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Blu-ray Disc Among Top Selling DVDs at Amazon
An anonymous reader writes "In a milestone for the next-gen disc format, the Blu-ray edition of 'Casino Royale' cracked the top ten on Amazon's DVD top sellers list upon its release Tuesday, peaking late in the evening at #8. Of course, the two-disc standard-def DVD still topped the chart at #1, but a strong showing for Blu-ray regardless."
Considering that, at this moment, the Amazon DVD top 100 is composed of 99 DVD (still including Firefly at #81, BTW) and 1 BR.
This says nothing about the format and everything about the movie.
woo a popular bond movie making it to the top of the charts on release?! OMG CALL THE PAPERS!!
Quite accurate. I have a blu-ray player (and HD-DVD), and my opinion of blu-ray is that Sony is just pushing releases out without a care on quality - honestly, some blu-ray movies are worse than if the DVD was upconverted (talladega nights anyone? My HD-DVD player did a much better job upconverting the DVD to 1080i than the PS3 did outputting a native 1080p (I have a 1080p TV) - honestly, the blu-ray version looked like someone recorded it to a VCR, then ran some lame upconverter on it, then ran the "blur" filter on it).
The good blu-ray I have is Employee of the Month, which at least looks decent. But I've had sharper images from HD-DVD (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being particularly sharp). I don't understand it since blu-ray has so much more capacity (50GB vs. 30GB), so HD-DVD should theoretically have worse picture quality, worse extras, worse everything because it's space-constrained.
In the end, I just picked up the cheaper DVD version - there weren't much extras, but I don't have faith in blu-ray transfers (I've got a few blu-rays simply in the search of "high def"). Being two-thirds the price clinched the deal.
(I should note that in Canada, the pricing of the LG "Super Multi Blue" player is more expensive than a PS3 and a regular HD-DVD player (and still pricier if you gave up the HD-DVD standalone player for the Xbox380+HD-DVD drive), yet you get two better players (PS3 can do blu-ray iHD, and a proper HD-DVD player must be able to do iHD) in the bargain. LG's player doesn't do iHD, which is why there's no official HD-DVD *LOGO* on it. Just "HD-DVD" in fancy suggestive type.)
This is an interesting comment as my wife and I subscribe to the Blockbuster delivery service and I've had to take Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs off our queue quite a few times as my wife just adds the first version of the movie she sees. One time, she even had the DVD and Blu-Ray version of the same movie on our queue, but that's another story.
I'm not saying that Amazon shoppers are making obvious buying errors and that the disc has no right being in the top 10, more just pointing out that difference between DVD and the other formats isn't always obvious to non-techies.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
The James Bond box set was on a special "Gold Box" deal yesterday, at $125, so that would be why it jumped up in sales.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when 300 comes out on home formats. That's going to be absolutely huge. I wonder if an HD-DVD exclusive would have the same effect...
I am an HD-DVD disc, and I am really getting a kick out of some of these replies.
It seems that most intelligent, tech-savvy slashdotters are predicting HD-DVD will be the winner, since they know more about the subject than the average consumer. So, naturally Blu-Ray will win ;-)
My rights don't end where your feelings begin.
You might want to switch to Netflix then, because Netflix won't allow you to add BluRay or HD DVD (not "HD-DVD") discs unless you tell it you have an appropriate player.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
But what you'll see if you've been following the comparison trends at:
http://eproductwars.com/dvd/
is that Blu-Ray passed HD-DVD early this year, and the sales gap is generally widening. It's not just a fluke of the Casino Royale release.
Couple this with the anemic release schedule for upcoming HD-DVDs compared to Blu-Ray, and it looks like Blu-Ray is on a pretty solid path to trouncing HD-DVD. I say this as the owner of an HD-DVD XBox addon (but not PS3 or any other Blu-Ray).