So, who's winning the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war?

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cerebrex

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I've been searching google, and looking over different sales statistics.. but can anyone give a general overview of the battle in the last few months?
 
According to Wikipedia:

According to a market research company Nielsen VideoScan, as of July 1, 2007, weekly sales of Blu-ray disc were ahead of HD DVD with 65% of the market. In 2007 sales, Blu-ray leads with 67% of the market. Since inception, market share was 60% for Blu-ray and 40% for HD DVD. [4] The 2007 sales numbers are in contrast with much of 2006 before the release of the PS3, when HD DVD had a lead.
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I have a feeling this is going to be a bash fest thread.
 
I am hoping that HD-DVD wins because I think Sony will make storing my movies on my server to difficult to do later on.
 
Who's winning the format war?
Why DVD is silly.
HD-DVD/ Blu-Ray currently only account for about 1% of disc sales
 
yeah VHS had 99% of all sales when dvd first came out and look how turned out in the end. DVD will be replaced sometime.
 
stevedave said:
yeah VHS had 99% of all sales when dvd first came out and look how turned out in the end. DVD will be replaced sometime.
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Slightly different situation in going from a tape format to optical disc than it is going from optical disc to higher quality optical disc.
 
Sony put the BR drive in the PS3 for a reason. They saw what big hits the PSone and PS2 were, so almost automatically people would rush out for the PS3 on the first day. By putting the BR drive in it, they are wanting to 'buy out' the competition because they can say they are selling more BR players which isn't entirely the case. The people who buy the PS3 would normally not have purchased a BR standalone player, especially at the outrageous prices they have compared to HDDVD. I'm also willing to bet the majority of people who have the PS3 don't have a 1080p television either. If it wasn't for the PS3, the BR/HDDVD battle would have been an almost sure victory for HDDVD.

The reason I chose HDDVD was for movie titles I like, no BD+ bullshit, and getting the HDDVD addon for the 360 and plugging it into my existing PC costing me only $160 out of pocket.
 
w1retap said:
Sony put the BR drive in the PS3 for a reason. They saw what big hits the PSone and PS2 were, so almost automatically people would rush out for the PS3 on the first day. By putting the BR drive in it, they are wanting to 'buy out' the competition because they can say they are selling more BR players which isn't entirely the case. The people who buy the PS3 would normally not have purchased a BR standalone player, especially at the outrageous prices they have compared to HDDVD. I'm also willing to bet the majority of people who have the PS3 don't have a 1080p television either. If it wasn't for the PS3, the BR/HDDVD battle would have been an almost sure victory for HDDVD.

The reason I chose HDDVD was for movie titles I like, no BD+ bullshit, and getting the HDDVD addon for the 360 and plugging it into my existing PC costing me only $160 out of pocket.
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The DVD driver in the PS2 was plagued with premature failures, if the same holds true for the PS3 we might not see this anticipated increase in blu ray sales.

But, even so.. I don't think an average PS3 owner will purchase a large amount of blu-ray discs. The figures I've seen show only a small minority of PS3 owners even have a HD TV. I would presume people would go out and buy a few movies at first, and then probably stop.. much like the PSP movie sales did. The people that really have the money to purchase hundreds of DVD's are older, and the majority will not be playing game consoles. I predict the long term sales of each one of these formats will be based on the consumer grade standalone players, not game consoles.
 
Blu-Ray is going to win.

not only because of movies, but the larger capacity of the disc. also because of PS3, Blu-Ray are more common used then HD-DVD. as of now, HD-DVD is strictly for movies and not for data or games.
 
Gloomy said:
Blu-Ray is going to win.

not only because of movies, but the larger capacity of the disc. also because of PS3, Blu-Ray are more common used then HD-DVD. as of now, HD-DVD is strictly for movies and not for data or games.
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lol, no offense intended, but every thing you just said is actually incorrect. (and I'm not fanboy of either format)
 
I think everyone has to look at this whole HD BR thing a very different way.

The music business has already said several times now that they are no longer willing to manufacture music CD product because most people simply don’t care about quality of sound as well as they found online sales are way up and so the bulk of their profit center is switching.

When SACD and DVDA hit the market Sony was the clear winner sound wise, but neither product ever caught on even when both formats became part and parcel with cheap DVD players so there was no additional cost at all for the customer. Now we had DVD, CD, SACD, DVDA players at $150.00 and people bought them in mass quantity never caring about anything except it was a cheap DVD player. It sold well only because the flow of pre-recorded VHS dried up and some people realized even the cheap DVD players looked much better then tape.

