HD DVD Player Sales Grind To a Halt

Lucas123 writes "While the news may fall under the 'Duh' category, it's still relatively shocking how quickly the death knell for HD DVD player sales came on after Warner Bros. announced they were dropping dual hi-def DVD format support in order to back only Blu-ray. According to a Computerworld story, the week after Warner's announcement, sales of HD DVD players dropped to 1,758, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc players, up from 15,257 the previous week."

Comments

"blue ray player" totals

[damn_registrars]

Previously, I had heard that the total sales for blue ray players included sales of PS3 consoles. Are they included in these numbers as well? I know that there are certainly people out there who bought PS3's with the intention of playing PS3 games, and didn't really care that they could play blue ray movies as well.

That said, of course the loss of another studio from HD DVD to Blue Ray likely didn't hurt sales of stand-alone blue ray players, either.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[Moonpie Madness]

I hear this line a lot. Why does it matter?

If you count the PS3s, then you also increase the denominator when determining the ratio of players to media purchases, the attach rate.

I think the only honest way to report on blu-ray is to include PS3s and accept a lower attach rate (if there is one). Frankly, most blu-ray players are PS3s, and it's simply an obvious selection for those who aren't interested in video games, so excluding it is insane.

I know of several PS3 owners. Some of them only have the free blu-rays. Fair enough. None of them are unaware of the HD disc abilities, but some just don't watch movies. The statistics reflect this reality, so I see no reason to adjust things strangely.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[Moonpie Madness]

Anyone know if the blu-ray folks were similarly inconsistent? Excluding the PS3 when discussing attach rate? Seems unlikely to me.

The HD-DVD campaign failed as soon as it became evident the PS3 was not going to flop, at least that's my view of the situation. When the PS3 looked doomed and 600$, it wasn't hard to believe that the HD0DVD camp would prevail.

But how do you compete with the PS3? It's not that expensive next to a great TV and movie collection, and it does all that media stuff + is a future proof blu-ray player. Almost unfair. I wonder why the 360 didn't come out with built in HD-DVD? I beleive it HD-DVD would have dominated had that been the case.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[samkass]

I think the only honest way to report on blu-ray is to include PS3s and accept a lower attach rate (if there is one).

I generally agree, but there might be more illuminating ways to break it down. There are PS3's that are sold packaged with movies. An 'attach rate' that counts those but not PS3s sold with game packages might be interesting. Also interesting might be the 'attach rate' counting sales of the PS3 Blu-Ray remote control, which while not required is probably a high-priority item for people who bought the PS3 largely to play media.

But in the end, I'm not sure the immediate attach rate matters much. A lower attach rate means higher opportunity, since I suspect most PS3 owners will buy at least one Blu-Ray movie just to see what all the fuss is about and the existing attach rate is less than 1.0.

And with Sony selling more PS3s per quarter than HD DVD players have ever been built (is that statistic still valid?) the sales of standalone players hardly matters anymore.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[samkass]

Thus it's ironic that Blu-Ray is a much more open format than HD DVD. Blu-Ray interactive media is based on the Java language, which is going open-source (although BD-J-specific JVMs aren't yet), while HD DVD is based on the Microsoft-controlled iHD standard. Blu-Ray encourages the use of MP4/AAC instead of HD DVDs Microsoft-controled VC-1 (although both formats support both, the authoring tools for each push studios in specific directions). And the PS3, the most prolific Blu-Ray player on the market by far, has "install linux" as a menu item out of the box. Sony doesn't even hold the most patents on Blu-Ray, so the IP situation is more diversified.

Anyway, I never bought a memory stick or PSP-format game, but Blu-Ray seems to be closer to Sony "getting it".

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[MsGeek]

MS was BRILLIANT in not bundling HD-DVD with the XBox 360. They can now quietly put out a plug-in Blu-Ray player for the box and catch what's looking like a tsunami for Blu-Ray.

HD-DVD will be the RCA SelectaVision of the high definition DVD-like disk era. Remember those? Flimsy 12" disks encased in a plastic carrier and read by a stylus, they'd fall apart after a few plays. This allowed Pioneer to own the videodisc market with LaserDisc.

Heh, Sony has gotten its revenge for Betamax.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[twistedsymphony]

...then they turn around and offer kits to install Linux on PS2s and even support Linux out of the box on a PS3

That's a different situation entirely... A group of console/linux hackers basically held Sony hostage saying that they cracked the console and if Sony didn't offer an official Linux distro they'd go public and open the door to pirates as well. Sony obliged and we got an official Linxu distro. The same group did the same thing to MS over the Xbox 1, MS denied and the console was cracked wide open to the point where it can be used as a fully functioning PC with little more than a screwdriver and a soldering iron.

