Two News Stories: Blu-ray vs HD DVD

[admin]

Blu-ray Holds 5 to 1 Hardware Lead Over HD-DVD

vs

HD DVD shrugs off Blockbuster move

The research firm concludes that Blu-ray presently holds a 5 to 1 advantage over HD-DVD in installed hardware, primarily on the strength of the PlayStation 3.

According to DEG, 1.5-million Blu-ray players reside in American homes, broken down between 100,000 dedicated players and 1.4-million PlayStation 3s.

-- snip --

DEG also reported that $55-million has been spent on high-definition movies to date, the majority ($35-million) devoted to Blu-ray.

He (Ken Graffeo, executive vice president of High Definition Strategic Marketing for Universal Studios and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group) remained adamant that HD DVD was on top at the moment and claimed that dedicated HD DVD set top boxes are outselling Blu-ray set top boxes at a rate of three to one in the US.

-- snip --

To further press this point home though, he highlighted the fact that if you include the PS3 sales in Sony’s Blu-ray sales figures, Blu-ray customers are only buying an average of one Blu-ray title per player, while HD DVD owners are buying around four titles per player.

-- snip --

Whichever way you look at it, the numbers are so inadequate, especially when you consider the fact that there are over 90 million US households with DVD players and the market is worth around $26 billion a year. It is definitely early days now and the war looks like it is going to continue for quite some time.

This quote would worry me a bit if I was a Blu-ray owner:

Graffeo is confident that HD DVD will win the war because its players are getting close to that critical point of affordability, and there's also the fact that the HD DVD specification was finalised before any player was released, meaning that even the first-generation players can access all of the features in discs being released tomorrow. On the other hand, Blu-ray's specifications still aren't finalised, meaning that current players will not be able to access new additions to the specification.

[admin]

So the PS3 is making Blu-ray figures look much more promising than it really is, while the HD DVD group is ignoring the PS3 sales altogether (but only when it suits them), while still including the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive in it's figures (I guess this makes some sense, since people who buy the HD DVD hardware are 100% getting into the HD movie scene, while you can't say that about PS3 owners, 30% of which don't even have HDTVs). Meanwhile, HD DVD owners buy 4 times more movies than Blu-ray owners, but this time, the HD DVD group decides to include the PS3 sales figures (if you don't include it, then simple maths tells us that there have been 1.4 million Blu-ray movie sales compared to 1.2 million HD DVD movie sales, of course whether the 500,000 Casino Royale PS3 give-away in Europe is included in the 1.4 million Blu-ray figure is hard to tell).

Lies, damned lies, and statistics indeed.

The final bits I've quote is interesting. The HD movie market is only 55 million in value (from the beginning to now), while the DVD market is a 26 billion (a year!) business. To declare victory now is just a bit ridiculous, by either side - they are both failures and until the HD movie market reaches at least half of DVD's, no winner can be declared.

For the foreseeable future, Blu-ray will get more studios to release more movies (BD+ should help Fox feel a bit more secure). HD DVD have yet to play their IT card (Intel, Microsoft and other IT companies that support HD DVD, and not forgetting Toshiba notebooks), and they will get more sympathy from people like us because they are less strict about DRM (no BD+, AACS is not mandatory, and if anybody is going to support managed copy, it will be HD DVD).

As long as this war can ensure I get my hands on a HD movie player, with networking support, DivX/XviD/H.264 playback, built-in hard-drive and DVD upscaling, all for under 200 bucks, then I'm all for it.

[ed klein]

"quote"
As long as this war can ensure I get my hands on a HD movie player, with networking support, DivX/XviD/H.264 playback, built-in hard-drive and DVD upscaling, all for under 200 bucks, then I'm all for it.

Yes that would work for me too, but also, I would like to see more information on "networking support", such as how the firmware updates? software updates? dial-up line? high speed internet line? are going to work, especially if manged copy if forthcoming.

[admin]

I meant networked playback of DivX/XviD/DVDs - it's really handy to have a central media server/UPnP storage device and then stream playback from that, instead of storing everything on the player itself (if it has a built-in hard-drive).

Blu-ray/HD DVD players won't require Internet access. Firmware updates and such, would be done through burning a DVD or something (although online updates would be an option if the player had networking/Internet support). Nobody really knows how managed copy will work, but from what the ACCS have said so far (ie. they will increase prices to counter the effects of casual piracy, like giving it to friends/family), it sounds like you'll be able to make a copy and it would play anywhere (there's really no other way to do it, especially on HD DVD where the specs are already finalised). The situation on the PC might be different though (PC players require Internet access, so some kind of authentication/registration might be required).