Blu-ray Disc Outsells HD-DVD 2 to 1 in the U.S.

[admin]

U.S. sales of Blu-ray discs totaled 2.6 million units from January 1 through Sept 30, versus 1.4 million HD-DVD discs sold.

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/14903/Bluray-Disc-Outsells-HDDVD-2-to-1-in-the-US/

These figures largely do not include the effects of Paramount/Dreamworks going HD DVD exclusive. And to put these figures in perspective, the DVD edition of Transformers sold 8.1 million copies in the first week - that's twice as much as HD DVD and Blu-ray combined for the whole year! Also, the HD DVD version of Transformers (which these figures do not include, I don't think) sold 190,000 copies in the first week - nearly 10% of all HD DVD disc sales for the entire year.

In other words, these figures are so small, it's not worth trying to see any trends from them because a major release will skew these figures one way or the other.

[admin]

HD movie sales for the week ending Oct 21. is not 51% Blu-ray, 49% HD DVD. Blu-ray down from the 65+% a week earlier, while HD DVD is up due to the Transformers movie. Again, it just goes to show that a single disc can make a huge difference to sale figures, despite the fact that there there are nearly 1000 titles already available on HD.

[src2206]

Is there any real quality difference between BR and HD-DVD (I mean which can be perceived by mortal eyes)?

[admin]

Not really. Early BD releases used MPEG-2 so the quality was average, while HD DVD favours VC-1 from the start. Now more BDs are using H.264, and many are switching to VC-1 as well (for example, Warner's BDs use the exact same transfer as their HD DVD releases, so the video quality is identical). People mostly prefer VC-1 transfers over both H.264 (not mature enough) and MPEG-2 (old inefficient technology). Both formats also support the same set of audio codecs, so quality wise, there is very little difference. Now some BDs feature PCM 5.1 audio, which some say is better than Dolby Digital Plus. The new Pan's Labyrinth BD/HD DVD is supposed to have DTS-HD Master 7.1 audio, which I think will set the standard for high quality audio soundtracks. To be honest, most people won't be able to hear the difference between it and normal Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, unless they've invested in a good sound system.

HD DVDs tend to have the better extras/interactive features though due to the more settled specifications. Pan's Labyrinth, for example, has extra web enabled features that the Blu-ray version won't have.

Other Blu-ray/HD DVD pros and cons listed on these pages:

http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/Blu-ray

http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/HD_DVD

[src2206]

But unless the battle is settled I think as a customer my policy should be "wait and watch"!

Btw, thanks for the links.