in which case choice wouldbe to stick with DVR optical, since freeview audio isn't 5.1 so not too much benefit from using toppy optical.

Do you have 5.1 sound on your PC? If so it might be that your ripping software must only be picking up the 5.1 and ignoring stereo. Playing back on the PC will be OK but not on the Toppy. Suggest you check the menus in the ripping software.

At the moment ive given up on trying to get a DVD to my toppy, as my DVD player sits next to my toppy, it was just one of those things to see if it was possiblle to get a DVd to the toppy, and use the toppy as a TV/video jukebox.
If the toppy had a 500GB+ hard disk inside it then i would consider copying a few DVDs over.

As it stands at the moment, i ripped the DVD using DVDcrypt converted it to a .TS using project X and transfered it to my toppy, where it was named by the toppy as "my personal TV channel" or something like that ( not a problem as it can easily be re-named)
When it was played back, improbox showed a yellow double 'D' dolby logo and the only sound that came out was through the optical output.