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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."
Being a long-time PlayStation fan, I bought a PS3 this year, and have been very satisfied with it. So now that the format wars are over, what will Microsoft do with their ill-faded Xbox 360 HD DVD player?
My fried bought the accessory (which, of corse, costs extra) when it first came out, despite me telling him it's a risk. But he bought it. So what happens to all the people who bought the Xbox 360 with dreams of watching HD movies?
I think it's funny. Microsoft, using their stupid buisness model, created the Xbox 360 "Elite" to give people this stuff, the Microsoft way (adding yet another version to the long growing versions of Microsoft products). So now is the HD DVD player for Xbox 360 a paperweight? Is this a victory for the PS3?
I bought PS3 (and Rock Band!) pretty quickly after the news came out.
Now you will have to get yourself a nice Sony TV to make sure the "trusted path" hangs together. I wonder if Universal and Paramount will continue working on the set. You can see where this goes, digital restrictions are an extortion that never ends even if it looks like the conspirators are cooperating with each other now. It's software that can be "updated" and revoked at anytime.
Look, go tell your masters that the only hope would be if they could somehow convince content providers to release content without DRM.
Yup, that is right. The only chance in hell HD-DVD has now as a technology is to play the open card for all its worth.
This is simpler than it seems: companies keep clinging to obscure back catalogue like if it was the bee's knees. Release this in DRMless HD-DVD and you could have a winner.
Once you are back in the game come back and contact me to send me a check. I'll take 1% from each player sold.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The end is near.
It doesn't matter either way, I've already made the jump to a non-optical home system anyway. The disc is just a convient method of transfer not what I use for playback. The only difference in the HD formats is HD DVD I was willing to buy, but anything from SONY is rental only. They won't be seeing too many of my $$, much like they don't from DVD sales now.