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212.146.11.98
so all the cheap players sold recently did not help HD DVD getting back.
No wonder, people buying USD 99 players do not buy many USD 25 movies.
USA is the only place in the world were some people still take HD DVD seriously. I still wonder why.
HD DVD has dropped from 100% to 34% of the USA market for movies. It might hold on to a nice in in USA, while the rest of the world move on to Blu Ray.
see link for market share in USA
- http://aventhusiast.com/blu-ray-and-hd-dvd/format-war/weekly-nielsen-sales-ratio (Open in New Window)
Follow Ups:
Most of us have a preference when it comes to red or blu. I think it's clear that while I try to remain neutral in how I represent both sides on my site that I have a preference for one side.
The real shame is that we are divided at all, and it's Sony and Toshiba's greed that will slow adoption of both formats. Boo, shame on them.
IF Toshiba really does have TL51 working, and IF those of us who already have players will be able to upgrade our firmware to support TL51, then I wish that HD DVD would come out standing when the dust clears. They had their act together (barring combo discs) from day one, and there are more stand-alone players installed.
It still remains to be seen if Toshiba can turn all those installed players into disc sales though. Maybe next year at this time one of the sides will have finally acted like they wanted to win and we won't be arguing about red and blu anymore.
AV Enthusiast
I make no claim to be able to accurately predict what is going to happen. I have no idea what really would happen if HD DVD ruled the US, but BD ruled the rest of the world. I have no idea what effect the joker in the deck, Microsoft, may have on the final outcome. But for now, it's just hard to go too far wrong buying a cheap HD DVD player, especially if one is going to stick to rental discs. IF BD wins, fine, I'll get one once things settle down a bit and things get standardized. If HD DVD wins, I'll probably get a higher-quality one that this cheapo Toshiba. Of course, something else could come along and knock both out, but I sort of doubt that for the immediate future. Someday it will surely happen.
Maybe B&M stores that sell and/or rent HD DVDs should also rent the players. That would be a way to really get people hooked on the players, and I'd bet the makers would be fighting to have theirs in the stores; they'd give them to the stores for free. That could have an interesting effect on the dynamic.
Joe
You are a gentleman. Yes, B&M should rent out, that would make more money.
Since I can buy one for significantly under $200 (roughly the cost of taking my family out to dinner in a good restaurant these days), and there are now many titles in that format I wouldn't mind renting, why not? The PQ is so good that at this level of investment and at this stage it's hardly worth even worth arguing about which is better. Just four of us going out to the movies three or four times can cost more than the player. I certainly won't cry if BD wins in the long run, but for me the significantly larger investment in a player with a format that isn't yet standardized seems silly. The BD people should get real. Sony did the right thing when they got together with Phillips at the introduction of the CD and agreed on what is now the RBCD standard, avoiding a repeat of the VCR fiasco. For the very few movies that might interest me that aren't out on HD DVD, but only on BD, upsampled DVD looks more than acceptable to me with my Oppo player.
Ole, you can quote all the statistics you want, but so far we are in the early stages. If the HD DVD players prices stay cheap or gets even cheaper, say near $100, and BD players don't get close to that, I think it will be all over fairly soon, at least in the US. It seems like everybody is buying HD TV sets these days, and they are going to want a HD player once they realize how good they can be. If they can be had for $100 or so, the average buyer won't care in the least if it's BD or HD DVD, and they will fly off the shelves.
Well, I'm off to the store!
Joe
" Ole, you can quote all the statistics you want, but so far we are in the early stages. If the HD DVD players prices stay cheap or gets even cheaper, say near $100, and BD players don't get close to that, I think it will be all over fairly soon, at least in the US. It seems like everybody is buying HD TV sets these days, and they are going to want a HD player once they realize how good they can be. If they can be had for $100 or so, the average buyer won't care in the least if it's BD or HD DVD, and they will fly off the shelves."
I seriously doubt it will be over "soon". And if it is, it will be because Warner's went Blu-ray-exclusive because of dismal HD DVD software sales despite the Toshiba Firesales. I think Sony/Fox/Disney are solidly in the Blu-ray camp and no matter what anyone else does, Blu-ray is here to stay.
