HD DVD Rallies Consumer Audience in 2007 Driving Nearly One Million Dedicated Player Sales in North America

[free2speak]

regeya -"Although Blu had a number of technical advantages and seemed more "future proof" than HD DVD...
Although Blu had the support of Disney, it was really sort of evenly split studio-wise from what I saw... Although attach rates and software sales were better for Blu, sales were terrible for both. I figured whoever sold the first sub-$200 player would win. We know how that one turned out, and how wrong that ended up being. I would love to see hard numbers on sales of both formats..."

BD and PS3 fans are always talking about the "future". I think it is because their present is not really good. BD doesn't have the features of less expensive HD DVD players, and PS3 is still in last place. Oh sure BD has plenty of "future" potential which really isn't a product. Imagine a store trying to sell "future potential", do you think they would be successful? The future potential seems to be based on the extra storage space for BD. Well if a disk is half full is it really a benefit for the extra space? BD is still a beta product. Two to three years from now BD maybe worth buying, but not today.

Both HD DVD and BD give the same video and audio quality for movies.

HD DVD has a complete feature set common to all HD DVD players.

The movies were very close to equal before Warner Brothers attempted to kill HD DVD.

Sales picked up significantly for HD DVD because of the lower price, and where there is a growing number of players the studios will follow.

I got the HD-A2 for $99 and it is a great value. BD is not price competitive.

There is no way for me to know that Warner Brothers would try to kill HD DVD with their move. It is one thing to decide to move your product to another platform, but it is very different to make your announcement just prior to what would have been a very successful CES show for Toshiba HD DVD. Instead people talk for a week about the death of HD DVD. Then the following weeks are filled with every rumor on the net to try and make it stick. Warner Brothers say the consumer made the choice, but I don't think so. Warner Brothers was the most profitable studio with its neutral stance. If the sales had played out with Warner Brothers still neutral then BD would probably lose to HD DVD by the end of 2008.

[regeya]

There is no way for me to know that Warner Brothers would try to kill HD DVD with their move. It is one thing to decide to move your product to another platform, but it is very different to make your announcement just prior to what would have been a very successful CES show for Toshiba HD DVD. Instead people talk for a week about the death of HD DVD. Then the following weeks are filled with every rumor on the net to try and make it stick. Warner Brothers say the consumer made the choice, but I don't think so. Warner Brothers was the most profitable studio with its neutral stance. If the sales had played out with Warner Brothers still neutral then BD would probably lose to HD DVD by the end of 2008.

Yeah. I've seen the talk about animosity between Toshiba and everyone else, but that just sounds like dirty pool.

I went ahead and jumped at the lower prices, and figured WB would stick to their word on staying neutral. As I said before I knew full well that Blu had a number of technical superiorities but that (IMHO) rarely determines superiority; if it did, we'd all be using Macs and Windows Vista would be a distant memory (although Microsoft, to their credit, helped standardize the PC industry, made it safe for multiple vendors, and helped cull the half-dozen or so incompatible personal-computer platforms out there...plus a number of things...other than that, what have the Romans...erm, Microsoft ever done for us? )

Had the market been allowed to work as it should, I think you would have seen a shift to HD DVD this year. As it is, I think we'll see further stagnation unless WB were to reverse its decision. Joe Sixpack really, really doesn't like being told that the $150 item is obsolete and dead as 8-track and that the $300 item is what he wants to buy, but that if he wants something a little more future-proof he should spend another $100 on a game console. I know there are people here that claim to "know retail" but unless you've actually been a retail grunt you don't fully know retail...Joe Sixpack may reluctantly buy BD eventually, but, just as he didn't like having DVD crammed down his throat, won't like having yet another incompatible format thrust upon him, this time with the added requirement that he have a high-def set, while 10 years ago he may have just needed an RF converter. The bar, and cost of entry, are higher this time around, and like it or not you need Joe Sixpack for BD to not be the next Laserdisc.

And I know there are Blu-Ray proponents who point out that Toshiba's selling their units at a loss to meet the magic price-point; fair enough. However, this past Christmas and on past the Warner announcement we saw partially obsolete Blu-Ray units being GIVEN AWAY. Granted, that was with certain HDTV sets, and there's a fair amount of markup on the things (there are on all electronics) but it's a bit telling that one camp is slashing prices into DVD upconverter territory while the other is bundling with TVs.

[DavidEC]

Few speak of it.. but what if Toshiba was able to play their real trump card and pulled the license agreement for many of the technologies that make the 'Blu-Ray' disc?
From how the disc is pressed to many of the parts used in every 'Blu-Ray' machine???
They could issue cease orders which would make it illigal for retailers to even sell the stock they currenly have.

[akirby]

You can't just "take back" a license unless the licensee violates the licensing agreement.