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NPD Group Says "Wait! HD-DVD Isn't Dead Yet"
The NPD group, owners of the not-quite-as-popular-as-they-had-hoped HD-DVD format, attempted to battle back against the tide of "naysayers" who claim that the format war is over and have declared Blu-Ray Disc the winner. "While select articles have implied that HD-DVD as a format is doomed and the sky is falling for the format's supporters, the NPD Group this afternoon reinforced that sales results from a single week do not necessarily indicate a trend, and that the week in question had several intriguing variables that have gone unreported."
The summary is partially incorrect. The NPD Group is a research firm, they do not own the HD-DVD format or anything close to it. The closest thing to HD-DVD's owners would be the DVD Forum, which is a consortium of companies.
The reason NPD is involved in this is because they are one of the big research firms for tracking sales data. NPD is the firm that released the earlier reporting talking about HD-DVD hardware sales slowing and this is a clarification of that. They are pointing out that one week's results can not be extrapolated to argue that HD-DVD is dying/dead like many people did, it's too short of a time period in a week with several unusual variables.
I'm trying to work out why the submitter thinks the NPD group has anything to do with HD DVD at all, let alone that they're the supporters. You appear to think the same thing. NPD is a market research firm. They, amongst other things, collect tallies of sales figures and pass this on to analysts and industry. They're complaining that various outlets misinterpreted their latest figures showing an immediate drop in HD DVD player sales just after the Warner announcement. One of those outlets was Slashdot, yesterday. They're not "supporters" of HD DVD, any more than they're "supporters" of Blu-ray.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.