As a neutral, still sitting on the fence after owning an HD TV for 8 months (my only HD content comes from Sky HD), I'd find a cheap player like this quite tempting.

Paramount's HD-DVD only deal is reportedly for 18 months. I also think there's little chance now of Universal going Blu Ray or neutral. And I don't think Sony Pictures will go neutral any time soon either, not to mention all those PS3s out there.

So if both formats will still be around 18 months from now, then dual format players will be the winner. I'd buy one now if they weren't so expensive, but I'm sure they'll come down in price now manufacturers can have the confidence to invest in making them in quantity.

I reckon I might have to wait a year for an affordable dual format player, so I plan on buying a really cheap player of either format just for that year, feeling pretty certain the DVDs I buy will work on the replacement.

Right now, it looks like that cheap player will be an HD-DVD one.

Looking at these figures it seems that the studio support is more significant than the PS3 factor. Not a lot of data to go on but for The Departed Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 5:3, rather than 20:1 as you might expect given the ratio of potential customers out there. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise though that games console owners are less likely to buy DVDs than people who've risked a lot of money on a standalone DVD player with a format that might yet die.

As others have said the studios will go where the money is and right now sales per title are too small to worry about missing out. This won't change until someone manages to sell a million dedicated DVD players. They'll need to be cheap - and HD DVD looks likely to be first out with cheap players - but customers will still need to be persuaded that they aren't going to left with a useless piece of kit. Hence the propaganda war, which Blu-ray is currently winning.

What this shows is that high definition DVD sales of both formats are insignificant so far. As HDTVs and Sky HD are selling very well, this can only be because of the format war. It also shows, sadly, that studios are not losing much if anything by not backing one format or the other.

The launch of PS3 in Europe will probably swing things Blu-Ray's way as it has in the US, but probably not so dramatically. PS3 will not sell a million units in the UK in 2007. The UK market is much smaller than the US market - the US population is 5 times larger - and the UK price of the PS3 is far higher despite the fact that it will support fewer old PS2 games. Also, PS3 is being launched in the UK in March and peak sales will not be until Christmas.

So the format war will go on and I'm not prepared to buy either player or any DVDs yet.

Well those sales figures are a much needed reality check. Blu-Ray might be outselling HD DVD by 2 to 1 but if that still only amounts to 2500 copies per movie, then it's a big fish in a tiny puddle.

There are so many PS3s out there compared to HD DVD players that Blu-Ray has to have greater potential to win this war - but clearly it isn't making the most of that. Why aren't PS3 owners buying more DVDs? Only when you have titles selling a million copies each are Universal really going to sit up and take notice.

Following the link to High-Def Digest, and following their link to their story about hardware sales figures, you get these stats for 2006

1 million PS3s "on the market"
175,000 HD DVD players sold
28 DVDs sold for every HD DVD player

So that's a total of 28*175,000 = 4.9 million HD DVDs sold.

If Blu-Ray sales to date are now at 92.4% of HD DVD sales, then that's over 4.5 million. If a million PS3s have been sold, then that's an average of 4-5 DVDs per PS3.

That's probably partly because people haven't had PS3s as long as HD DVDs have been out there, and partly because lots of PS3 owners bought their consoles primarily for playing games. Whereas anyone prepared to be an HD DVD early adopter must be a bit of a film fanatic.

So you wouldn't expect PS3 owners on average to buy as many DVDs as people who've bought a dedicated DVD player - but surely at only 4 or 5 DVDs at the moment, there's still a lot of room for growth. And with over 5 times as many PS3s out there, that looks good for Blu-Ray.

I'm still not ready to commit my cash to either format though. If I could get a cheaper BD player (I don't want a PS3) and if Universal started producing Blu-Ray DVDs, I'd probably change my mind.

And with HD/BD DVDs in total still less than 1% of total DVDs sold, I'll be sticking with the real winner in the format war for a while yet.

zombieflanders, has anyone published cumulative sales figures? HD-DVD has been out longer than Blu-Ray, it might be 3:1 for Blu-Ray now but what has it been to date? Is there any indication that for new DVD releases, Blu-Ray is comprehensively outselling HD-DVD? Or is this a case of most HD-DVD owners having already bought the DVDs that Blu-Ray owners can only buy now?

I'm still sitting this one out for now. I'd expected to go Blu-Ray, but the head start and cheaper players for HD-DVD have made me wait and see. It'd take at least a couple more months of 3:1 to Blu-Ray before I change my mind.