HDTV Forum

According to sales statistics by Market Research Company NPD, Blu-ray is not a selling as one would expect after HD-DVD died.


Blu-ray player sales dropped 40% from January to February in the U.S. and only saw a 2 percent increase from February to Marc...]]> ...

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SURPRISE! I don't suppose any of us HD DVDer's would say I told you so but we did. It was basically the sale of PS3s that propelled the rise of Bluray - not all the baloney about how much more wonderful the disc capacity is. Movie collectors liked the reasonable pricing - and loved the loads of extras - and that's what propelled HD DVD.

And as some pointed out, there are lots of folks who just can't see all that much difference between a HD disc and an upconverted DVD.

Now, add that to a recession - everyone is very concerned about gas prices heading toward 4 bucks, but have you checked prices at the grocery store since gas went to over $3? If not, you should. Taking these things into consideration, even if Mr. Average Consumer already has bought and paid for his HDTV, does anyone seriously believe that he's going to put out 500 clams this summer for another new player and then opt to pay $100 more for every 10 movies he buys? Not in the immediate future, I don't think. The one business that might enjoy a boost is the rental business. From those already invested, at least......

And not to let Toshiba off the hook - We just got our free rebate HD DVDs after waiting 6 months! Wow, what great customer service. And guess what? They ran out of some titles so they substituted. We had a hard time finding 5 that appealed to us out of their ORIGINAL list, so you can imagine the crap that we got. Ah well, live and learn.

The results would have been the same had HD DVD survived and not BD.

I dount that. HD-DVD was the most affordable way for the masses to get in to HD discs, It offered more than BR could provide (INCLUDING capacity, with the 51gb disc) for less! Even know, a BR player that can do what HD-DVD offered will retail at $500 when the player debuts later this year!

If Warners didn'tdo what it did, competitive pricing would have continued, allowing the CONSUMER to make the decision, instead of just the game-console owners. I said at the time that the industry shot themselves in the foot and torpedoed mass adoption by killing HD-DVD. The industry will instead have to live with a niche product.

So explain why no other mfrs were selling sub $200 players with 5 free movies and why the first Toshiba players were 2-3 times that price.

A samsung stand alone BD player was $400 and a samsung combo player was $800. This is one of the few examples of a mfr that did not have a vested interest in one technology or the other and thus not trying to subsidize players or movies to win market share.

The subsidies would only have continued to the point where one side won or it was obvious that neither side was going to win.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply ignoring the facts.

I'm not referring to "the first" players. We are now a few years past the debut of HD discs. Third generation players offering everything except 1080p (and the overwhelming majority DO NOT have 1080p sets) were avaialble. And the highest price I've ever seen for the A3 was $250.00 at retail. More often it was $200.00. And even if the format battle ended diferently and the A3 now cost $299.00...that is still a couple hundred less than the up-coming Sony player.

The consumer doesn't care about subsidies...they care about out-of-pocket cost to them! And, as I said, since we're now into Year Three, a $400.00 or $500.00 HD player for movies that are available for $3 or $4 bucks via HD OnDemand, cable, satellite, etc. (and with a greater quantity of content) is not a smart buy for the average consumer.

If the industry had allowed the consumer to decide, instead of relying on a gaming console or trying to force an expensive alternative down their throats (not to mention alienting millions who owned/bought/received an HD-DVD player that Christmas!), then mass adoption would have a better shot.

With HD-DVD gone, the consumer is left with no economical choice. Yes, I'm sure in a few years the BR prices will come down. But by then....

The biggest red flag is that none of the other major electronics mfrs were selling HD DVD players. If the players could truly have been sold at a profit for $250 then LG and Samsung would have had players out in that price range. If, however, the true street price was closer to $350 or $400 then there is no way they could compete with $250 Toshibas since they had nothing to gain from the format war like Toshiba.

I'm not saying that consumers wouldn't get lower prices - only that the lower prices for HD DVD were artificial and short-lived regardless of what happened with the formats.

Believing otherwise is wishful thinking.

The Chinese made Ventura HD DVD player had a list price of $199. By the end of this year there will be many different CH DVD (Chinese HD DVD) players in the $150-$200 range. Moreover, HD DVD discs cost half as much to produce as Blue Ray discs. BR supporters forecasted that once the format war ended, there would be a great surge of pent-up demand for HD disc media. I cautioned from the beginning for BR supporters to be careful what they wished for. I was in favor of the production of discs in both formats; and let the market determine its preferences. Regardless of why prices were as low as they were, competition was, and would continue, benefiting consumers. We in this country have always been strongly anti-Communist; yet so many here supported the idea of the "commissars of industry" selecting the one format for the people (although here it was worse than communism because the idea was to increase prices rather than reduce them).

pmalter0 wrote:so many here supported the idea of the "commissars of industry" selecting the one format for the people (although here it was worse than communism because the idea was to increase prices rather than reduce them).

Agreed. I also have to laugh at the excuse that it is the economy hindering BR sales. In a nutshell, HDTV sales are up, upconverting DVD players are up, and Blu-Ray SA player sales are down.

The Chinese made Ventura HD DVD player had a list price of $199.

Chinese HD DVD is not a fair comparison due to the huge difference in licensing fees and and their own home grown firmware/software so they could keep royalties in their own country as much as possible.