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Blu-ray Adoption Soft, More Still Own HD DVD
MojoKid writes "A new study by Harris Interactive notes that currently,
one in ten Americans (10%) own an HD DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player. Crazy, right?
More Americans own HD DVD right now than the 'winning' format, Blu-ray. If you think about it, that statistic isn't that shocking. When HD DVD was around, it was far and away the 'budget' format for high-def. The players were cheaper, the films were cheaper. In other words, it was a format more ready to thrive in a down economy. Blu-ray was always viewed as a niche format for those absorbed in A/V, not the common man's format. The survey also found that on average, consumers purchased approximately six standard format DVDs in the last six months, compared with one in HD DVD format."
So they're counting the PS3 and the Blu-Ray players as separate items in their study. If you add the two together, Blu-Ray adoption is higher. Of course, the question is if they count Xbox HD-DVD drives, but those numbers are probably low.
As a way to make some extra dough I work at a video rental chain (the largest here in the US) and just from what I have seen no one really wants to rent Blu-Ray. We got 90% of the new releases on Blu-Ray and yet they prefer dvd even at the same price point. Who wants to buy a blu-ray player at over $200 right now when I can keep buying dvds at a cheaper price. Blu-Ray is beautiful yes but for most pictures I don't need or want to pay an extra 10-20 dollars for it.
https://www.speakservers.com/
This isn't true, from here:
"The primary advantage of this format is a low manufacturing cost. Since HD-DVD media is so technically similar to standard DVD media (it uses the same layer thicknesses as DVD, made of similar materials), the discs can be produced with only a slight modification to existing manufacturing lines. "
"This technology comes with a significant price. Manufacturing Blu-Ray discs requires significant costs in updating DVD fabrication equipment, and would be a sharp manufacturer cost increase over HD-DVD."
Toshiba also got the jump on sony and released it's first players months earlier allowing it to get production ramped up. It's true that when HD-DVD started to lose they chopped at the price, but it was already significantly lower than Bluray.
It's amazing. Sony are so bad at format wars that, even when they win, they lose.
This quote from the article doesn't tell the whole story, though:
"A new study by Harris Interactive notes that currently, one in ten Americans (10%) own an HD DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player. Crazy, right?"
If you look at the chart, they've separated out the PS3 owners from the Blu-Ray player owners. Combine the 7% Blu-Ray owners with the 9% PS3 owners, and that's 16%. I'm sure that most PS3 owners didn't feel the need to buy a separate Blu-Ray player.
So you're judging your opinions of HD on one of the few movies that was done almost entirely in front of blue/green screens, the exception being the scene involving the Persian horseback messenger coming across the hills. Mind you 300 was about 90% blue screen and 10% green screen. I'd venture to say that unless you were seeing this effect the entire movie, then your complaint isn't nearly as problematic as you make it out to be.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Chances are your friend doesn't have the TV calibrated properly. Turning up the sharpness too high on many Hi-Def sets will cause this effect by adding in a lot of edge enhancement (ringing) to the image. Getting a good calibration disc like AVIA or Digital Video Essentials will make a huge difference in the appearance of HD sources.
It was reported that Criterion uses the Playstation3 as their reference Blu-ray player. So I'd say it's up there in terms of quality.