Blu-ray and HD DVD both find reasons to be thankful
By Richard Lawler 
posted Nov 27th 2007 2:39PM
posted Nov 27th 2007 2:39PM
At this point, it's no longer unusual for both sides in the format war to both claim victory in different areas, even on the same day. While the Blu-ray camp celebrates topping the 1-million disc sold mark in Europe and 73 percent share of all HD movies sold on the continent, HD DVD's Black Friday marketing push has put it over 750,000 dedicated players sold in North America. So far this doesn't mark a departure from the norm, while Blu-ray pushes sales via the PS3, HD DVD continues to ride its strategy of lower priced standalone players, we'll have to wait and see which one consumers choose this holiday season.Read - HD DVD Surpasses 750,000 Dedicated Players
Read - Blu-ray outsells HD-DVD format in Europe
I'm gonna warn the spinsters from both camps right now.................
This is good news for both camps, just leave it at that.
No fighting, just for one article please?
Unless you wanna comment about the fact that there's a format war. :p
I think this just goes to show there probably won't be a winner on either side. The only time the numbers really shift is when a hit movie gets released.. And since both sides have hit movies it's just a back n forth tug o' war. For now this seems good in terms of player pricing being lowered though.
The HD DVD press release happen to include HD DVD add-on drives to the Xbox 360, which means that Blu-ray can now include the built-in Blu-ray drive to the PS3, which places the BD "dedicated player" sales mark well over 2.5 million. Just an observation.
The HDVD add on doesn't play games.
So how many did HD DVD sell this past weekend? The weekend of the $98 players HD DVD sold 90,000 and had about 420,000 players...now they have 750,000. The buy 1 get 1 that has helped blue ray keep the lead in software sales won't last forever.
Whoa! A balanced article! Oh, wait. It wasn't written by Ryan. That explains it.
Just a few issues with the summary, though.
"At this point, it's no longer unusual for both sides in the format war to both claim victory in different areas, even on the same day."
Corrected version: "At this point, it's no longer *desired* for both sides in the format war to both claim victory in different areas, even on the same day." Quite frankly, I think that most of us are completely fed up with the extremist jackasses on both sides beating their chests at every opportunity, which ends up in a cacophony of chest beating that does nothing but drown out whatever news is trying to be reported.
Also, about your last sentence: "we'll have to wait and see which one consumers choose this holiday season." The customer doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of choice because of the bribery/exclusivity of studios -- Disney, Paramount, etc. -- to stay with one format. The only way that customers can truly decide is if all studios have identical releases (movie, features, and so forth) in both formats. Then it would all be up to hardware.
"cacophony of chest beating"
that is awesome
I chose both this holiday season, having bought a PS3 and an HD-A3 in the past couple weeks. I'm glad I made that decision, even if it did cost me.
I just wish all studios would format neutral and let the consumers decide what they want instead of being exclusive to either format....................is that possible? Please...................
Frankly, this whole format war is really starting to piss me off! I'm an owner of a $99 HD-DVD player, so I'm somewhat invested in that format, but not enough to care if BluRay is ultimately victorious. Enough already! Clearly, this thing won't be decided anytime soon. Certainly no earlier than 2009. Maybe the studios will be fed up enough by then to demand that Sony & Toshiba make nice???
While BluRay has more movies and more mfgs, HD-DVD clearly has the cheaper players. Both offer clear advantages over the other, but not enough to win outright. And combo players are too expensive .... for now. Even if one reaches a decent price (sub $300, $200??), will studios ever want to produce both? And then - how much of each would they produce?? It's an issue for sure!
Man, I figured this would be overwith by now, but - if anything - it's getting more crazy by the week!
Your article shows that you need to proofread better. The HD-DVD press release states that the 750K data includes standalone units as well as the XBox 360 add-on. Dedicated does not mean standalone. Your link gets it right but the the post does not.
If we start counting all units as standalone, then all machines should be counted for both sides, including burners, PS3s and laptops.
You're right, I reversed where I indicated dedicated and standalone.
I don't see a winner anytime in the future. If HDDVD can maintain a 30% market share there is no reason the 2 can't coexist. Heck Apple survives with a 15% market share (in PCs). Since I have both players I wish them both luck :)
"I don't see a winner anytime in the future. If HDDVD can maintain a 30% market share there is no reason the 2 can't coexist. Heck Apple survives with a 15% market share (in PCs). Since I have both players I wish them both luck :)"
It's not directly comparable, I don't think, but the market size did limit what software was available for it, and the availability of software limited sales too, so it was kind of a feedback loop.
