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Just got home from Sony dealer training. The portion devoted to Blu-ray was long on talk, short on substance. Basically, rehashing the same song and dance as the past year with not much to show for it. Still touting the same specs without revealing the now well-known production issues (which I expected).

There was a single BDP-S1 Blu-ray player being used for the actual Blu-ray demo. It was a prototype that the trainer had to admit was not able to play a commercial blu-ray disc. Output was limited to 1080i. The only disc he would/could play was demo clips. The player was not turned off or the disc stopped while we were in the room. Other demos for TVs were using the Japanese BD-ROM player that has been around a while. Only playing clips, no commercial discs.

This is as of August 15th.

I asked about disc replication issues. I could best describe the response of the trainer as "deer in the headlights" followed by quizical consternation. In other words, like a good soldier, when confronted with undeniable negative data, play dumb.

After some five years of developement with prototypes now over a year old, Sony still can't produce a commercially viable player that conforms to the BD spec, there is that little issue of some 60% or more failure rate for single layer BD discs and dual layer BD not even producable in commercial quantity.

Negative feedback was not even hinted at. All they wanted to do was blow sunshine up our..., well, you know. They are still making a huge issue out of PS3. They are telling dealers that PS3 will be the key to Blu-ray's success, will make us all a lot of money, and bring world peace.

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But Ben, that is not news. And recent history shows that more support doesn't mean better delivery of what people are looking for: excellence in audio, video and interactivity. Fewer companies can move much faster and more efficiently to build a format. The original CD format was owned and developed by two companies: Sony and Philips. BDA with so many members and agendas, moves slowly.

And membership there doesn't translate to products that move the needle. Or for that matter, real products. Look at Thomson who has shipped HD DVD players, not BD.

Let's look at Dell. All last year they were practically the spokesperson for BDA, talking about how great BD format was. But here we are, with no BD product from them where as LG, Acer, Fujitsu and Toshiba have all shipped HD DVD laptops.

Of significant note is that the three core companies in BDA, Sony/Philips/Panasonic, have not shipped any products. And Sony will OEM a player from another company. Or aggressiveness in pricing them. This speaks volumes to the prospects of the format in the eyes of their business decision makers, not their standards setting folks.

And we have companies like HP who was the marketing leader for BD format but later decided to also support HD DVD. So things change.

A year ago when we threw our support behind HD DVD, people thought it would not matter and that with all the “support” behind BDA, HD DVD was as good as dead. Indeed, there were polls created here asking if this were true, and majority said yes. But the same poll has the opposite results now.

Fact is that great execution matters more than the army of people behind you. It pains me to point this out but Apple has done very well with the iPod against the mass of traditional CE companies. We are not Apple and I don’t mean to imply that these analogies are the same. But it is important to know that HD DVD is real, and can do the job exceptionally well. And we have proven that we can deliver exceptional audio and video in HD DVD-30.

Yes, BD-50 is an important thing for BD to get done from marketing point of view. But reality is that with advanced codecs, the only use of that extra 20 gigabytes is to fill it with even more extras. But if the upcoming release of MI3 is any indication, the market values two HD DVD discs more than a single BD-50 discs that may even cost more. Indeed that releases uses two BD-25 discs.

It may not be an attractive thing to say but the outcome of this “war” currently is that both formats will live on. Studios will eventually support both at which point, the consumer will not care about the war. And yes, I am including Sony in this list. Recall that they eventually supported the VHS format…

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Comparing both formats’ first six weeks of launch, HD DVD player sales, which began in April, outsold Blu-ray players, which launched in June, by 33%.

But Blu-ray’s first six weeks of launch, thanks to its higher-priced players, raked in 42% more revenue than HD DVD hardware did during its first six weeks out.

Blu-ray’s singular player on the market is a $999 model from Samsung.

The report also compared the two formats’ performance during a short time they have both been available, the six weeks ended July 29.

Based on that time frame, Blu-ray led the next-generation market with a 54% share of hardware units sold and a 69% revenue share, according to NPD data.

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I just saw a demo of Sony's new player at a Sony showroom in Tampa. I was totally underwhelmed by what I saw. The quality of the video was not as good as you get from HBOHD, and that is faint praise at best. I wouldn't pay $500 for the player with that format, much less a $1,000.

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Until we see both formats selling within the top 1000 consistently, we shouldn't celebrate so much.

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