Based on what shows up to stores, based on how many the #1 seller of the hd-a1 has said hes sold on avs, based on my personal experiences of anyone i'd know buying a hd-dvd player (read: 0).

Didn't I read a quote from a studio exec that said that there were as many HD DVD players sold as there were SD DVD players at the end of 1997?

Good call.

yep.

He seems like the type who comes to a conclusion without doing research, *then* looks for things to support the conclusion.

That's highly unlikely. According to Jim Taylor's DVD Demystified FAQ:

(All non-bold mine)

DVD: First players available March 1997. By the end of 1997, there were:

200,000 players sold into US homes, 500,000 sold worldwide. Not counting the PS3, I find it possible, but unlikely, that we will reach that in the US. With the PS3, that number will be easily surpassed.

But now? There's no way that 200,000 HD-DVD players have been sold. No way. That would be 2x the adoption rate of DVD. (DVD sold 200k March-Dec, HD sold 200k in April through August???)



A library of over 900 DVD-video titles. Absolutely not happening. Right now, between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, we've got less than half that, and that includes rumored releases, not-yet announced titles, and duplicates across both formats.

They also mention that over the next several years, DVDs will have an installed base of over 600 million. I don't see Blu-Ray or HD-DVD ever doing that. Ever. I'll be surprised if it's over 150 million worldwide.

Looks like we're going to have to dig out the quote

A tour promoting HD DVD is launching in September, and Microsoft will be providing its Xbox 360 + HD DVD combo as an example of the experience. Looks like a sign of confidence that the HD DVD extension will be on par with other HD DVD players -- whether the price will also be on par has yet to be seen.

Here are the tour dates:
September 14 - 17: Denver Colorado Convention Center
September 22 - 24: Dallas Plano Balloon Fest (Texas)
September 29 - October 1: Minneapolis, MN
October 5 - 6: Chicago, IL
October 10 - 15: New York, NY
October 20 - 22: Washington, D.C.
October 26 - 28: Philadelphia, PA
November 2 - 4: Richmond, VA
November 15 - 16: Los Angeles, CA
November 24 - 28: Seattle, WA
December 6 - 10: San Francisco, CA

I might try to go to this, though I'm not really interested in an Xbox for the most part.

Just because a studio head says it doesn't mean that it's true. The NPD report said for the six weeks ended July 29, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray had a 0.4% share of all DVD hardware sold. During those six weeks, HD-DVD had 46% of the units sold. Out of the 0.4% that BR/HD shared, 46% of that was theirs. So, out of all hardware sold, HD-DVD players were making up 0.14% during that period.

According to the latest CEA figures, in the six weeks ending July 29, there were about 2.53 million DVD players sold. So, that's about 3,548 HD-DVD units during that time period. Or about 84 players per day. Perhaps this is how the person in the USA Today story came up with the 5,000.

Hey, guess what... NPD and CEA figures aren't bulletproof. There's also the issue of shipped vs. sold I know that. But to arrive at 200,000 in sales already (as of now or whenever the quote was said) is completely asinine. Toshiba said they shipped 20,000 players in the US as of June.

You mean to tell me since June, they've shipped another 180,000?

Just follow the logic. It doesn't make any sense. By its second full month of release, DVD had sold over 60,000 units. Toshiba obviously did not ship 60,000 by the end of their second full month of release (June).

Maybe what the exec meant was that they expect HD-DVD to outpace DVD by the end of the year. That's possible, althought it means HD-DVD sales need to accelerate. Even if HD-DVD sold 5,000 units every week (which it obviously didn't until the end of June), it would still fall back behind DVD (even using Jim Watson's lower 200,000 number).

Let's start to approach these situations in a more practical, matter-of-fact way.

you mean...your way?

I'm just following RoboDad's advice.

I made a mistake in my post. It should have read "25>30" not "15>25."

I still stand by my statement that the number of players sold has to closer to 100,000 than 5,000. Sell through v. shipped isn't an issue here; stores can't keep the A1 in stock. I have yet to see a boxed unit in person.

That's a bad comparison. UMD videos were limited to one player and one screen. Its uses were limited, and thus its adaptation was once the novelty wore off. Plus, UMD videos have competition from homeconverted videos on memory stick, which is not something BD or HD-DVD have to worry about anytime soon. BD is just as unlimited as HD DVD in adoption and application to existing home theaters.

"I have yet to see a boxed unit in person," is anecdotal evidence and shouldn't be taken into serious consideration by anyone with a reasonable mind.

However, assuming that every store everywhere has sold out of all Toshiba's June shipments, as of June Toshiba says they shipped 20,000 units. 20,000 is much closer to 5,000 than it is to 100,000. Even figuring that BD sold equally as many, 40,000 is still closer to 5,000 than it is to 100,000.

