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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.
So do you hate BluRay because of some irrational hatred of Sony? I personally like BluRay because it comes free with a PS3 and the lack of have handed tactics by MS (such as buying support) used to try and force us all to convert. One of us. One of us. One of us.
Frankly if you want to look at the sides involved you could at most choose the lesser of two evils, lets see who is the convicted monopolist again? Who is the rootkit company again? Who insist on ignoring standards and enforcing their own inferior solutions on the public?
Sorry, this format war was about the difference between Jack Johnson and John Jackson. If the parties involved had been smart they would simply have merged their products and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
Oh and I don't hate MS, I just don't trust them, they got a very long history of lying to serve their own goals. Sony does the same, but I have never ever been forced to use a Sony product that was riddled with bugs. Can you say the same for MS?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They need to get burners to market in mass quantity as well as offer those licenses for free or very very small royalties.
Like pennies per unit. Plus they need to get the consumer on their side. The more hd-dvd players out there the more the industry has to listen. Unfortunately with the economy tanking this is hard. Right now I personally would put money making on the back burner and just look to break even. Make hd-dvd discs cheaper to buy then a normal dvd and make the players cheaper. At that point this whole thing can turn around , with consumer demand the studios have to listen. If smaller studios stick to the format then there really can be a price market , smaller studios usually make lower cost films and don't need to recoup so much back.
The reason I say they need burners in high volume asap, is that whether they like it or not piracy is often times a real boost to sales. It's been proven that it helps.( http://www.stargeek.com/item/41324.html ) ( http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=243454 )
The american and canadian dbs providers , even cable can thank piracy for large subscriber growth. They really should get those burners out in high volumes fast.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
It wants to go for a walk!
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
As an insider I can attest to the fact that the online world has been nailed by one of the most successful viral marketing campaigns ever waged in a digital format war. An unnamed company (or three) got together before the recent announcement by Warner Bros in the weeks before CES to orchestrate this domino effect. The game plan was, in a nutshell, that Warner Bros would announce their support for Blu-Ray (even though they will continue to make HD-DVD for some time) and their subsidiaries would follow closely with announcements. Then it was revealed that Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and Twentieth Century-Fox Home Entertainment would reaffirm their commitment to the format. This information was fed into the biggest gadget blogs with the underlying message that the war is over. This was parroted near verbatim by submissions to all of the major technology and social bookmarking sites. Major audio video forums had been primed with posters working for the viral marketing firms employed to pull this off. Overnight every major site on the internet along with mainstream media was singing the Blu-Ray song. To make sure the statistics following CES would confirm the "Blu-Ray has won" story manufacturers were heavily discounting Blu-Ray players. This week, much to no ones surprise, this came true.
So why am I sharing this? I am firmly in the Blu-Ray camp but the techniques employed in this war have been rather unethical. Which blog or news agency will be the first to hunt down the facts in this story to confirm my story?
Don't buy it? Then read this article on TechChrunch which describes the same techniques used to market viral videos.
It not dead yet, just resting and dreaming of Norway.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
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.
You laugh, but HD DVD is at least a DRM optional format like DVD. Blu-ray mandates AACS - you can't press a Blu-ray disc without AACS for some reason.
Not that any studios are putting out AACS free HD DVD discs, but the possibility is there for any company that wants to act ethically - or that just doesn't see the onerous licensing requirements as worth the money supposedly saved by using DRM.
And yeah, I like the fact HD DVD is region free too.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I agree both formats are probably dead, but not for the reasons you state:
Here's the more probable reason why both formats will likely fail:
The studios are largely backing Blu-ray. That means HD DVD will likely fail unless Toshiba can get a hell of a lot of players out in the next six months.
Blu-ray cannot succeed either. The players are expensive and unlikely to come down in price. Most of the players on shelves right now are obsolete. The only player worth getting is the PS3. The PS3 is sufficiently powerful enough that the upcoming changes to the Blu-ray spec are just a matter of updating the firmware. Many standalone Blu-ray players have no internet connectivity (required for recent Blu-ray spec changes), and nothing like enough storage capacity.
HD DVD, interestingly, doesn't have this issue. Much of the recent revisions to Blu-ray have to do with bringing it up to spec in capabilities to HD DVD. But the studios seem to be going Blu-ray. So it doesn't matter.
I don't think consumers are going to go for either. For Blu-ray to take off, it needs cheap players - sub-$200 before there's any chance of mass market starting to take off, with sub-$100 players to truly achieve DVD-like penetration. it certainly isn't going to work with $300-500 players that you already know you'll need to replace within the year. That'll piss people off, especially when they start playing DVDs and HD discs back to back and notice that the visual quality they paid $300 for isn't that dramatic after all. Oh, sure, 2001 and Blade Runner look awesome. But anything action based isn't, and who cares if a romantic comedy is high definition?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Blu-Ray at this point is simply too expensive to be any good for backups,at least for me. And I care more about burning my own media than I do about formats, which is why I and a LOT of people I know are sticking with DVD.And let us not forget that the cheapness of digicams and other forms of user content creation. And people are a lot more used to being able to burn a disc and share it with friends than passing around hard drives. I just hope they are forward thinking enough to see this instead of helping Blu-Ray kill the competition by keeping licenses high.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Blu-Ray: You fight with the strength of many men, HD-DVD. [Slashes HD-DVD's arm off]
HD-DVD: 'Tis but a scratch.
Blu-Ray: A scratch? Your arm's off!
HD-DVD: No, it isn't.
BLU-RAY: Victory is mine! We thank Thee Lord, that in Thy mer--
HD-DVD: Hah! [kick] Come on, then. Have at you!
You can talk about sales rates or attach rates or how much shelf space is dedicated to blue boxes as opposed to red boxes, you can talk about technical merit or political merit, you can talk about studios committing to or being bought out by one side or another. You can talk about all number of things, but I know the war is over.
Blu-ray wins. I know this to be true.
I know this because sitting on the shelf underneath my teevee is a Toshiba HD-A3.
Plus I think that a lot of folks out there have stuff they want to back up that is really pointless for anything other than discs. I have about a spindle full of drivers for most of the major pc manufacturers from my days at the repair shop. It would be crazy to waste the money on a HDD for stuff I only need once in a blue moon,whereas it is only 25c to back it up on DVD. And at that price I can afford to make more than one copy of things I really want to keep.
And for those of you who have a disc that has trouble reading, I have had very good luck with this. I know most of the recovery tools are bunk, but I've recovered discs with this that literally looked like someone had played hockey with them. Great tool to have in your toolkit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.