I was commenting regarding if the 40GB PS3 did not have Spider-Man 3 included if the sales would be very different (since its free inside). I concluded they would not be very different going by the current % of PS3 population buying Blu-ray movies who would have bought the 40GB PS3 and Spider-Man 3 in the 3 day time frame.

I'm in a similar situation, I want to use analog out and need on-board decoders for TrueHD and DTS-HD-MA since discs are starting to use them. But I am wondering if Panasonic might eventually add the lossless decoding via firmware updates (like Toshiba did with the A1 and TrueHD last year). Anyone care to guess as to whether that is likely?

Guess I'll keep looking for a profile 1.1 BD player.

I think he's talking about the 2.5 million PS3s that were sold before Spiderman 3 came out on BD. Why didn't more of those owners buy the trilogy or part 3?

Can they? From what I've read, there is no audio decoding of any kind, aside from DD & DTS. This unit is a spruced up version of the Samsung 1000, which didn't have onboard decoding either. I think Panasonic has basically told us to go buy a HDMI 1.3 player to use with the BD30. I'm wondering if we'll ever get a standalone player that truly "has it all". It seems like they keep adding features, while quietly removing some. Sounds like the 40GB PS3.

you seemed to be hoping that the deal was included in the figures to undermine the total. given your posting history that is certainly the perception i ( and i suspect others) have of your question regardless of intent.

Really? I don't recall ever mentioning Sony padding their Spider-Man numbers by including the PS3 systems at all. Thats just you trying to label me. Feel free to dig through my posts and quote me on it.

You can have questions as much as you want about my "intent" but I am also one who owns both HD DVD and Blu-ray with almost 100 movies combined between the two.

Fact is, Spider-Man 3 sold only 130k copies to a base of 3-4 Million potential players. Compare that to the 115k from Transformers to a 500k-800k base. See why I might think that would be a dissapointment considering the Spider-Man trilogy is one of the biggest money makers in the past 10 years and Blu-ray fans have been calling it the "death of HD DVD" for several months?

If you don't have anything to add this argument and just want to attack me, I would recommend not doing that.

blu ray fans have been calling spider man the "death of hd dvd" for several months?! you clearly have a strange filter on your reading habits because i haven't seen this stated anywhere, let alone as a general consensus amoung a group of fans.

the other arguement is the tired old attach rate beast which has been flogged so hard it's beyond a joke. strange how players suddenly become worthy of mention for attach rate by one group to prove a certain point, then are ignored when trying to make another... strange, and amusing!

The 2:1 Sales Ratio (now only 1.8:1) is commonly used by Blu-ray on a weekly basis, but HD DVD fans can't use the ratio of movies to actual players?

Regardless, I am done with the conversation.

it is informative that you consider yourself an hd dvd fan, rather than a "blu-ray". kind of puts the lie to your professed neutrality...

You can use the attach rate, but I don't see how it's nearly as important as the software sales ratio. It's clear that some PS3 owners would always be into games only and others would only rarely buy movies. What's more important is that some PS3 owners do buy movies (even if not the majority) and deserve to be counted (somethingthe "standalone" player sales stats don't consider). I don't see how the leader in sales ratio isn't still in the lead (unless someone can come up with some #'s showing Wal-mart routinely sells primarily HD-DVDs).

For me the most important # I'm watching is the sales ratio of Warner discs. If Spiderman 3 and Transformers sales were about the same (I'd bet a good share who bought both are dual format), then upcoming Warner sales will show us where things stand.

The reason why Spiderman 3 hasn't sold as much as some of the expectations boils down to the fact that it really isn't that great of a movie. The trilogy itself is too high and they screwed up by not releasing complete special editions for the first two movies.

You have personally questioned my persona numerous times and I have made it clear that I do not and have never worked for the SONY corporation. If you have evidence that I have by all means make it public: my name and bio are on the site, you are welcome to use them.

Furthermore, I would also go on record, as I think that it is needed to calm a few possible doubters, that I don't have vested interest in the company: I do not own stocks or benefit from SONY products (in)directly, period!

As to the information I have supplied on this forum it has always been related to a specific source (this would also include the advanced release info I have been providing for the International Forum over the last 6 years). I have not fabricated or misquoted relevant data which has been related to me. Finally each and every bit of info you have concerns about can easily be addressed by the party which has supplied it.

The rest of your legal ramblings simply do not belong here.

Pro-B

Let's all take a breather, shall we? I can't even tell what some of these arguments are about.