I still think that the split HD market hurts the niche and back catalog titles. The blockbuster titles often do fine (though 100k copies isn't many, IMO), but less popular and older movies might not sell as many and is still about as expensive to author as a blockbuster title, so it's harder to make the money back on the investment.
Holy crap 750k players.. so we are most likely looking at over a million players by year's end not including huge amount of sub $1000 laptops with HD DVD too.. Oh yes, it's definitely moving.. numbers will look quite different Q1 2008.
Well the BluRay story shows up fine but the HD-DVD one doesn't. I can't see how Toshiba sold 350,000 players in the past 2 weeks when there wasn't a $99 player.
Somethin's fishy. I'm thinking the PRnewswire story is getting pulled.
The 360 HD-DVD add on should be counted as dedicated. It isn't purchased for any other use (it can't do anything else!). A PS3 should not be counted as dedicated--it can be used for years as a game console without playing Bluray movie once... they're apples and oranges.
Then I guess we should count between 20 and 40% of all PS3's right ? :)
Let's take middle of the road, 30%.
2.5 million (before the new $399 PS3) in NA alone, that gives us 750 000 PS3 used as Blu Ray Players. With Standalones, we are well over 1 million.
If we were to consider worldwide numbers, the # of Blu Ray players would be even much stronger :)
Studies have shown that 60% of PS3 owners don't even know the unit has a Blu-ray player.
Of the remaining 40%, some don't buy Blu-ray, and some don't have an HDTV either. So I think the absolute maximum you can assume are buying Blu-ray is 20%, and it's likely more like 10%.
Still a ton of players, though.
Oh and the 1 million + number for Blu Ray is before $399 PS3 and Black Friday of course :)
I was at Best Buy today. The salesmen there are pushing HD-DVD players in a Big way. I listened to their sales pitch. They took this couple to were the HD-DVD & Blu-ray discs are dispalyed for sale. Their were twice as many HD-DVD's out as Blu-ray discs. The salesman said ,"See HD-DVD is going to win they have many more discs available". The customers bought the HD-DVD player. As I was leaving the store I noticed their was another whole Blu-ray display with many different titles upfront in the store in a totally different location. I don't own either format. I don't care who wins. But I certainly did take notice that the sales people at Best Buy were pushing HD-DVD and manipulating sales to favor HD-DVD. Could be they will eventually win if the Big Box retailers all do this.
"But I certainly did take notice that the sales people at Best Buy were pushing HD-DVD and manipulating sales to favor HD-DVD."
Approximately 200,000 stand-alone Toshiba HD-DVD players were sold in November.
Less than 200,000 stand-alone (Sony/Samsung/Pioneer/Sharp/etc.) Blu-Ray players have been sold since inception (approximately one year).
The sales people at Best Buy are merely trying to sell what people will buy. And people are willing to buy a cheaper HD-DVD player with more than a half dozen hi-def movies that also upconverts their standard DVD's.
Very interesting, considering the exact opposite situation is common in many Best Buy stores.
73% in Europe and what like 70% here in the US. I'd say the format war is over.
What's the point of having 750,000 dedicated HD-DVD players out there when BD is outselling HD-DVD world wide by a 3:1 margin? Software is what makes the success for any hardware, and HD-DVD is completely failing at this given their lack of software sales and support.
I was at a b&m store the other day and they had a HUGE display of PS3 boxes stacked and formed into a bridge that customers could walk under. It was decked out with Christmas lights and ornaments and it looked very impressive. As for the Xbox 360, they didn't have a single display or anything to promote it.
This indicates that the PS3 is the HOT console for this holiday season.
"This indicates that the PS3 is the HOT console for this holiday season."
Or it could indicate that the PS3 is not selling so its used for Christmas decorations...
LOL. . you are beyond ridiculous.. Yes, I heard that Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD now by 20:1. Get a grip please with imaginary numbers and stop using drugs. The only numbers that Blu-Ray favors are in software and that's because software numbers are so small that they are pretty much easily manipulated with BOGOs and other crap. Transformers was a very simple example. One titles completely decimated all Blu-Ray offering and the only way they managed to get those pitiful 2% advantage was because they were giving away free movies under the half off from every disc so they count as sales.