HD DVD can provide a very good picture, but the lack of consistency in HD DVD video encodes and the absence of lossless/uncompressed audio on the great majority of HD DVD releases suggests storage/bandwidth issues HD DVD cannot avoid. I think the closer the studios look at this issue, the less likely they will be to abandon Blu-ray and the more likely they will be to abandon HD DVD.
You said "The BD people should get real. Sony did the right thing when they got together with Phillips at the introduction of the CD and agreed on what is now the RBCD standard, avoiding a repeat of the VCR fiasco."
I understand they did try to get together with other relevant parties and achieve agreement but were unsuccessful. What is clear, however, is that there are several companies making BD players, only Toshiba making dedicated HD DVD players, and a couple of companies making dual format players. Overall BD seems to have been the preferred option for the electronics manufacturers.
On the movie side of things, there are more companies doing BD releases than there are doing HD DVD releases, even after Paramount stopped releasing BD.
For a firm that couldn't achieve agreement on a single standard, they certainly seemed to do a bit better than the other side in attracting other equipment manufacturers and the movie studies than did Toshiba and the HD DVD side. And, as Ole keeps repeatedly and annoyingly pointing out each time the new stats come out, more BD discs have been sold than HD DVD despite the fact that BD wasn't released till several months after HD DVD.
You also said "If… I think it will be all over fairly soon, at least in the US." I wouldn't be too sure of that. The US is probably the biggest single market in the world for this kind of product but I don't think it makes up the major part of the total world market. Here in Australia, HD DVD actually started later than BD and the player prices are not significantly cheaper than BD players. The last time I looked there were 3 Toshiba players available and 2 of them cost more than the PS3 before Sony dropped the price of the PS3. The other one cost over twice the price of the cheapest Toshiba available in the US. The BD people released players and films here almost 2 months prior to HD DVD and I think the cheapest current model hi def player available here is the PS3 though I may be wrong since I haven't seen any recent Toshiba prices. The reason for that: no real advertising or publicity push by the HD DVD people. In fact, you can walk into the average consumer electronics stores here and see BD players by 2 or 3 manufacturers and no HD DVD players. I've yet to see a Toshiba player in a shop despite the fact that Toshiba released here in January this year. It's now 11 months later and I still haven't seen a HD DVD player in a mass market store while there's always BD players on display running a BD movie. In addition, HD DVD discs have only really started to appear in any quantity in the DVD stores here in the last couple of months. What does that say to you about the state of the market outside the US?
BD may not be doing the best job of winning in the US but, if experience here in Australia is any guide, HD DVD looks like it may be doing a good job of losing in the rest of the world. If HD DVD doesn't defeat BD convincingly in the US and doesn't do well elsewhere, it may prove to be a matter of HD DVD losing the war rather than BD winning it.
Neither side can afford to ignore the rest of the world and HD DVD did that here for months after their US release, allowing BD to release here first and build momentum. They still seem to be ignoring the market here and they continue to have low visibility of players and discs. BD hasn't made that mistake here. They got in first here, established visibility early, and they've maintained that visibility. HD DVD looks like a late and amateurish challenger here from what I've seen, instead of looking like the side that got to market months before the opposition.
So far I've been fence sitting waiting for player prices to drop and specs to improve on the audio format side but I have to admit that I'm leaning more to BD than HD DVD given the way both are being marketed here.
David Aiken
The EU is the world's single biggest market, and I'm sure it goes for HD players as well. But in this case we are talking regions. And it is a very different world today. Both formats can co-exist, with HD-DVD in America and BD (BD?) in Europe and Asia. And it shouldn't matter to the movie and gaming industries. In fact, I don't think Hollywood would mind that at all since it would mean and end to parallel import.
"Both formats can co-exist, with HD-DVD in America and BD (BD?) in Europe and Asia. And it shouldn't matter to the movie and gaming industries. In fact, I don't think Hollywood would mind that at all since it would mean and end to parallel import."
Well, I doubt those studios that are issuing in both formats would mind, but those that are issuing in only 1 format may mind because it would lock them out of any zone which did not support their preferred format or force them to support both formats if they wished to sell world-wide. And if they go dual format to sell world wide, they may as well go dual format in the US as well.
I'm not certain that argument holds up all that well.
David Aiken
You say that if BD wins, the sudios who supported HD-DVD will be locked out?
It doesn't work that way. This is not intended as an insult to prostitutes, but studio execs are whores. They will go where the customers go, always. If Asia goes BD, Hollywood will support BD in Asia. And if America goes HD-DVD, Hollywood will support HD-DVD in America.
