http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...chnologyNews-2

(Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up and other retailers have had the same experience," said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn's.)


This is what we all said before - One Format and One Format only. I will not put out $500-$1,000 only to find out my player is not playing the format that wins the war.

All they had to do was read this Forum to see what was going to happen, slow sales does not surprise me at all.

PLUS, the website says "Hollywood is hoping high-definition DVDs will reignite a slowing market for movies at home", but slowing only means that instead of 150% growth, the are only getting 30% growth on a multi Billion dollar market place. I do not feel sorry for them that the DVD market is "Slowing".

"High expectations were set. At every meeting with Sony, every demonstration was spectacular. Then along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung and that's when my expectations were hurt. When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD." - Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn's

I'm curious to see if the market picks up once King Kong, Superman Returns, Batman Begins, X-Men 3, Harry Potter, and other blockbusters get released...

I'm sure it will improve but I agree with Iron Giant that many people will wait for one format to win before investing that much into a new player. Having two competing formats is definitely hurting both sides.

yeah and thats the boat i am in... i am ready to buy either format but i am waiting for the dust to settle..... i wont invest $500 or more on a player that is in no use (ala beta/vhs situation)...

but we wont see the dust settle until ps3 comes out

Again...the player won't be useless if BD "won" 3 years from now.

What happened to HD DVD "selling better than DVD when it first launched"? Or was that all bullshit?

I don't think "Better" was ever uttered. I think it's always been that it was the same. But if you'll notice, a majority of that article is about BD. HD DVD doesn't get much of a mention. Until #'s are released on both sides, HD DVD's lead won't get press, i don't think.

Everyone is too preoccupied with not hurting Sony's feelings.

The A1 is my first DVD player. For $500, I get a great upscaling DVD player + I can play HD content for years. Even if BD wins, it won't be for at least a year, maybe two, maybe three. By then the players will be $50 or $100.

And in the meantime, I'll see 50-100 great movies on HD whenever I want.

That was probably bullshit, and whoever said it, I called them out on it. As of right now, based on the public info we have, both HD formats are selling slower than DVD was.

I already have a upscaling player, so I don't care about that. I also don't care about the $500 for the A1, since in home theater world that is not a lot. My concern is about having a collection of HD-DVDs and BR ending up the 'winner'.

That's been my concern as well. And, because of it, I planned to sit out the format war.

But once I saw the fantastic quality of HD DVD vs. the mediocre quality of BD, I decide to get off the fence and vote with my wallet.

Bjorn's is a great store. I sat through the HD DVD demo there and they managed to get a Blu-ray player from Japan before most of the country had a chance to see Blu-ray. They definitely had trouble keeping HD DVD players in stock at one point, but considering they mostly carry the XA1 maybe they are having trouble moving them. Their salesmen are definitely down on the Samsung and Blu-ray in general.

You know, I've been meaning to stop by my regional ultra-high-end HT store to see if they had any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray setups. I don't think they cary Toshiba stuff, but I might be wrong. I'd be interesting to see how they're handling this.

Maybe someday I'll buy one of those fancy $9000 CD players.

(sigh)

Don't waste your money on that, get a $50000 turntable instead. Then you can start tweaking it to make it "really" good.