Second, what your experience at B&M store means is that PS3 is selling like CRAP, that's why they have to push it, and in addition set it up under the lighting tree in hopes that it will attract consumers as nobody wants to buy it anyways. Several GameStop managers (I know personally) have told me that it's absolutely horrible sales for PS3. Since $399 model came out they sold from 1 to 3 units per each store while Xbox 360 and Wii are simply killing sales.
Why you don't see promos for Xbox 360 or Wii is because they are selling like HOTCAKES, they don't need to promote them, they are just selling great.
Or it could be because all the 360's have sold out because they actually have games too play on their console, and they had so many PS3's in stock they don't know what to do with them other then make a pretty bridge :)
yeah
"Or it could indicate that the PS3 is not selling so its used for Christmas decorations..."
hahahaha... OMG that was awesome!
"Software is what makes the success for any hardware"
This is exactly why PS3 sucks. People buy them, realize all the games suck, and buy movies instead.
Once HD DVD builds the hardware base, the software will start flying.
Everybody bitches and moans about BOGO but the point still is that it's two titles sold.
If I could have 100 titles for the price of 50 I would buy the 50 to get the extra 50 in a heartbeat as would anybody else and that includes you HD people on here.
/Don't own either system yet.
Nfinity, get a reality check, the Fact that Blu-ray leads in software sales by a wide margin is a fact. A fact that has been the same week after week for this whole calendar year+.
It's just So far off the realistic mark with the historical data out there to think HD-DVD can be anything at this point but an alsoran.
With the Great reduction in pricing it can be expected that some of the HD-DVD players are bought as DVD player replacements that will upconvert better and be decent HD insurance for the buyer, which does not equal decent HD-DVD disc sales.
You can change the Date number in the link below to see any week of disc sales, but it's kind of a waste since they all show 60%+ and sometimes up to 74% in the Favor of Blu over and over, week after week. It's slowly climbing week after week closer to 70% since inception, and though it will take longer and longer to keep rising, realistically unless something changes, it's only getting worse, as it has been for the last Year, for HD-DVD.
Oh, and for the Software sales not meaning much...8 HD DVD discs cost as much as most available HD-DVD players in price nowadays, and the profit margin is no doubt much better than for the players. From a point of view of profit and being able to sustain themselves in the format war, software sales matter the most.
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom112507/index.php
Oh, and at Amazon, in the PS3 section, the 6th best selling item is the Blu-ray remote. Yeah, no ones watching movies on the PS3.
Coincidentally, the PS3 Blu-Ray remote is also a top selling item with the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. Go figure.
PS3s simply don't shift enough Blu-ray movies.
Blu-ray is PS3, a kids console, and that is all Blu-ray will ever be
(excepting a handful of people using their over-priced burners in PCs).
HD DVD is the format that will take the (much larger) adult a/v market as the strong HD DVD stand-alone sales continually show.
Uh, it's a Fact that when the PS3 released last year, thats when things went bad for HD-DVD.
Even the Vast majority of HD-DVD fans will admit it's when the PS3 released that the rosey outlook for HD-DVD started to fade.
I would value PS3 attach rate at 40%, XBox360 Add-On attach rate at 80%.
Toshiba sold approximately 200,000 stand-alone HD DVD players in the past month. Sony has to sell at least 1,000,000 PS3's in November to maintain its lead (on a percentage basis). I wouldn't be surprised to see 1,000,000 HD DVD players by the end of the year, and Sony would need to sell more than 2 million PS3's in November and December to maintain its lead (again on a percentage basis) in a million HD DVD USA. There will be a little bit of a lag time as these HD DVD's get into people's hands (more than a few as presents), but Blu-Ray's 2:1 advantage will slowly deteriorate.
With installed base of PS3's in North America a little bit more than 2 Million, I don't see that happening. Less than 200,000 stand-alone Blu-Ray players have been sold to date.
I didn't buy a Playstation2 to use as a DVD player. Wii's are hot -- PS3's are not. Sony will sell PS3's because they are in-stock, but the Wii is winning the console war (with Microsoft 2nd and Sony a distant 3rd).
No, it's a fact that with Blu-ray piggybacking on the PS3 they were always bound to take some sort of lead (with the PS3 guaranteed to sell several million how could they not?).
The only surprise here is just how poor a lead it has become.
Contrary to the obvious wishful thinking going on things are very very far from "bad" for HD DVD right now.
(and at CES in Jan things will be looking a lot lot brighter too, count on it.