The Blu-boys claimed that HD DVD would be more prone to playback problems due to the ubiquitous scratches and fingerprints on rental discs, but I've found exactly the opposite to be true. I haven't had a single problem with any HD DVD rental discs, but the slightest blemish or fingerprint on a Blu-ray rental disc makes my Blu-ray player glitch, skip, or pixelate.
The disc drawer on my old Faroudja based Panny XP50 is starting to get a little balky, so when I ran across a Toshiba A3 for $179 with 10 free discs from Amazon, it was a no-brainer. If an entry level BD player was available at a similar price, I'd have considered that, too.
The player arrived yesterday-unfortunately, my wife is insisting it go under the tree :(
well, I will also buy a cheap HD DVD player to play some HD DVD concerts and movies, which I doubt will be released again, as they sold badly.
Just like I have bought a DVD audio player and some for me important DVD Audio discs.
And I have in the past placed a link about cheap HD DVD players.
Paying USD 99 for a player is not a problem for me or you.
Above does not change the facts of the market, which I present with links. You may not like the facts, but the facts does not care :-)
It's quite obvious that Ole is seeking peer approval for his decision in choosing Blu-Ray hence his continuos need to tell the community how well BD is doing, over and over again, even if his "facts/statistics" do not really prove anything. I fear that he may commit suicide when BD loses out. I only wish that someone could help him see the light (no pun intended).
Have no worries mate :-)
I will buy a HD DVD player for my collection and some HD DVD discs, that are important for me, when they have a closeout sale. And use it togehter with the Blu Ray discs on my Panasonic projector.
Just like I have bought:
an Otari 10" open reel 1/2 track tapemcahine for my mastertape copies,
a Tandberg 1/4 track machine for my older tapes.
a MSB/Pioneer Laserdisc player for my laserdisc collection,
a Philips SACD 1000 player for my SACD collection,
a JVC DVD Audio player for my DVD Audio collection,
a Pioneer DVD player for my DVD movie collection,
a JVC Super VHS HiFi for my VHS tapes
a Sony Betamax HiFi for my Beta video tape collection,
a Harman Kardon Dolby B/C casette deck for my few casettetapes
a dbx noise reduction for dbx tapes.
many CD players for my CD collection,
a Michell Hydralic Reference LP player for my LP collection.
I also bought an iPod using it with lossless for holidays,
and I have harddisks with my entire CD collection, which I play from my PC.
As you can see, I have most formats and many brands, but not the SONY minidisk :-)
Live or dead formats does not matter to me, as long as I have the software I like. I am not much of a SONY fanboy, my only SONY product today is a 36" tube TV.
To me the software is central, and USD 200 for a player does not matter much. Most of my machines I bought early, when they cost USD 2000 or more. Often the early machines are build to be long lasting.
I just present links, which nobody else seem to present.
The links are out there, and I suggest you present some other links.
We understand you prefer blu-ray.
Your obsession with blu-ray has undermined the value of your posts.
Please move on.
Shooting at the messenger does not help you :-)
If you do not like my post, then I suggest, that you do not read them.
I asked him pretty much the same question last week or so. Maybe if he also came on talking about "this great TV he saw" or...? Get's boring real fast. This is a forum to discuss things, hopefully not boringly posting the same axe to grind over and over. Almost makes me want to buy an HD DVD player. :)
Fanboy . See also "Jazz Inmate"
Someone who pretends capacity isn't important in HD media.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
... while humbugging happy folks who are satisfied with a cup that's more than half full. ;0)
AuPh
You can be satisfied with a diet of twinkies and burger king. It doesn't mean it's good for you.
I'm glad you're getting enjoyment out of HD DVDs, but the fact is that the other format is superior.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
the only controversy is how thes "advantages" translate to the real world. blu-ray has 50-60% advantage in both audio/video bitrate capacity (48 vs. 30 mbs) and storage capacity (50G vs. 30G) which can effect PQ/SQ quality but plenty of folks (probably mainly those with vested interests in HD-DVD) question whether the spec advantages translate into "practical" advantages.
