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Well, I hate to say this…

Posted by David Aiken (A) on December 1, 2007 at 22:23:12

In Reply to: Well, Ole, I'm heading out today to buy a HD DVD player! posted by jsm on December 1, 2007 at 11:52:16:

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

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