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Blu-ray/HD DVD Disc Sales Numbers Revealed
An anonymous reader writes "The High-Def format wars finally have a yardstick against which to measure who's winning with the first public release of VideoScan sales figures for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. The first two weeks' worth of data seem to back up what many predicted — that the Blu-ray-enabled PS3 is helping Sony quickly close the gap with HD DVD, with almost three Blu-ray discs sold for every one HD DVD during the first week of January. HD DVD still leads in overall discs sold since inception, but that lead looks to be quickly dwindling. While they do show a trend, the results from VideoScan are still fairly vague. Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?"
This hurts the consumer on way too many levels. You might as well release music in several formats...Oh, wait a minute...where's my 8 track player? Ooh! I just found my Betamax VCR. Screw this DVD shit, it won't last out the year's end.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!
You know, the Blu-ray/HD DVD squabble is not actually important. You rights aren't being trampled on. Most people couldn't care less about it; they're happy with their DVDs and don't mind letting you *philes hash it out with your disposable income.
Get a grip.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
That comment is insane for so many reasons. Not the least of which being that Blu-Ray could "beat" HD-DVD and still lose. If they 5 times as many Blu-Ray media as HD-DVD, but only sell 10,000 units per year, then they fail. From TFA:
you won't find any hard sales figures here
In other words, we have no idea how either format is doing on an absolute scale.
"According to VideoScan, during the first two weeks of January, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVD by more than a 2:1 margin."
Why does the summary make Blu-Ray sound better by saying it outsold HD DVD by 3:1 in 1 week? Do I detect a bias?
- Sony has never won a format war, haven't they learned their lesson? Just look at Beta and MD.
- Sony has had great sucess with their formats, can you say CD?
- There is no reason for anybody to even upgrade past DVD. There is simply no big difference between any new formats and DVD
- I simply will not buy anything from Sony after the whole DRM fiasco
- HD will win out because there will be more HD players on the market because of the cheap HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360
- There will be more Blue Ray players on the market because every PS3 comes with a Blue Ray drive
- Nobody will buy the HD DVD drive addon for the Xbox 360 because it is too expensive
- Nobody will buy the PS3 because it is too expensive
- Blue Ray disks hold more information than HD DVD disks and so Blue Ray will win
- HD DVD disks hold more information than Blue Ray disks so HD DVD will win
- What are you guys talking about? Its all about Nintendo
- Neither format will win because people will be downloading movies from here on our
- The name HD DVD just sounds better than Blue Ray
- The name Blue Ray just sounds better than HD DVD
- Movies these days are worthless I havent watched a movie in 25 years
Hopes this helps shed some light on which format is better.The one thought that keeps swirling through my mind when I browse through the HD movie section at my local Best Buy is, Who the HECK figures out the pricing for these things?!
How can Little Man cost $29 but the Fifth Element is only $19!?
I've owned the HD-DVD drive for the XBox360 now since it's launch and the only HD disc I currently own is the free copy of King Kong that came with it.
I'm floored that new titles aren't being released in both DVD and in their respective HD format at the same time. The studios seem too busy trying to 'catch up', releasing titles already available on DVD. I know they're doing this in hopes that people purchase both the DVD version and HD version when it's released later, in an effort to double their money.
Makes me want to vomit.
FWIW, Bluray is superior to HD-DVD in many ways. So it has had (and still has) a good chance of "winning" against the competing HD-DVD format. The real problem with such a "win" is that it's not much of a "win" if you claim victory in the battle, but lose the war. Allow me to explain.
Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions. As it would seem, the vast majority of consumers are happy enough with their TVs as they are today. The real consumer push has been a much different one than quality.
Consumers today are looking for convenience first and quality second. They want to be able to sit in their living room and chose what they want to watch (or play!), when they want to watch it. Nothing makes this more apparent than the popularity of the TIVO and other DVR players.
These players timeshift shows from their regular schedules to a time that is more convenient for the viewer. Thanks to thier ties with online TV schedules, a user can setup his DVR to record dozens of shows. When he feels in the mood to watch something, he can then chose from the options at his disposal.
However, this process does have its drawbacks. The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.
The second drawback is that these devices have limited capacity. Once they are full, you must remove some material in order to make room for more material. This biases the devices against consumers who watch television on few, rare occasions, but enjoy a wide variety of entertainment.
The solution on the horizon is not digital transmissions over the airwaves, by digital cable, or even by plastic frisbees. The solution is to stream the video directly to the consumer over a broadband internet line. This allows the consumer to access a wide variety of quality material, but without the same storage drawbacks that limit DVR devices.
So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I have mod points and I figured this would be a good discussion, but I'll reply to you instead.
First, dual format players CAN'T WIN the war. They are not a format. Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format. Dual format PLAYERS may win the PLAYER WAR, but the disc format war has no real hybrids right now.
Second, these discussions constantly suppose that someone will win. I've seen one comment so far that I agree with: by the time these things reach something akin to a critical mass or become big successes, I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close. These things may just be failed. Too early for cheap prices and large HDTV adoption, too late to enjoy a long advantage over internet distribution.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
As to the question "Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?," I answer: I have all the information I need. With the DRM constraints, I don't intend to buy discs of either format.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
What the hell are you talking about? For one, there is *NO* HD-DVR out there that encodes the material it's storing. None. Zero. Nada. There's simply too much video to make that realistic. Every one of these machines simply demodulates the QAM, pulls out the MPEG stream, and saves it to disk. That's it. No quality loss whatsoever.
Second, storage is a solved problem. Harddisks get bigger every single day. It's simply not an issue. Granted, existing DVRs are a little lean on storage, but that will change with time (my Myth box at home has 250GB, and there are many with 1TB+ setups).
Third, the very idea of Internet distribution of HD, which can be upwards of 7 *gigabytes per hour*, is simply laughable. There's no way in hell that would get popular enough to sway the HD-DVD/Blu-ray battle in any way whatsoever.
I'll be patient, and TiVo it when it's on cable.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law