HD TV hit the market in late 1997 early 1998 and we couldn’t stock enough product to keep people happy in spite of the fact entry level sets were selling for around $4500.00 and the higher end was up around $10,000. That lasted about 3 years and the early adopter / enthusiast market was starting to dry up and many people simply never believed that regular TV would actually go away at some point.

Things stabilized until about 2003 or so until ultra cheap HD sets started hitting the market. At that point nobody cared how bad they really looked or how short the lifespan was going to be, they were cheap. Especially cheap were the 480p sets that really looked like crap but they sold by the truck load because they were flat and cheap and cool.

Now you have a huge installed base of cheap DVD players already in people’s homes, most of them hooked to the lower end of the HD TV market TV’s. They work, they look “good enough” and I fear that may well be the end of it. Once the enthusiast market has purchased whichever format, the rest of the people simply won’t care because their regular el cheapo DVD player plays just fine to them.

That’s why after 40 years of dealing with it all I’m semi retired from the business.

My personal choice on players? Well, I’ve had the big Toshiba and the big Sony at home plugged into my Pioneer Elite TV. BR does look better. I’ve had both companies lowest price machines at home and neither is as good as its more expensive counterpart.

As for today’s typical consumer it simply won’t matter which is why companies like Tweeter and their associated stores are about done and let’s not forget CC just closed all their stores in Canada and unless something drastic happens they will fall into the Comp USA category and simply close all if not most of their stores. BB is still profitable, but if you look at their stock reports their shareholders are less then happy, just like most of their customers.

Cheap rules the markets at the moment, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.;)
 
cerebrex said:
lol, no offense intended, but every thing you just said is actually incorrect. (and I'm not fanboy of either format)
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So you're saying HD-DVD is a higher capacity?


In any event, who's winning? Me. I owned a PS3 for Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD player.

BTW, Planet Earth is amazing. My God, the "shallow Water" episode...just jaw dropping.
 
ever heard of beta or minidisk or any other proprietary tech sony comes up with.....

1 thing in common....


they all die to their unproprietary siblings

VHS won out, flash drive players are far better. Sony is good bc the push the envelope with new ideas but the lose out when everyone else adopts an eventually cheaper product...

no one wants to pay for Sonys R&D and they wont license the tech to other companies..


and sony will never put JVC, pinoneer, toshiba etc all out of business....
 
RoBo said:
Perhaps you should get out more. :p
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I live on a miniscule island that you can drive around in a golf cart in about 15 minutes. It's hard to get out when there is no where to go. :p
 
Well Blu-ray is a superior format, and has a lot more support from major studios, so my guess is that it will win out.

I personally don't own either player, and am holding out until a standard is chosen. I think that once more people start to own HD TV's (I believe all TV's sold either currently or soon need to be HD ready) it will help the push.
 
Troz said:
I live on a miniscule island that you can drive around in a golf cart in about 15 minutes. It's hard to get out when there is no where to go. :p
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Go for a swim. :D


But anyhow, I have my hopes set on HD-DVD.
 
Right now there is no "real" winner.

When people made the jump from SDTV to HDTV there was a massive...and I mean massive jump in quality. It was 100% night and day. It didn't matter if you were 5" away or 20 feet. You made a glance and it was obvious. Once the general populace saw that they waited and waited for the price to become "decent" and jumped on it. This last Christmas, 720p hit the 1k mark and the game officially started. This year 1080p will be name and finally in Christmas 2009 "HDTV" will become a very cost reasonable item for the typical American home (1080p, 37", less than 400).

However, the high def DVD market got caught in a pickle. The 480i DVD market figured out a) how to get better compression on a disc and thus give us more quality as time went on and b) upscaling DVD players at a decent price. If you put those two things together, the "at a glance" look isn't so "wow" anymore. While the differences between HD and SD DVD's are tangible...as a consumer it doesn't scream "buy me" yet. If you couple this with media cost double to triple that of a typical DVD..well.

Therefore, I’m not sure there will be a winner especially if movie house stay exclusive to one format. I believe the "war" will drag on long enough that it will be a dual format player for everyone.
 
Surprised no one here mentioned the study published recently in europe. Now normally i don't pay much attention to events over there but it's claimed that HD-DVD stand-alone players have 74% of the market share vs Blu-Ray (3 to 1).

What is revealing is that the study did not count Sony PS3's because the study was looking for what people would choose if they wanted a stand-alone player, and europeans, for now, are choosing HD-DVD.

Of course you can poo poo the results but imho europe is a decent market to study because there's a good size middle class there and there's money to be spent on luxury and entertainment. I'll echo other's statements when i say that the better product does not always win (betamax for example), there's more complicated things involved here, and dual-format players are yet another wrinkle to be considered.
 