I think people are just passionate about movies, and are excited about the technology and its' benefits. I enjoy most of the posts (except when they get personal), and I find the information from a lot of the posters, especially Pro-B, very informative.
It's hard, but if we can focus on problems, and not personalities, this forum would be even more informative.

My original post only said posters can't confirm sales data if you don't work for Sony or Nielsen. Please do not mischaracertize my posts, if it is quite annoying.

Can they? Yes. It is just a matter of programming the machine to decode TrueHD and DTS-HD-MA and output the PCM. I don't believe for a minute that they don't have enough firmware "space" to add such an algorithm.

Will they? Perhaps not. But what's the point of 5.1 analog out if the only thing it can send is audio from discs with a PCM track or plain old DD and DTS (which the player can decode)?

If the goal is to force me to buy a new HDMI receiver with on-board decoding, it won't work. I'll settle for the core sound codecs instead. But I'd really rather not. This is supposed to be state-of-the-art technology, so not including decoding for the new audio codecs is ridiculous.

^Plus, discs authored in Advanced Mode require decoding in the player, right?

At this point, I don't see how one can be that much more important than the other ... unless you have a significant bias towards one format. Besides, all the numbers we get are inflated marketing numbers anyway. To buy into any of it is retarded. We should even take Nielsen numbers with a HUGE CHUNK of salt.

The attach rate by itself isn't that meaningful. It's an effective counter to Blu-ray including PS3's in "total players sold" but by itself it proves little. Say 20% of PS3 owners buy movies. So what? If 20 million PS3s were sold, that means there are 4 million PS3 owners buying movies and Blu-ray would be overwhelming HD-DVD. If only 100k PS3s were sold, then there are 20k buying movies and Blu-ray would be going away quickly. The 20% by itself tells us very little.

The sales ratio doesn't really depend on any other # and gives an absolute comparison of how the formats are doing. It actually does something to COMPARE the formats. I keep seeing the attach rate used to downplay Blu-ray sales. So what if some PS3 owners are only gamers? The sales ratio already accounts for whatever difference the attach rate makes.

I'll agree the attach rate is necesary when looking at players sold. We can't just compare total players or total stand-alones. I've yet to see a good survey that find us a number in between. So I'll agree we shouldn't favor Blu-ray by looking at players sold. But I don't see how attach rate takes anything away from Blu-ray's lead in the sales ratio.

I think the most important # is combined HD market share vs DVD. #2 is the ratio on Warner discs sold.

Problem is, you think that 20% will hold true forever...which it won't. Much like PSP, once games come out, a good chunk of people who bought Blu-ray in that 20% will buy games instead. I'm sure the Blu-ray zealots will say "No, not going to happen!", but it will. Go to any store and take a look at the UMDs piled up for $4.99 that they can't move. That was THE format 1.5 years ago and they were selling better then any PSP game could. Then when games came out...people stopped buying them.

Yes, but according to Josh Z, most BDs have been authored in Basic mode:

Well there are people that bought a PS3 just for Blu-rays and there are people like me that use it for games and Blu-rays and you can bet your bottom dollar that regardless of what games I buy for it, I'm still going to be buying BDs regardless.

Of course, there are always some. I have a PS3 but have no intentions of using it as a game machine since I already have a Wii/360 and I am more then covered on games. I can't even think of a single PS3 game I would buy in the next year from whats announced.

But then what does the actual # 20% matter? That seems rather low and it can't go below 0%. There's plenty of PS3 owners here as it seemed to be the consensus that the PS3 was the best bet early on for a Blu-ray player (price, upgradability in features). I could see if the attach rate was 60% and there were no games on the market yet, then maybe you have something of a point. I seriously doubt there are many PS3 owners buying movies the last couple of weeks because they're waiting for games to start coming out. Maybe new PS3 owners will have a lower attach rate, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. I've already agreed PS3's shouldn't be counted fully when comparing players sold. Other than that, what would it matter?

It does matter from the ROI from the standpoint of the investor (studios). The goal is for 100% of the market to purchase into your product. This certainly never happens, but 70% is better than 20%. Of course, 20% of 20M units is better than 70% of 500K units. Sales ratio and attach rate are intertwined.

The problem for BD comes if they don't increase their attach rate, and the growth of the installed base slows, or the attach rate drops. This assumes that HD DVD maintains a healthier attach rate while simultaneously growing the installed base.

I do think the comparisons to PSP and UMD carry a little weight here. Once PSP owners had quality software to buy, then the attach rates of UMD slowed to nothing. Will the same happen to BD?

Edited to fix my stupid math error.