OTOH, Toshiba's apparent marketing strategy means minimal (zero or less than zero) profit margins for retailer/manufacturer's trying to sell HD DVD. The BDA is apparently trying to maintain (obscene?) profit margins for the sales of Blu-ray and HD DVD is messing that up. I've the suspicion "Old Lund Christensen" may have an 'interest" in the winner of this format war. But then again, I also have an interest; I want the best possible PQ/SQ for all my movies and I believe Blu-ray does a better job of delivering it than HD DVD.
My nephew has separate HDDVD and Blue Ray players. He says both formats look great, but says ultimately HD looks and sounds better than blue ray.
quite a few of which were quite mediocre in picture quality. Nowadays, the Sony/Fox/Disney 50G releases are consistently better than the stuff Universal has been putting out on HD DVD.
This is true with both formats. There is alot of mediocre titles, even recent ones. IMO, the majority are good, but not fantastic, by HD standards. Examples? BD- Perfet Stranger and Premonition. OK, but nothing fantastic. Die Hard 4 is good, but didn't make me go wow. It also had some banding. HD DVD- Tremors. It was good but has some edge enhancement. Next was mediocre. Dreck 3 was good (its kind of hard to do bad PQ for animation)but I expected better. I could go on, but you get the point.
While I do have a few real standouts in both formats, they are the minority of discs. That said, even mediocre HD is still much better than DVD.
Jack
...how much storage capacity does the human brain have and how much of it is ever actually used? The fact that space is available doesn't mean that the 'container' is ever going to be utilized to maximum benefit! Ummm, ...food for thought!I have to concur with the Consumer Reports analysis based on some of the comparisons I've seen and my own experience with HD: the picture quality of both formats is virtually identical. If I were ascribing points to the plus and minus columns of both formats HD would probably come out on top because Blu-ray's hardware costs so much more (i.e., when the extra space available on Blu-ray discs isn't being utilized) that it cancels out any theoretical value of BD over HD. Add that to BD's robust region blocking which appeals to studio greed (or pirating paranoia) much more than it does educated consumers who may like the option of purchasing HD films and television programming from other regions of the world and you have a potential deal-breaker.
Cheers,
AuPhPS: BTW, if you still in need of a switcher (HDMI as opposed to the DVI switcher I offered earlier), I now have a spare HDMI switcher after upgrading to the Oppo HM-31 (which is sturdier and has a few more bells and whistles, such as signal equalizer and support of long cable lengths); I'll loan the spare to you or sell it to you cheap if you're interested. Oh, almost forgot, see ya at the ORAC auction. :o)
your points are good, as an aside, you may be operating under the misinformation people my age learned in junior high school. "You only use one seventh of your brain" was and is completely wrong. It was based on neurological data from people's brains that were partially destroyed, or removed, but the people still operated almost normally. But that was due to the brain's wondrous ability to circumvent damage, repair itself, and redundancy. You use every last square millimeter of that miraculous organ.
Most of the material where movies are available on both formats (i.e. Warner) also use the exact same encodes so you'd expect the picture quality to be the same. Yes, PQ on HD DVD can be very good (or very mediocre) and likewise with Blu-ray. But I find the 50G Fox/Sony/Disney releases consistently have better picture than Universal/Warner releases. This is not inconsistent with the finding of the wouldbe HD movie reviewers on various websites. YMMV.
Have you had the chance to play around with lossless/uncompressed audio yet ? This is the more obvious differentiator IMHO.
...with rare exception I'm more into two channel for music (as it was originally recorded and mixed). Surround sound for movies is great, but for most consumers lossy or lossless is meaningless jargon. Note: And as an audiophile, I know that lossless doesn't really mean "lossless" when compared with the analog original because it still utilizes compression codecs.
I've even considered getting another turntable and acquiring some classic recordings on vinyl (shudder) because in some instances there are no satisfactory digital recordings available of desired music, but to get back to the original point the term lossless is deceptive.
> > > "We can agree to disagree." < < <
That's fine; I wasn't trying to make this into a personal issue, Oscar, and I'm sorry if you took it that way. If you prefer Blu-ray that's hunky dory. My only bias is toward buying the movies and TV series I want and paying a reasonable admission price with no strings attached.
The blue/red format wars won't be resolved by heated debates here; I'm sure that there are dedicated fans in both camps. There will probably come a time when I'll purchase a Blu-ray player as well when the price becomes more competitive with HD-DVD and they resolve some issues, but there's no rush.