Even still the PS3 does offer more open standard support than their competitors. You can use Generic hard drives, generic bluetooth devices, generic memory units, generic usb devices, etc. while it's mostly proprietary on the 360 and Wii.

Sony's Biggest folly IMO is their abhorrent lack of organization both blu-ray and the PS3 in their release configurations were running on un-finalized specs, blu-ray is just now finalizing it's spec and basically obsoleting most of the early players, and disc releases and the PS3 still feels incomplete and probably wont feel "finished" until the release of home/full integration of the x-media bar. At least the HD-DVD spec was finalized and all the players and media supported that spec on day 1.

one week

[Anonymous Coward]

And as the article points out, the information from that week is useful to gauge sales for that one week only. Since Toshiba responded the following week with massive price cuts, the sales figures will be drastically different for the following weeks. Basically, these numbers will be all over the map for a while, and won't be useful for generating any sort of trend. That said, it is clear that HD DVD will be going away soon.

Don't Count HD-DVD Out Yet

[ergo98]

During the week following Warner's announcement -- a period in which the HD-DVD group went into hiding while they regrouped -- FUD went absolutely rampant. Eclipsing the damage of Warner's announcement were rumors from so-called insiders that Paramount and Universal were also jumping ship, along with the standard claims that the adult industry was going blu. If you do a news search on HD-DVD right now you'll continue to find the same FUD, blown into a life of its own by blogger referencing blogger referencing blogger, repeating the same disproven claim.

In this vacuum of information, there's no surprise that HD-DVD sales collapsed, and it isn't because of the loss of Warner's catalog.

Since then the outcome is much less certain, however. Toshiba hasn't just conceded (and they shouldn't -- just prior to Warner's announcement it was 50/50), but instead they've come out swinging, dropping the price of their units by half (obviously it has to be cheap to compete with a format that largely was acquired for "free" as an added value of a game system). This price puts a very capable HD-DVD player with ethernet, HDMI, optical audio, and so on, as cost competitive with a decent upscaling DVD player -- and the Toshiba unit is a very good upscaling player. Add the 7 or more free HD-DVD movies that'll work forever even if HD-DVD dies, and a catalog of 1000 or so HD-DVD movies already on the market, it's a hell of a deal. If someone could hack this baby to be a media head unit it would absolutely own.

Reports are that sales have been absolutely massive, and Toshiba's campaign has been a success. Warner since has extended their HD-DVD support by almost a month, and other very positive rumors have circulated about HD-DVD.

Don't write HD-DVD off quite yet.

As an aside, one thing that really pisses me off about this war are claims that the end of the format war would be good for consumers. This is as logical as saying that Windows and IE should be universal -- good for consumers. Worse, Blu-ray has so many consumer-unfriendly facets (cost, no combo discs, a standard that's still in flux, early adopters getting screwed, the nebulous DRM of BD+) that it winning can never be perceived as a consumer win. Yeah, I'm biased because I didn't choose a format to win based upon a game unit I happened to buy.

Re:Take with a grain of salt or two...

[Wdomburg]

Oh, it's also worth noting that all three current Toshiba players (A3, A30, A35) have been in the top ten at Amazon since the price cut.

MS has said from the start that the 360 can switch

[tacroy]

One of the rationals of doing an external player was so that they could just make a blu-ray addon if HD-DVD didn't win. The main difference is that blu-ray and the PS3 are intimately intertwined. However, the 360 is just a video game machine that you can buy an add-on movie player too. Very few people (that I know of) bought the 360 as a movie player, compared at least, to the apparent many that bought the PS3 for its movie ability. So for all intent the HD-DVD addon, will suffer the same fate as a standalone player, and have little affect on the 360.

Re:DVDs Still Work Just Fine

[afabbro]

Not sure about digital delivery, but the fact is that consumers are not going to replace their home libraries they way they did when they went from VHS->DVD (or tape/LP->CD for that matter). End of story. Without that, a new format really doesn't mean much in terms of economic effect for companies.

When my DVD player burns out, I'll buy an HD player if it's the same price and plays my existing DVDs. After that, maybe I'd buy some HD discs. Otherwise, I'll just keep waiting. That's the attitude of 99.9% of consumers.

Re:I bought a PS3, and only for HD movies -nt

[Stamen]

I pretty much did the same thing, I bought the PS3 mainly for the Blu-Ray. Why is this having "a lot of cash to burn"?

I wanted a Blu-Ray player, and the PS3 was only $80 more than a pure player, and it got good ratings on the quality of movie playback. I figured the extra $80 was worth getting a game console and media center thrown in. Seems like good economic sense to me.