You are correct, and that is exactly how it stands now. In each formats first 6 weeks of sales, HD DVD outsold in units, while Blu-ray outsold in revenue.
Sony may be able to claim higher sales from a dollar perspective since their hardware can be double per unit cost compare to a HD-DVD.
Remember, it's Samsung that has the player out right now, not Sony.
Another subtlety burried within your comment (and as videograbber pointed out) is that Blu-ray appears to have much higher margins for the retailer ... thus the reason most retailers appear to be pushing Blu-ray while HD DVD is burried off to the side.
- Shane
Publisher, HDTV Magazine Your Guide to High Definition Television
Too early to tell. Comparing sales over the past 6 weeks, when both players were available, Blu-ray leads slightly in unit sales ... but HD DVD is gaining.
That is true, but next time I would appreciate you verifying the facts before presuming they are flawed or slanted.
Yet that fact is flawed and slanted in even more ways than I was aware of based on the responses that followed... I am not accusing YOU of misrepresenting the facts that you found or were given. I guess I questioned what purpose did it serve to report it?
Hi,
Its been proven over and over that software sells hardware.
Were not going to see any meaningful #s until the studios drop the other shoe. DVD was a huge success in part because the PQ was leaps an bounds over vhs.
Theres a whole world out there that is more intersted in a films content than (in relative terms) a very expensive incremental increase in PQ.
I certainly would not consider it an incremental increase in picture and sound quality... seems pretty huge on my end and after so much HD, SD DVD is finally looking like SD rather than near HD. A huge point on my end is having a display that can do the numbers and using a critical viewing distance of 3 screen heights. With HD DVD players at less than $500 it is not pricey either but with Bluray starting at $1000 that I agree is an expensive proposition unless you are an enthusiast with money to burn.
I grant you that most do not have a top performing display and sit too far away which would create the performance response you have stated, incremental. Being out in the field though you would be shocked how so many people set up their DVD players wrong and use the worst video connection it has. For them going HD DVD or Bluray would not be incremental since it will force them to setup correctly; yet another fly in the performance perception ointment...
As for software selling hardware... That is the burr in my hide! I was looking forward to the HD version of 5th Element, it would have motivated me to buy a bluray player and what do I find out? The audio is no better than my Superbit version and the video is only marginally better due to poor mastering by Sony. I am not happy with them...
Thanks for the article, however I wonder whether the real issue impacting this, and I assume many other consumers has been missed. I was a very early adopter of CDs believing not that it was superior to LPs, but that it was the way forward. This proved to be predominantly true, i.e. digital was the future. Since then we moved to DVD, another great solution. So after nmearly 30 years of microgroove stereo records we moved to CD. 20 years after VHS we move to DVD, but then the industry completely lost the plot, and the formats started coming thick and fast, and unlike their predecessors they offered little innovation, only minor evolution. Rather than push the technical envelope for the benefit of consumers, the manufacturers have become obsessed with meaningless format wars. I am sorry to see that DVD-A and SACD have predominately failed (I count myself an audiophile, and am friends with many others, none of us have bothered to purchase SACD or DVD-A players - why get stuck down an expensive rat hole), but I wholly blame the manufacturers and the music industry for lacking any imagination at all and caring nothing for their customers. Now along comes HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, same greedy manufacturers, but now the greedy movie industry as well. Frankly I expect both formats to suffer a similar irrelevance to the industry.
But if the improvement in picture and sound is enormous (allegedly, I've seen neither) why I am so disillusioned? The issue is simple, when push comes to shove I simply want pristine audio and video, the best they can sell me, and the best I can afford. But, unlike the music and video industries I've grasped that technology has moved on, the Internet is here, hard drives are borderline free. Highly reliable disk storage is a little more than free. So why do I need a very expensive, bleeding edge hard coded player that won't evolve with technology advances? Why do I need silvery disks that aren't as convenient as a home network? The answer is I don't, at all, HTPCs offer a better solution for early adopters, but rather the spend the money to develop decent open DRM solutions to exploit these devices and really allow consumers to benefit from technical advances I am asked to spend $1000s on equipment that will be outmoded in a few years, and probably won't play my older music and video disks. And to make it worse Toshiba is selling me a PC, pretending to be a player, but not in a way that I can use moving forward - something a real PC offers me. So if HD-DVD fails, I can junk it? What a waste...
Rest assured these same companies, Sony, Toshiba etc. will be developing the next generation audio and video playback systems as we wait for these ones to mature - digital technology makes it that easy. But in reality, it's a video codec and an audio codec we care about, and instead they blow billions on laser technology that adds nothing to my enjoyment. To make it worse, what we think of as bleeding edge, and pristine today we will understand to be flawed as we move forward. In nearly 100 years of audio reproduction we can all hear the limitations of our sound systems compared to live music - and this is what makes the industry great, constant improvements, but blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD, CD offer no fundamental difference to each other, they simply store bits on a disk and extract it using lasers, and yet I am expected to dump a lot of money each time to ensure decent quality in a multiformat player (when they are finally available) or stack player after player - for what? Nothing except supporting wooden thinking and backward engineering.
