Target to Feature Sony Blu-ray Disc Player

[Shane]

Beginning this fall and continuing at least through the holiday season, Target will feature Sony® Blu-ray Disc® players as the exclusive product in the emerging category of high-definition home video systems, as well as an expanded assortment of Blu-ray Disc movies.

The Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc player will arrive in stores in October as part of a holiday feature endcap that will clearly communicate the consumer benefits of the Blu-ray Disc technology. The endcap will also feature an expanded list of movie titles from a variety of Hollywood studios.

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/news/2007/07/target_to_featu.php]Read the Full Article[/url]

[jcook01]

Couple this with Blockbusters recent announcement and I'd say we're just one or two more corporate announcements away from checkmate and an end to this senseless HD format war. I'm glad to see that the superior format may actually win out this time around.

Another announcement I'd like to see is a decent price drop in PC bluray recorder prices.

[Shane]

Keep in mind that each of these announcements is about 80% marketing, 20% meat. I don't think that either Blockbuster or Target have a large enough impact on the market to sway it one way or the other. It will take a Wal-mart or Amazon to do something like that. Speaking of which, wait until this Christmas when the press releases really start to fly, and prices really start to drop ... and see where the market takes us. There will be prognosticators coming out of the walls declaring this format and that format as the winner. It will get worse before it gets better.

I have been of the opinion all along that there will not be a winner, and I still believe so. Neither side will give up. They each have a large enough equipment base, content library and corporate backing to stay in it.

There will be no winner, and the biggest loser will likely be the consumer ... forced to buy into both formats in order to see the content they want.

- Shane

[Shane]

I just received the following from the HD DVD side in response to Sony's announcement:

[quote="Ken Graffeo, Executive Vice President of HD Strategic Marketing for Universal Studios Home Entertainment"]Target will continue to carry the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive as well as HD DVD titles so we don

[ghuntybellsouth]

Here we goooooooooooooooooooo

[rfowkes]

Couple this with Blockbusters recent announcement and I'd say we're just one or two more corporate announcements away from checkmate and an end to this senseless HD format war. I'm glad to see that the superior format may actually win out this time around.

Another announcement I'd like to see is a decent price drop in PC bluray recorder prices.

Don't be so quick to buy into the Sony party line. (If you believed everything they say you'd think that the PS3 also won the game console wars). The Blockbuster and Target announcements, as Shane pointed out, are a lot more sizzle than steak. As the HD-DVD camp mentioned, there's nothing "exclusive" about the Target deal because they are not dropping HD-DVD players nor product. To me it's just another example of Sony talking a good game but not performing so far in the marketplace. While I really don't care which side wins this "war" (I own both formats) I find it interesting that one side talks about how great they are and the other side keeps bringing out more and better products, more features on the discs, and lower prices. Right now if you take the same title that's available on both formats and compare them side by side, in the vast majority of cases the picture looks nearly identical (both are great) but the edge definitely goes to the HD-DVD version in both sound codecs offered and in other features.

[whatchel1]

Sony wants to prove it is winnings so badly that they are trying every marketing trick they have. It is nothing more than try to sway people w/ psycho-babble to get them to buy the product. Of course a whole lot like Beta they are ignoring the features and price wants of the consumer.

[Richard]

Bear in mind ONLY blu-ray has received substantial manufacturer support beyond just Sony. That brings pressure on the format war from a different direction that most have overlooked.

So far Toshiba and HD DVD has been snubbed and left on their own to either make HD DVD swim or they sink with it...

This is the opposite of the beta/VHS war where Sony sunk the beta format due to not letting others build beta and then when they finally did charging excessive royalties making the product more expensive than VHS. Ultimately it really was a royalty war with Sony being so greedy they sunk their own ship.

Expense is the key and Toshiba is bank rolling on that with their new price reductions. Entry level HD DVD is $299! How long they can financially bleed over HD DVD before it takes off is the question.

[dabhome]

Were do you get your data that HD-DVD is bleeding? It seems like it is actually the other way around. You can't believe that Blockbuster selected Blu-Ray because they sold more. They must have made a fantastic deal with Sony and/or Disney. The same with Target. Target didn't go with Blue-Ray because they felt it was the better technology. They got a deal from Sony! We all know that Sony is financing the PS-3.

How about the cost of HD-DVD disks vs. Blu-Ray disks. It is common knowledge that HD-DVD disks are cheaper to create then Blu-Ray disks. Yet the prices are the same in retail stores. So who is bleeding.

I think it is clear that Sony is the one bleeding. The question is can they keep it up for long enough to win the war.

[rfowkes]

Without a doubt the only blood being shed is "Blu" Blood. With the PS3 debacle, Sony is in serious financial trouble. Not only that, but it costs substantially more money to make a Blu-ray disc than to make an HD-DVD disc. Not only are the retrofit start up costs greater (something on the order of $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 per factory site to switch from DVD to Blu-ray capabilities) but each disc itself is more expensive to produce. The only reason that Blu-ray and HD-DVD titles are fairly close in price to the consumer is because Sony has made deals to subsidize the cost. If you had to pay $40+ per Blu-ray title compared to $25 or less for the comparable HD-DVD product (street prices) then this format war would have been over long ago.

While I agree with Richard that the lack of multiple HW manufacturers is a potential problem for Toshiba/HD-DVD in this struggle, all other indicators show that the Blu-ray camp is gambling a lot of up-front money to stay competitive and it might become a question of how deep the pockets are and where the breaking point is. HD-DVD doesn't suffer from this same cash flow problem and, of course, Mr. Gates and MS have the deepest pockets of all. I have, and love, both formats so I don't really have a horse in this race.

Ironically, my favorite HD player by far (either format - I own 4 of them) is the PS3. As a Blu-ray player it works efficiently and looks and sounds great. It's also one of the cheapest Blu-ray players at the new price of $499. The games? That's another story, but not important to me.