BIG APOLOGY to Sights & Sounds for this store is just a reseller. But if you're going to buy these two INFOCUS models at the price its true source or supplier is asking - then you're being hold-upped BIG TIME! Infocus X10 has a suggested retail price of 900 Euros, and presently sells at $1,300 U.S. Why should it then be sold on the Philippine market at a dollar equivalent of $3,200?
The truth is that this Infocus is being imported and distributed by a sole company. I won't cite its name but its a sister company of American Technologies - the distribution arm of business-grade Infocus projectors. ATI is a qualifiably lecherous, blood-sucking trader, it cornered Infocus' importation and doing so has consistently charges prices that are ethically wrong. ATI spends big-time on advertising budget, appearing almost daily on the business section of major spreads like the Inquirer. Its main market targets are corporations and institutions who almost always are not so finicky when it comes to spending on media peripherals like the projector - because they could charged it as routine "company expense."
Also, ATI made an early-bird headstart on the projector market when most folks are still witless or overwhelmed by a "new" technology called giant screen projection. The result is that they became easy target for ATI to sell overpriced projectors, yet those corporations and institutions (schools, retreat houses, etc.) has hardly care or has deluded themselves effectively to the fact that their purchase was hardly reasonable & fair, in value. When you check those Infocus adverts on the paper, you'll find out that ATI would want you to buy an SVGA unit for as much as P40,000 - this, when SVGA is the lowest form of resolution and hardly worth a spit now amidst high definition standards.
ATI's sister company is the one distributing the home theater line. Its business philosophy is even more ruthless - a high-price policy thats impregnable and unyielding. Even when a model is being discontinued and obsoleted all over the world and correspondingly lowered in its retail price as in the case of the X10 - the Infocus predator would never adjust his'. Case in point, the Infocus LP830 is an effectively 6 or 5 year old model, a geriatric in a fast technology age - yet ATI continues to charge you P280,000 for it, when it could hardly sell now for a thousand dollars in the West.
Sayang itong X10 because its hailed as a breakthrough model, just like the X1 of around nine seasons ago. Its 1080p resolution yields an its-truly-there hi-def sharpness, its calibrated for a superb colorometry and its shadow details truly accentuates the native resolution of both DVD and Blu Rays. More Pinoy videophiles should owned this, it ought to have been a very affordable blockbuster like the Panasonic AX200 LCD. But thanks to the ruthless Infocus monopoly, its effectively being made out of reach from most of us. Kung oorderin ito sa Amazon.com at isi-ship through Johnny Air, the estimated cost all-in-all would be P75,000 - on the event Johnny the courier charges P12,000 for it. If on the best scenario, the freight is pegged at P8,000 only, then the X10 should be placed at P69,000++ delivered on your doorstep.
Why then make other people obscenely rich by paying P149,000 for a stuff that should've been a mere P69,000? Mahiya kayo ATI sa balat ninyong maitim, unethical kayo!
