The world does not end at the borders of the US, you know.
2007 major widespread Japanese publisher support for XB360
- Thread starter Brimstone
- Start date
The world does not end at the borders of the US, you know.
crazygambit
Regular
Even if you add Europe the point still stands. There are considerably more BD players on people's hands with PS3 sales than HD-DVD ones.
The 42,000 HD-DVD sales were in about 1 week. NPD numbers stop at the 25th of each month the HD-DVD drive was releases around the middle of November. Those are good numbers for an HD add-on which sole purpose is to play HD-DVD's. 42,000 sold in a little over 1 week is a good number.
42k HD-DVD drives sold = 42k guaranteed purchasers of HD-DVD movies. 500k PS3s sold does NOT = 500k BD movie purchasers. In fact, when the PS3 releases in Europe, one could mark off 99% of the sales as people that have no reason to purchase a BD (HDTV sales in Europe are beyond atrocious). So, trying to compare what the PS3 sells as BD movie purchasers, to the HD-DVD drive is not very logical. A better measure is software sold and as it stands now BD better hope to be the tortoise while HD-DVD is praying not to be the hare.
more likely than not, if you have BR player sitting in your living room, you will buy BR movie at some point. So it is not illogical at all with comparing HDDVD addon to PS3 numbers. I don't expect HDDVD addon to be huge competition to PS3 unless new version of 360 comes out with HDDVD standard anyways...it is more of a political decision rather than economical.
Yep and they'll go out and buy SACD's since it plays that also, right?
The price of media will be the determining factor. Joe Citizen isn't going to shell out $30+ for a "HD movie" when a $10-$15 edition of that movie upscaled to HD is good enough. This applies to both formats btw. To top it off, not all movies look amazing in HD due to style of shooting.
I didn't say that they will definitely buy it, but they are very likely to get one at some point...at least, they are more than "potential" customers. If u even thought about getting PS3, then more than likely you know that it is full-fledged Blu-Ray player.
As for the movie prices, they are not going to stay forever on that price range. Like all other optical formats, they will fall pretty quickly, I think we will see movies in $19-25 range by end of next year.
inefficient
Veteran
I want the names and addresses of these citizens who think upscaled DVDs look good enough compared to HD-DVD or BR so that I can plan gestapo like raids on their homes. They will rounded up and sent to camps for re-education.
Alternatively, I will just sneak in like Santa and install TVs that don't suck in thier homes.
And yet you still need to consider that a considerable number of the PS3 units won't be used for movies. It may be 60, 70, or 80%, but counting all 1M PS3 sales as equivalent a dedicated player misses the point of both utilization as well as potential movie sales. From a movie studio perspective, do you want to see 500k sales of a dedicated player or 1M PS3 sales?
But it is attractive nonetheless, I don't think BR would have cracked even 50k units if it wasn't for PS3. Suddenly, Blu-Ray player base is significantly larger than HDDVD player base...that fact alone is hard to ignore...
inefficient
Veteran
Of course 500k sales of a dedicated player would be great! But there is no indication that sales of all HD-DVD players combined have even come close to that number yet - even with nearly a full year since release. I think the last number I saw was 110,000 units.
Assuming Sony meets their projection of 6mil units by the end of March. Even if the HD-DVD camp is able to claim 500,000 dedicated units by then, and only a pathetic 10% of PS3 owners adopt BR, they would still have the advantage.
I think it's inarguable from a movie studio perspective that PS3 is significant. Hell, the studios have come out and said it themselves many times.
ME! I think upscaled DVDs are great! Who needs stinky ol' HD? Now if you want to sneak 'round my house and install a non-sucky TV to prove me wrong, I'll PM my name and address!
He he. Ditto here... I have always watched my DVDs on my PC with some nice software and they look good. Not theater perfect, but I am not willing to spend $10 more per disk as well as $500 for a drive to get that. DVD, for me, is enough to hold me over until there are digital formats that are portable (pleeeease no iTune like formats for movies pleeeeease!) Once I get invest once--and use on any machine--formats for movies I will consider investing more into them. But even now I won't even buy a DVD anymore. I rent and have been for years now. VHS, DVD, BluRay, What-is-next, And-what-follows, etc... all the different formats as well as rebuying the same stuff... no thanks. It has to be very compelling for me to move on, and DVD is a sweet spot for me right now.
Actually I was fibbing to get a visit from the TV Upgrade Fairy. I've never bought DVDs as I've been waiting for the next standard. As I think 1080p is as good as TV will get for a long time, and as good as anyone needs, I'll be happy to buy HD movies on an HDTV. Excepting I don't have an HDTV, and won't get one for ages. I also haven't spent much on CDs over the years either, waiting for streamable music. It's a shame the current services are such low quality, but in a few years that'll be fixed.
I think lots of people really are overestimating HDTV uptake rates outside U.S.
At the moment across quite a lot of Europe there is next to no HD content. And besides that, the lion's share of TVs on sale at the moment are only 720, not even 1080! Almost everyone I know currently has a "wait until my current TV is broken" approach, since there's no compelling reason to buy a new one.
There was something of an HDTV push for the world cup, but that's about it. And getting HD signals for the world cup generally involved signing up to an expensive subscription, a new HD digital set top box, and a big fat bill for the pleasure of a few weeks of football. Doh!
So.... How many people who are buying PS3 are likely to be buying BR movies? Well, I'd have to agree that we're talking 1/4-1/3 as a realistic number here in Europe. And sorry, no sources linked or evidence to back it up, just gut feeling.
At the moment across quite a lot of Europe there is next to no HD content. And besides that, the lion's share of TVs on sale at the moment are only 720, not even 1080! