Spiky

God, even the BD fanboys are saying this, now. You will all believe anything a marketing sheet of paper tells you, huh?

Qui Gon Jim

I want to correct a statement I made earlier. I knew there was a major sports franchise skipping PS3 this year, but it was not Madden but WWE. Sorry for the confusion.

The Bus

Your point is still a good one. What real Madden fan is going to wait until November to get the game?

Coral

Don't forget NHL 07... won't be released for the PS3 at all, but will be on the 360 and by all accounts is a true next-gen sports title.

Shannon Nutt

The Official Sony Blu-ray Launch Team

FantasticVSDoom

This is still going to be the driving force...You can talk about storage, specs, studio support, brand loyalty,whatever, this is going to be the most important factor. Mom and Dad aint going to drop the kind of prices we are talking so that little Jimmy can play video games. They didnt drop $400 when the 360 came out, and sure as hell arent going to drop $600.

Qui Gon Jim

AH! I was pretty sure it was a major EA title that I was thinking of, but a cursory search didn't reveal anything.

stanrozenfeld

Now, here is an article that seems to claim that blu-ray is actually outselling hd dvd!

http://www.homemediaretailing.com/ne...rticle_ID=9539

It boggles the mind! It just seems to contradict every piece of anecdotal evidence that we have.

Any comments?

Stan

Supermallet

What it sounds like is BD sales went up at launch, then down after people realized what Sony was pulling on them. But since the BD player cost more, it's generating more money overall, even with fewer sales. Or am I reading it wrong?

Mr. Cinema

"Retailers expressed frustration over slower than expected Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD product sales during the fourth annual HDTV conference here Aug. 15-16.

Among the retailers were execs for Ultimate Electronics, Bjorn’s and Ken Crane’s.

Many retailers noted that they were suffering through more problems with Blu-ray than HD DVD during the formats’ first few months on the market."

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6362963.html (full article)

The Bus

Yeah. I've got a comment. That article is poorly written. Note:

So, which is it? Did Blu-Ray sell 54% of all players, or did HD-DVD sell 33% more. Something's not adding up. I emailed the author for clarification. When HD-DVD sells 33% more, I don't consider that a "Blu-Ray sales lead".

<hr>

And now, my aside, which was nicely summarized in the VBO story:

HD/BR is fighting a somewhat uphill battle. If it's difficult to convince people on a DVD enthusiast board (who argue about inserts, for Pete's sake), how do you think this will work with the general public? Execution needs to be flawless. The technology is there but only by the studios doing their job extremely well will we see this format war win. That means doing a flawless job on restoring the image/print, a flawless getting the sound mix right, a flawless job releasing cool/new extras and finally a flawless at getting the right software out the door.

Hint: That means no bodded transfers (or VHS tape Robocop releases), actual TrueHD on every title (not just DD or DD+ or PCM), HD/BR-only extras (or at least as many old extras as possible at 1080p), and movies people actually care about (not Rumor Has It or Basic Instinct 2 or Assault on Precinct 13).

From that standpoint, HD-DVD has been very disappointing and Blu-Ray has been an outright failure. No one should be surprised that consumers don't care. There's 1000 DVD-loving people in a room all talking about home theatre and movies and who has HDTV. In a dark corner, there's 4 guys debating Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD.

(To be fair, one of the guys has a smudged "ask me about D-Theatre" lapel pin. The subject is never brought up).

Put that into perspective.

My point is, the tech doesn't matter. HD-DVD is near perfect, Blu-Ray has the potential (and will more than likely) also be near perfect. The studios need to put that behind them and focus on the software. That's what matters.

stanrozenfeld

One can also argue that hd dvd player hasn't sold as well, because it was never available!

Adam Tyner

What?

Drexl

I think he's referring to supply issues and how the players seem to sell as soon as the stores get them.

Zman

What the?

penguin42

As much as I would like to respect the opinions of others, it's impossible if their argument is completely irrational.

This website thinks blu ray will win. But wait until you read why Blu Ray will win!

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/08/16/why-blu-ray-will-win/

I havn't laughed that hard in a while. I'm hoping that whoever wrote that got a nice paycheck from Sony.

awmurray

Looks like Sony has dropped Black Hawk Down and Sense & Sensibility from their release schedule "indefinitley". Full article here.

This is significant because BHD was supposed to be the first DL 50GB title.

Also a BD insider from Sun has floated an estimate of the % of DL titles at 20% for the first few years. OK, so we're supposed to settle for SL 25GB discs for 80% of our movies!?!? For years until Sony can figure it out?

Curiously, 20% seems to be a "magic" number. If you create X BD discs with 80% SL/20% DL the average is (drum roll): 30GB. Which happens to be the size of the HD DVD releases (not counting the handful of combo discs which are supposed to be 30GB soon anyway).

BD supporters are in the strange position of supporting the idea that 25GB is "enough"-- most don't seem to care and think it'll be OK for studios to release say 5% in BD50. That's a very weird position to take after carrying the "more capacity" banner for so long. After all, wouldn't they want to support the side that had the most capacity? Realistically, even when/if BD50 is released, 90+% of the BDs released will have LESS capacity.

The BD supporters have jumped from one "killer advantage" to another each of which was supposed to doom HD DVD to the tech junk pile.

Capacity

• Was supposed to give us more extra features/better PQ. Almost all BD releases so far have come with fewer extra features than the SD DVD or the HD DVD version. Some have had NO extra features at all.
• BD PQ is subpar because the encoding tools are MPEG-2 only-- even though Sony had to have an idea that BD50 wasn't going to make it to launch.
• BD50 is MIA "indefinitely".

Better Interactivity

• BD-J was supposed to give better interactivity than iHD. But the BD-Live profile isn't mandated until mid-2007. BD-Live, therefore, isn't supported by the Samsung and possibly not even the other BD players this year (including PS3?). Even so, this will lead to a segmented market where some BD players won't be able to play all the "special features" because their player won't support BD-Live. That makes it unclear how much support studios will give to BD-Live features.
• BD-Live is required for PIP (like HD DVDs IME feature). MI3 coming 10/30/06 will have this feature for the HD DVD version but NOT the BD version. This is because the only BD player (the Samsung) doesn't support BD-Live.
• No one has been able to verify that the Samsung even supports BD-J. People have tried to figure out how to author a simple BD which would include a simple BD-J script to verify that BD-J exists. Apparently no BD insider is willing to help them author or to provide such a disc. Rumor is that studios were told not to use BD-J for "at least a year". No one can demonstrate BD-J at this point on a commercial player...

Studio support

• Beaten to death-- studios will follow the money, though. HD DVD titles are outselling BD titles. The 10th ranked HD DVD titles outsells the TOP SELLING BD title on Amazon.

CE support

• They will also follow the money (see studio support)
• Rumor is that there are other CE companies interested in making HD DVD players

PS3

• Also beaten to death-- a big topic for BD supporters because this one hasn't been destroyed/proven (yet).

Peak Bandwidth. The current advantage that BD supporters are clinging to. Most likely will be a non-issue-- the proof is in the current HD DVD releases. BD was designed with capacity and bandwidth matched to MPEG-2. VC-1 requires less capacity and bandwidth. If BD switches to mostly using VC-1, the space/bandwidth advantage disappears (for movie playback).

Oh, yea, and Blu-ray players cost twice as much...

awmurray

Quote from the article:

Uhhh... no. That isn't happening. I've got over $25,000 worth of AV equipment in my HT room and I'm not going to buy a BD player.

The sales figures are completely opposite of what the guy assumes.

It is full of laughs:

Choo, Choo .

Eventually BD might equal HD DVD... whooo hoooo!

Says it all, doesn't it?

pinata242

When you assume the opposite of fact, anything is possible.

RockStrongo

Who the hell is that guy who wrote the article? I didnt see his credentials anywhere.

While I do see BD becoming better in the future, his reasoning for BD winning was idiotic.

The Bus

This is the only logical thing he's said:

awmurray

Unless your favorite movie is a Universal title that is.

Shannon Nutt

Sony started shipping its 50GB recordable media today, so one can only assume that prerecorded movie releases on 50GB discs will be upcoming soon.


http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/16/sony_50gb_blu_ray/

kvrdave

With a suggested retail of $48 per disc, what the hell are the movies going to cost???

awmurray

From what I've read from BD and HD DVD insiders, pre-recorded media is much different as far as the manufacturing process than recordable. So much so that one doesn't imply the other is close at all. There are physical differences. If it were so simple you would think we'd have already seen them since recordable BD50 has been available in Japan for 5 years (albeit in a caddy).