Personally, I am tired of format wars, I don't see why I should fund the winner or loser of these battles. Sure I want the improvements, and I'm happy to fund these improvements by buying the software and the hardware to play it, but not formats that are orthogonal to improvements in the sound and picture quality - they are simply media. By contrast if we used hard drives, internet downloading and software loadable codecs I'd have a somewhat future proofed solution (not that I wouldn't need to keep buying hardware for these larger files, more powerful codecs, better displays, more powerful amplifiers, smaller and more precise speakers), and as we these standards become more mainstream they'll migrate to hardware, but I wouldn't be stuck with a lemon, and I can leverage this platform to keep buying teh bleeding edge. It would also free up more money to spend money on the music and videos that got me started down this path in the first place. And the obvious benefit, nothing would ever go out of stock, or be deleted, there'd be no need to pirate films that you can't buy any more due to stocking space.
Sorry for the dissertation - the MPAA and the RIAA are missing their time, and we're funding that bill, it's time this stopped.
Nice magazine by the way, please keep it coming...
(I count myself an audiophile, and am friends with many others, none of us have bothered to purchase SACD or DVD-A players - why get stuck down an expensive rat hole),
I did make the purchase and have only one issue... new releases are going down quickly. Otherwise it was a huge improvement for CD and SACD and DVD-Audio are the audiophile BOMB! As an audiophile this is a great time to pick up used equipment and discs for a fraction of what I and many others paid.
Kudos to your overall statement about the potential power of the PC and internet.
Two points
The US is behind on internet hi speed capacity and our system can't handle what you propose if everybody goes that route.
Take 10 consumers and hand them an HD DVD/Bluray player and a PC with the same capability. You can't help them; they have to use the same support of owners manual, friends and store employees to hook it up, set it up and play the disc. Which one is easier and requires far less time to operate and understand for the mass market?
As powerful as the PC is it requires much of the user; far too much at this time for a mass market approach in my opinion.
I think you've hit my frustration nail on the head. The quality improvements are immense, but because of the duplicate formats requiring store front support the stores only stock what sells, because real estate is expensive (be it store front or online warehouse). And because CD, DVD-A and SACD compete, and most people buy CDs, the stocking of low volume items is too expensive, so everyone misses out on these formats. I believe that BluRay and HD-DVD will go the same way, for the same reason. Their main chance to survive is that I think people prefer to buy videos over music - but that is a gut feeling, and there may be just enough volume to support them. The problem is that CD and DVD are good enough for the masses - often because they are not aware of what is so easily available AND because backwards compatibility is not assured AND because the industry is not offering a universal solution, but a mixed message - too many formats and positioned as a videophile/audiophile experience.
I do agree, the PC is not the panacea for everyone. The vast majority of users would not relish the opportunity. The HW is often flaky, Microsoft does not specialise in open reliable OSes, but they are easy to use. Linux is reliable and open, but complex to use (I am a Linux user of 8 years and still get frustrated when I try to push my envelope) - and Apple has only started to embrace the x86 architecture idea, so not open enough yet. To make it worse, it's nearly impossible to confirm support for something as basic as 1920x1080P video support for a graphics card, nor can you reliably predict the CPU and memory demands of an MPEG2 and MPEG4 streams. So these remain the domain of the knowledgable, experimenters and early adopters - the very people likely to embrace these new HD formats.
However I am proposing something a little different, i.e. the above, but more. The ability to stream, or move data from a local server to a local player does not require generic HW, but hardware based on generic technologies - i.e. the PC and the Server. Those of us able and motivated by leading edge technologies could download the latest codecs, install the appropriate graphics and sound cards and reap the benefits of these advances - at sensible incremental costs. Those more cautious can purchase a ready made media PC, with a shrink wrapped OS, and wait a little longer for the codecs, graphics and sound cards. The ability to upgrade sound and graphics cards may require proprietary plugin hardware, or a new machine, the former flexbility being more expensive than the latter absence of flexbility - but not that much more! These consumers certainly wouldn't be worse off than they are now, infact they'd be better off, as the older material would definitely still play (lower bitrate, same codec), their backend storage wouldn't change and they'd reap the benefits of not having to trail blaze new, potentially doomed, technologies. One enormous benefit the industry would see is the take up of the new high quality formats by the early adopters, and it could then move towards these goals in shrink wrapped hardware. But the benefits go further for the HW manufacturers, no need to waste money on doomed format development, as the PC would absorb those challenges and the market would demonstrate it's desires. In addiiton as these systems get deployed, the ability to install full house systems would be simple, an Ethernet or better yet WLAN connection to every room is all thats needed to have every song, every film and every TV station in every room - but each room would need a screen, speakers and a media PC - plenty of ways to make money!