I'm really looking forward to the Blu-boy's excuses once the really big news gets out)
ahaaa the troll twins Truth Teller and Nfinity have emerged from under their bridge! They speak the way of fud! An unknown language to us!
They choose to ignore bare faced facts, bless them!! Probably the same person anyway!
They love to denounce the BluRay BOGO offer yet love to praise the buy 10 HD-DVD's and get a Toshiba player free!! LOL! Irony does not compute!!
Another favourite is to classify the PS3 as a kiddy console! LOL! These machines are suitable for all ages, which is also why it is going to trounce any HD-DVD hardware sales.
HD-DVD is destined for the bargain bin where it belongs as nothing more than a curiosity to old folk looking for a set of shiny drinks coasters!
HD-DVD is dead as a dodo in Europe and Asia. Only a matter of time for the US.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Naturally anyone daring to say anything different to the usual tidal wave of Blu-ray PR BS spin just has to be a "troll", at least according to the Blu-boys.
Very amusing.
People are so passionate about either side it's amusing. Both sides account for what 1-2% of the market, combined? Maybe, when one side controls 10-20% by itself we could actually legitimately declare a winner.
Nice to see things haven't changed... :)
"They love to denounce the BluRay BOGO offer yet love to praise the buy 10 HD-DVD's and get a Toshiba player free!! LOL! Irony does not compute!!"
The free HD DVD movies generally don't count as sales (5 from MiR, 2 in the box). The BOGO is brought up because that directly influences the weekly sales numbers -- and it's easy to manipulate when the total numbers are so low. The BDA paid money to maintain their "we've won every week" statement (although keep in mind that the 51/49 "victory" was too close to tell as the margin of error was around 3% if I recall). While there's nothing wrong with that (it's their business decision), it's worth noting at least. And while the fanboys might like to point to those numbers and say, "BD wins!" the studios (I would hope....) are looking at revenue and net profit, not just number of disks sold. In that sense, HD DVD has beaten BD at least that one week (but probably more than that, given all the BOGO BD deals, plus the fact that BD disks are more expensive to press than HD DVD). So while this site looks and says that BD is outselling HD DVD 1.9:1 (or whatever it is), the revenue for both is much closer to 1:1.
Carry on :)
@Xyzzy
"So while this site looks and says that BD is outselling HD DVD 1.9:1 (or whatever it is), the revenue for both is much closer to 1:1."
LOL, yeah sure. squint your eyes at the screen and the figures reverse and HD-DVD is outselling BD at 1.9:1!!!!
Dear oh dear! The excuses get thinner and thinner!
"LOL, yeah sure. squint your eyes at the screen and the figures reverse and HD-DVD is outselling BD at 1.9:1!!!!
Dear oh dear! The excuses get thinner and thinner!"
If you don't understand my post, you should probably take a basic economics class.
I'll try to illustrate, even though I really shouldn't be feeding the trolls...
Let's say it costs $2 for ABCCorp to produce a Foo and it costs $1 for DEFCorp to produce a Bar, and both companies sell the product for $4.
One week, everyone decides they want a Bar and DEFCorp sells 1000 of them at full price. That's $4000 in revenue, and $3000 in profit (since it cost them $1000 to make the Bars).
ABCCorp doesn't want to be outsold, so they offer a 2-for-1 deal on Foos. The sale works, and they sell 1100 of their product, or 10% more than DEFCorp. However, that's only $2,200 in revenue (because they gave half the products away) and $0 in profit (because it cost $2,200 to produce 1100 Foos).
So while ABCCorp did outsell DEFCorp, it was only a PR victory because DEFCorp made more money.
The same thing happened for the Transformers week, even though we don't know exact numbers for units, cost, etc.
I have both the Sony BDP-S300 and Toshiba HD-A30. I have a fairly large collection of HD-DVD and
BluRay titles. I did "cheap out" on the Pioneer receiver. It doesn't natively decode TrueHD bitstreams. I've updated the S300 to firmware 3.20 and the A30 to firmware 1.1. The A30 has crashed in the middle of "Blades of Glory". I often have to pull the power plug to reboot the processor. The
S300 had problems shifting across chapters with the factory firmware, but the current 3.20 rev has fixed that problem. Both units drive my 1080P Mitsubishi display just fine. Frankly, I don't care which way the format war goes. I've updated my audio/video suite to current standards that should be satisfactory for another 10+ years. I'll be happy when Toshiba ships firmware that doesn't crash.
