{"id":248,"date":"2008-02-12T10:04:52","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T15:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mancide.net\/2008\/02\/12\/blu-ray-wins-but-who-decided-the-war\/"},"modified":"2008-02-12T10:04:52","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T15:04:52","slug":"blu-ray-wins-but-who-decided-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/12\/blu-ray-wins-but-who-decided-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Blu-Ray “wins”, but who decided the war?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Due to the announcements yesterday<\/a> that Netflix<\/a> and Best Buy<\/a> are dedicating their HD operations to Blu-Ray, this appears to be the final nail in the coffin for HD-DVD.<\/p>\n

However, I pose the question, who really decided this “war” was over? Was it the same company that brought Blu-Ray to the market when it wasn’t ready to compete<\/a> with HD-DVD. The same company that bet it’s game console<\/a> could sway the market? I bet it’s purely coincidence that they are the company that owns two movie studios, developed Blu-Ray, and manufacture the only “player they would recommend, due to upcoming changes to the platform. But Pioneer, Samsung, Panasonic and Sony have all been selling standalone Blu-ray players to customers, a representative at the Blu-ray booth at CES said.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I may be bitter because I bought an HD-DVD player. I’m still holding out for the firesales on HD-DVD discs to pick a few more up. I also think Blu-Ray early adopters are bitter<\/a>, and we might see more suits as the whole Profile 2.0 event happens later this year; which will effectively render all stand-alone Blu-Ray players incompatible with the completed feature set of Blu-Ray 2.0. Might I add that Profile 2.0 adds no features over what HD-DVD offers today, and in fact merely gets Blu-Ray to the same feature set HD-DVD has offered since it hit market.<\/p>\n

High-definition video discs accounted for $300 million of 2007’s $23.7 billion home video market, but high definition represents the future. In its first two years, high-def players are outselling the DVD player in its first two years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blu-Ray also accounted for 62% of the disc sales, versus 38% for HD-DVD. One has to wonder if the weak software library of the Playstation 3 (which accounted for an additional 3.25 million Blu-Ray players on the market) had anything to do with skewing disc sales. I know if I had spent money on a Playstation 3, I would have felt compelled to buy some software to justify the $600 price premium on a gaming system that lacks many features of the leading next-gen console; but that is an argument for another article.<\/p>\n

While HD discs may be the future of the home video market, they still face an uphill battle, even with a clear “winner”. DVD players and discs are 79 times greater<\/strong> than the total HD disc market. Statistics such as only 21% of homes have HDTVs and of that only 14% are connected to an HD source do not bode well for consumers clamoring for HD discs. Couple that with the fact that most HD players, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, upscale existing DVDs. In most instances these look good enough that typical consumers cannot see the benefit of the HD version over an upscaled DVD.<\/p>\n

So consider this my last take on the “format war”. I’m going to go play some XBOX 360 and wait for Amazon<\/a> to put the bargain bin HD-DVD sale in the works so I can stock up. I’ll also be waiting for a Profile 2.0 compatible combo player, or possibly pick up this nifty combo HTPC<\/a> that is currently the bee’s knees.<\/p>\n

Seacrest out.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> It appears my assumption of the PS3 having a weak game library driving Blu-Ray sales may have been the wrong assumption to make. It appears<\/a> that I should have came to the opposite conclusion. That the increased number of PS3\/BD players should have correlated to an increased number of disc sales. When you figure the attach rate including the PS3, the disc to player sales ratio is around 1:1; HD-DVD was around 4:1. So the studios should have been looking at the format that was selling more software per player<\/em><\/strong>, not what format was selling the most units in the admittedly niche market that is HD disc sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Due to the announcements yesterday that Netflix and Best Buy are dedicating their HD operations to Blu-Ray, this appears to be the final nail in the coffin for HD-DVD. However, I pose the question, who really decided this “war” was over? Was it the same company that brought Blu-Ray to the market when it wasn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancide.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}