Like hundreds and thousands of others I've already built an HTPC, with full PVR, remote storage, unified music store etc., and I did this without writing a single line of code, nor having to pay for any software, such is the power of Open Source - i.e. it's all completely legal and above board. And while I agree that this isn't for everyone, the degree of complexity is moderated by one's willingness to buy off the shelf software and hardware - the more you spend the easier it is. But we HTPC people ARE the early adopters, we want perfection, but we want flexbility and futureproofing as well. We're already demonstrating what the market will want in the next few years.
Switching topics, I am not sure I agree with you regarding the Internet. I've been working in data communications for 20 years, and have been working with UK, US and global Internet Service Providers and Carriers on public IP infrastructure for the last 12. In all this time the service providers have been waiting the "killer app", the bandwidth driver that's going to move the Internet to even greater heights, and bandwidth is easy on the backbone, there is a ton of dark fiber all over the planet, and Cisco and Juniper have more routing capacity than is being used by any provider today. However, while we definitely don't have the infrastructure to support live streaming - that will be the domain of IMS and IPTV and has many technical challenges beyond bandwidth - which is something else I am relishing the prospect of receiving - the bandwidth on the backbone is clearly there to support downloading video and music. Equally with Cable, xDSL, FIOS etc. bandwidth to the home is already there. What I am proposing is replacing the drive to the store, or waiting for Amazon to deliver, with setting my PC off to download these files while I use my time to do other things. Once I have the files, I merely store them on a reliable server and away I go. The latest technology for the cost of the video or music itself!
The RIAA and MPAA firstly, need to embrace technology and not panic when 15 year old kids from Norway outsmart their over paid techies and crack the encryption - which they will always be able to do. But on that front iTunes offers a potential solution. While I can't say I care for iTunes, why pay for low quality, Why not sell me pristine quality and give me the low quality copies for my mpeg player? Those of us willing to buy the media will buy the media, those of us who are happy to pirate it will pirate it - we've done it for years, they used to be called casette tapes, and nearly everyone (probably including the execs at the MPAA, RIAA and every record company) did it - it was fine - but we still bought the original pristine version. If the music and video industry offered every song and every film in very low res for free - the pirates will be catered for, as they can get it for free, and those of us who would have bought will still buy as we want quality and completeness. Witness the Arctic Monkeys, an overnight success in the UK, the fastest selling debut album of all time,. why? because they gave the first three singles away on MySpace and the potential purchasers were so hungry for more they happily paid for the CD, and hardly a penny wasted on marketing. Time for a new paradigm chaps...
Switching topics, I am not sure I agree with you regarding the Internet.
While the backbone may have the speed and overall capacity the problem as I understand is from the back bone to my house based on some articles over the last year. I can dig one of those up if necessary...
As for PC, all I can say is if somebody can figure out how to put one together that the average shmoe can operate for his HT there is a fortune to be made out there! Make it and they WILL come!
Again you are correct, access technology remains a barrier - but a diminishing one. With regard to local loop - the bit between you and the backbone, the issue is that there is not enough bandwidth for streaming of HDTV, to the best of my memory this is about 20 Mbps for 1080i. Clearly today's cable (about 8 Mbps for top end), xDSL (about 1.5 Mbps) are inadequate - by contrast FIOS from Verizon promises up to 30 Mbps - which would allow a single channel - streaming that is. But what I am proposing is not streaming at all, but unmonitored downloading, the same as copying a file to your PC., i.e. iTunes for HD video and audio. If a two hour movie takes three hours to download - its frustrating, but that's all. Once it's downloaded 20 Mbps is readily available in today's home wireless (though only just) and easily in wired networks, and the next generation of wireless technologies will throw bandwidth at the problem as well. However SDTV (well sub SDTV to be honest) is regularly streamed across the Internet, MySpace, YourTube and numerous boutique sporting channels rely on streaming events. The picture quality is merely adequate, but a two hour event is pushed live to hundreds of viewers. Having that streamed to my sw scalar, denoiser and deinterlacer and put on to a decent TV is a goal, but again the use of closed Microsoft formats prevent this, at this time.
I think IPTV will move from MPEG2 to MPEG4 because of this bandwidth issue, but at the same time FIOS and other fiber to the home technologies will increase domestic local loop well beyond the sub 10 Mbps we see common today. Streaming is the solution, it's not today, but it could be sooner than the next flavor of disc technology if we want to make it happen!
Purpose built PCs exist, the first Xbox, ReplayTV and Toshiba's HD-DVD players are all simply PCs, the former running a variant of Windows, the latter custom versions of Linux. All the current media servers are also basically PCs. Making them a little more flexible, well that's a little harder, but USB, Firewire, SATA are making things pluggable, the next step is to make their physical form factor more appealing to domestic environments. But I don't disagree, crack this problem, and the market should open up, but it's so accessible everyone would jump on board so quickly, so hard to justify the expense upfront for a small company, but it would be far far cheaper for a Toshiba or a Sony to do than to develop the next version of laser technology.
