If I may be allowed to offer my '2 cents' to this topic, I would not like to be dependent on a standard issue computer hardware like the BOT-1. Sure, it looks nice, but under the bonnet it is a ROM drive which in itself isn't so dreadful. What is dreadful though is the price. While prices vary from country to country, the BOT-1 costs 1.500 € here. So the profit margin is, what, five thousand percent?
The BOT-1 isn't for everyone, but it isn't that simple as the cost of small scale production can't meet the same sustainable thin markups of large scale automated production and it certainly isn't 5000%.
For example the drives where purchased 50-100 pieces at a time, not ten's thousand or or hundred's thousand of pieces at a time, which is common in the mainstream electronics ecosystem. Audiophile electronics for the most part aren't sold in such large quantities. There really isn't any part of the BOT that ends up being excluded from this.
The PCB circuit boards like every other part are only ordered in quantities of 50-100 pieces at a time, not ten to hundred thousands at a time. The design of the PCB has durability and repair-ability in mind, not lowest possible cost. Components and the PCB tend to be larger to accomplish this and this also increases the price relative to something only meant to last a few years if not a year and then to be thrown out rather then repaired. The PCB's are manufactured in low quantities in Canada, rather then large quantities in China and don't tend to follow the same pricing for different features of PCB fabrication.
The chassis is made of metal (1/16 of an inch or more, before finish is applied) rather then plastic injected molding and again are made in much smaller quantity then your average optical drive. Also in a non-automated fashion, usually with direct human involvement and usually if not always a company from Ontario, otherwise from Canada or the US.
Each unit is covered by a three warranty (other products having 5 and 20 year warranties) and of course life time support
Each unit is hand assembled, inspected and tested.
Like James pointed out, we don't sell direct and rely on distributors and stores to sell our products and they too need to a way to profit off the product with the support and convenience they are providing to service the end users needs.
Is that to say the BOT-1 or any other product is good value to every customer, not necessarily as it depends on what your after. If you want something that was built with the intention to last and and fabricated locally from a company that tries to place a high emphasis on customer loyalty (as in we try to place an emphasis on high customer satisfaction) then you buy Bryston. That's also not to say we force you to buy our accessories, we try to make customers as happy as possible so we will do our best to support our products with third party ones and BOT is no different. Want to use the cd ripping and playback features of the BDP, but not spend all lot of money on an optical drive, we will happily do our best to support those features with a third party drive.
Hope this helps and stay healthy,
Chris
