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In Reply to: RE: Latest USA movie numbers show HD DVD losing share posted by Ole Lund Christensen on November 29, 2007 at 07:13:54
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
Follow Ups:
" 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 :-)
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