Based on what?

In June, Toshiba said they shipped 20,000 units. Assuming a 100% sell-through rate, there's still another 80,000 to account for since June. Between more Toshiba shipments and RCA sales (which may or may not be counted in that 20,000 figure), what evidence (besides you not seeing any in stores) indicates these are selling so well?

Yeah. I'd imagine between both HD DVD and Blu-ray combined, you're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 30K units sold in total, give or take a few thousand.

HD/BR discs are also limited. As of this year, most people will only have the one player, so it's use is limited. You certainly can't do anything with it in your existing DVD players, or your portables ones, or your PC, or your Navigator's TV system. Next year, and the year afterward, will be different. But not this year.

HD/BR is also limited in that in addition to the player, you need a TV. Not any TV, an HDTV. And not any HDTV, but one with HDMI. The whole ICT issue has made others worry that their current non-HDMI TV is not "good enough" --- something the media has been saying in every article for the past year. Not true, but that is the perception. This will change down the road.

If HD/BR was the first way to get HD-quality content, then that would be something. But free OTA HD has been around and most cable/sat systems give you HD. There is some competition as people say, "For now, whatever is on these HD channels is good enough." Again, that will change.

My point is that right now (2006), HD-DVD and Blu-Ray could appear to be very much like UMD/Laserdisc/SACD/DVD-A.

Just read the lead article in the new Sound & Vision on Blu-Ray. They got to compare the "defective" samsung against a new one that has the chip turned off to make the picture better. Both guys conclude that there was some improvement. One thought a fair amount, and the other thought it was fairly minimal. They conclude that there is still a mystery as to why the discs don't look better. On the plus, they say that the sound on Blu-Ray, especially the uncompressed tracks, are the best of any they have ever heard. But in terms of picture, they still need to go a ways to catch up with Hd-DVD.

My point is only that sales of a game console don't automatically trigger movie sales. The attachment rate is what is important.

I know that BD supporters hypothesize that the PS3 will be different because of the reasons you list, but, IMO, that's pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

BD supporters can say that PS3 is different until they're Blu in the face, but there isn't a single example of a game console that defined a movie format. The PSP, however, is an example of where a game console could not define/support a movie playback format (for whatever reasons). Oh, and the PS2 didn't "make" DVD like the Blu crowd asserts, either.

You really need to take LD out of there. People keep making this mistake. LD lasted for over 2 decades and had thousands and thousands of titles available. If HDDVD/BD do that, I'll be very happy. They're already cheaper than LD.

UMD is still very much different from Laserdisc/SACD/DVD-A and HD-DVD/BD. All the latter formats had multiple manufacturers and players, UMD doesn't. All the latter players can be showcased on a multitude of audio/video systems (and BD/HD-DVD don't need an HDTV, although there's little advantage to getting them if you don't have one). UMD can't.

And while right now most people will have limited access to their HD media, there's the assurance that it won't always be the case. PCs already exist with drives for both formats. While someone may have only one player now, they can get more for their other TVs. Portable players are an eventuality.

Add to it that HD-DVD/BD offer an improvement in video/audio quality among disc formats, while UMD was actually a decrease in quality for the sake of use in one limited fashion, and the differences are great.

I agree that HD-DVD/BD could both be limited to a niche product for the near, or even far future. However, the differences between them and UMD are too great for the latter to be used as any form of accurate comparison.

I was searching for something and found this exchange between Blitz6Speed and darkside... funny stuff in retrospect. This was from 5/21/06.

And that is unkown at the moment. But to predict it to be identical to UMD is to ignore that PS3 isn't going to be the only machine capable of playing BD.

And to assert it's going to be the same as UMD is head-in-the-ground wishful thinking.

That doesn't make it impossible.

The reasons are what are important though. If I cited betamax as an example of why HD-DVD will fail, I'd have to outline the reasons behind the example. Otherwise examples are meaningless.

It may not have "made" DVD, but when Sony can make statements like "Forty-six percent of PS2 owners say PS2 was the first DVD player they owned, and 93 percent of PS2 owners played DVD movies on their PS2s," then that's something to take into consideration.
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...rticleID=11503

Especially the 93% part, since it shows that consumers aren't afraid to use a game system as a movie-viewing device. Even if only 2% of PS3 buyers become regular BD video consumers, if Sony ships the amount they claim by the end of the year, that's 80,000 BD video consumers. HD-DVD will have to sell 3 times as many players as they had by June by the end of the year to meet that number.

So, PS3 may not cement BD as the one-and-only HD disc format, but its a force to consider.

LD had, comparably, zero penetration. LD took 20 years to amass 3 million players. DVD did that in about two years. At its peak in sales, DVD sold more in a month than LD ever did.

I do agree that an LD-level library for HD/BR would be phenomenal.





Correct.