I wrote portions of this at Engadget.com a few days ago, and I will post it here again:
Windows has a 90% marketshare vs. OSX's (being generous) 10% marketshare. The Apple fans will tell you that the Mac is far from dead. 360 consoles and games outsells, on a typical week, the PS3 counterpart 2:1. For example, Assasins Creed (in the first week) on 360 sold 585,064 copies while it sold 226,177 on the PS3 (as per vgchartz.com). Neither the 360 nor PS3 fans would say that either colsole is dead (actually, through some twisted logic, some PS3 fans say that the 360 is dead, but that is another story). And yet, Blu-Ray, with the millions of PS3s sold and 100,000s of standalones vs. the around million HD DVD players sold, has a 2:1 or 3:2 movie ratio depending on the week, and the Sony boys and BD members over and over again saythat HD DVD is deader than the Turkey I ate last week. To me, those numbers do not indicate deadness.
I have a PS3, Sony BDP-300, 360 add-on, an HD-A2, and a 41:15 movie distribution in favor of HD. I am more in favor of HD, but that is because of the way the BD forum and BD fans have acted rather than one being better than the other. I still wish HD to win, but I think that eventually it will go the way of DVR+-R. Dual format will win out, and the studios will choose which is ever more appropriate for the movie they are shipping.
@stepehnbratz2
you may be right.. however lower costs of manufacturing will again shift everything to HD DVD. Blu-Ray is simply not ready for mass adoptation, nor is hardware finalized by a standard, and neither is software. It's a huge mess they are trying to push onto people and fix problems as time passes by.
HD DVD is the winner anyway you look at it, it's just that these juvenile Blu-Ray fanbots lack experience and logic to understand what's going to happen. The only chance Blu-Ray had to win was to annihilate HD DVD in the beginning. That didn't happen and now it's all HD DVD. It just takes time that's all, though it is important to note that HD DVD hardware implemention is much much higher then it was for DVD after 18 months. It's moving much faster.
I'll be laughing so hard when the Blubots start scratching their heads a few months from now and say "How did this happen, how did HD DVD take such huge lead". Twin discs, TL51, combos, dirt cheap prices, awesome interactivity and online connectivity along with guaranteed future compatibility meaning that what you pay now for $100-$199 will last you until YOU decide to replace it and not when BD CE companies think you should.
The future of HD DVD is bright and hardly even questionable whether or not it will win. It's a done deal, it just takes time.
I actually made a list of all these Blu fanbots here on Engadget we can laugh at once the HD DVD gets adopted the same way DVD has after a while. It's gonna be so much fun.
Why do keep HD-DVD fanboys keep slating Blu-Ray for being totally region locked? It's not! It was left up to the studios to decide whether or not to lock their content. The good majority of movies out there are region free! *shrugs*
Nfinity, you make alot of good points, and I also hope HD wins, but it puts me off when you ALSO use petty extreme language.
For instance- "I'll be laughing so hard" is this necessary?
"i actually made a list" I really hope not
Locke6854
It's just poking :) I don't care either way to be honest with you, I have both and have pretty solid collection of movies on both, I just like to get them riled up because most of the Blu-Ray supporters that are screaming and quoting Sony's PR and completely irrelevant numbers at this point are pretty juvenile in their language and this type of comments ticks them off :) They don't really argue anything, they repeat press releases and call people idiots. You need to read responses where they call me names and stuff without reason, just because a person's opinion is different from theirs and actually founded on very logical points. It's a sad day where you see that majority of young people are completely uninformed, very under-educated and easily manipulated like this.
I've asked Ben numerous times to delete posts that offend me, he just turns his head away, but he's quick to delete any post I make that actually speaks logical and highly evaluation of very probable scenarios.
Don't sweat it and know:
2008 is the beginning of Blu-Ray shutting down. Pay attention how there is no other Profile 1.1 except from Panasonic who is one of the main backers of Blu-Ray. Others are just waiting now, they simply don't want to invest anymore in failing format where Sony is kicking their asses with $200 cheaper console.
Btw, here's another thing I don't get. PS3 40gb came out AFTER Blu-Ray MANDATORY Profile 1.1 rule (Oct. 31) for players they enforce on all CE companies, yet PS3 40gb is NOT Profile 1.1 compliant and there's no firmware update. Some rule eh? How do you think CE companies feel about this.