BTW, would you mind addressing the robust region blocking issue which SONY touts to endear themselves to the pirate paranoid studios? For some folks this may be a deal breaker for acceptance of Blu-ray.
> > > "But I find the 50G Fox/Sony/Disney releases consistently have better picture than Universal/Warner releases." < < <
Since you have both HD-DVD & Blu-ray, have you made any A/B comparisons? Oh, wait! That's right, there aren't any because the Fox/SONY/Disney consortium have blocked the release of corresponding titles in HD through exclusivity deals; that's why the HD camp retaliated this fall by signing Paramount & Dreamworks to exclusivity deals of their own! So, the customer is forced to choose between the formats based upon favored titles rather than best reproduction.
As I stated in my prior post with the intentionally humorous analogy regarding cranial capacity, the available space is less important than what's in it.
The bottom line: When compared, movies which have been released in both formats are virtually identical PQ-wise.
Cheers,
AuPh :o)
PS: E-mail me if you're still interested in the extra HDMI switcher; I'd rather offer it to a friend than auction it off on eBay.
E.g. It wouldn't do the studios any good in terms of European sales if they released region-free movies on Blu-ray in USA if the first run movies haven't been in the theaters in Europe yet; that would kill theatrical sales (I believe that's the reason Warner's isn't releasing a certain movie on HD DVD yet, though the BLu-ray release is forthcoming). I can't blame the studios for doing that though it makes my life a bit more inconvenient.
Also, don't you prefer "lossless" DVD-A or CD vs "lossy" DD/DTS ? Whether it's music or movie tracks, "lossy" DD/DTS still sounds "muddy" next to their uncompressed/"lossless" counterparts. E.g. when choosing between Eagles' "Hotel California" on DVD-A or DVD-V, I have to choose between a video presentation with "lossy" DTS or a more pristine presentation with 5.1 "lossless" 24/96 DVD-A but no video. Blu-ray will allow me to have both high def video and "lossless" 5.1 24/96 sound (too bad they can't slap on DSD @ 5.6Mbs at the same time...
That vinyl argument doesn't really apply for movie tracks, the master "tapes" are typically digital 24/48 so yes, HD Media can be "lossless" bit-for-bit identical to the masters.
> > > "I can't blame the studios for doing that though it makes my life a bit more inconvenient." < < <
I do blame the Blu-ray consortium for acquiescing to studio paranoia, and when you say inconvenience that's an understatement, especially when it limits or prevents one from acquiring high definition formated television and film titles from overseas.
> > > "Also, don't you prefer "lossless" DVD-A or CD vs "lossy" DD/DTS?" < < <
If it were truly lossless, then yes (esp. for CDs, DVD-A & SACD music), but that's a misnomer because it's still compressed. Nevertheless, it's a moot point because both HD-DVD & Blu-ray have codecs for lossless digital audio. However, to play lossless audio requires a receiver or digital processor capable of handling those formats and I'm not willing to sacrifice any part of my tube based stereo rig to accomodate lossless audio from my video gear. I will add this capability when I can do so affordably and without compromising any other aspect of my A/V system.
Cheers,
AuPh
The Blu-boys only watch Hollywood blockbusters, reissues of Hollywood "classics," and the occasional US-approved import, so they can't understand why you'd be so concerned about that obscure furrin stuff. If you don't see it their way, there's obviously something wrong with you. You're not fitting into the flock! You're a baaaad sheep! Baaaaaad!
I didn't know that.
By the way, if you're really opposed to protecting copyrighted, intellectual property, you may fit better in a country like China. Or maybe Eastern Europe.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
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-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
.
This from your "open letter" but that was nothing compared to an earlier rant of yours whining about regional encoding.
"if you content providers keep putting commercials, previews, obnoxious Don't Steal PSAs, etc. and locking down the controls so that I can't choose to skip them and just watch the movie I paid for, you're going to drive me to piracy."
Pretty funny.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
.
... about "intellectual" property? Inquiring minds may want to know! ;0)
Cheers,
AuPh
Making the weekly numbers trivial because the number of discs sold by both formats is so low.
By the end of Q3, both formats together sold about 5 million copies. To put that in perspective, the Transformers DVD sold 8.4 million copies its first week.
Keep grasping at those straws though. :-)
Jack
EDIT: BTW, that's old data. The numbers for last week won't be in until tomorrow.
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