Both the companies are . :D
Consumers are losing.

jk, but it does suck going into this "format war" as a consumer and having the risk your format could "die", meaning a lot of people will be hesitant to jump in at the moment.
 
SJetski71 said:
Surprised no one here mentioned the studyOf course you can poo poo the results but imho europe is a decent market to study because there's a good size middle class there and there's money to be spent on luxury and entertainment. I'll echo other's statements when i say that the better product does not always win, there's more complicated things involved here, remember betamax?
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Decent yes, however my international economic knowledge seems to remember the US does have more luxury income to spend in comparison, which would make these findings less applicable since the less expensive alternative was chosen in a market which has less disposable income, the reverse would have been a much more telling discovery.
 
cerebrex said:
Decent yes, however my international economic knowledge seems to remember the US does have more luxury income to spend in comparison, which would make these findings less applicable since the less expensive alternative was chosen in a market which has less disposable income, the reverse would have been a much more telling discovery.
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Very good point, on the one note it shows that cost is a consideration, especially in markets with less disposable income, but those poorer markets probably won't be the deciding factor either.

The last few posters bring up another possible wrinkle in the debate, the xxx industry. Haven't been following their trends but i have heard they influenced events with VHS vs Betamax (?) (edit: just noticed your last post)
 
porn will have such a small effect on the "next gen war"
it helped VHS because the internet didn't exist as a medium to get it.

and ugh, have you seen HI-Def porn?
all that detail :(
 
I "want" blu ray to win so in 5 years when Blu-ray disk cost 40-50 cents a disk I can back up my HD's on just a few disk. Also I really enjoy the Jrpg that sony is known for and PS3 uses blu-ray so I want to support the format my Jrpg's are going to be on.

I "think" that blu-ray will win because the blu-ray group is huge and they have a ton of support from almost everyone a ton of movies studios are behind blu-ray. Also the ps3 is eventually going to have some good games out and it's sales will start to climb and they won’t stop.

Blu-ray Group represent
 
stevedave said:
I "want" blu ray to win so in 5 years when Blu-ray disk cost 40-50 cents a disk I can back up my HD's on just a few disk. Also I really enjoy the Jrpg that sony is known for and PS3 uses blu-ray so I want to support the format my Jrpg's are going to be on.

I "think" that blu-ray will win because the blu-ray group is huge and they have a ton of support from almost everyone a ton of movies studios are behind blu-ray. Also the ps3 is eventually going to have some good games out and it's sales will start to climb and they won’t stop.

Blu-ray Group represent
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The difference in capacity between the two formats is pretty minimal, it won't effect quality to any reasonable extent. Actually, from my knowledge initial reactions were HD-DVD had better visual quality than blu-ray due to a superior compression system ( I can't speak if anything has changed to now, however). Although the blu-ray support group is large, I believe it lacks official acknowledgement by the DVD-forum.

Originally, the blu-ray supporters cited the PS3 as the "save-all" of the format, however now that we have hindsight, we can see that the PS3 sales have been rather disappointing. And, as time as shown, PS3's cannot be legitimately factored into regular receiver sales because console owners on average purchase significantly less of the applicable movie formats supported by those devices as due traditional receiver customers. This is a big deal that people frequently overlook, and refuse to consider. Let me explain it in a little more detail. A consumer who purchased a Toshiba HD-DVD player will most certainly own a HD television, because that is the sole purpose to take advantage of the technology he has just invested in, and all the exact same movies are available in a non-hd format. However, a consumer who purchased a PS3 might not own an HD television (suprisingly, a good portion of PS3 owners do not), this is because the primary purpose of the PS3 is to play games, which are not available on other cheaper older systems - they can only be experienced using this piece of equipment - HDTV is a perk, and certainly a buying point, however it is far from the central purpose of the purchase. Because of this, using PS3 sales to make an exact comparison to HD-DVD player sales is far from accurate.
 
cerebrex said:
The difference in capacity between the two formats is pretty minimal, it won't effect quality to any reasonable extent. Actually, from my knowledge initial reactions were HD-DVD had better visual quality than blu-ray due to a superior compression system ( I can't speak if anything has changed to now, however). Although the blu-ray support group is large, I believe it lacks official acknowledgement by the DVD-forum.
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Half right...but not right. Blu-Ray released their first batch of movies with the H.264 codec and not the VC-1 codec (which they had support for). Therefore, in terms of players...they were same. In terms of media, well HD DVD released a better set of media the first time around. Right now there is minimal difference between a Blu-Ray player using VC-1 and HD DVD using VC-1.
 
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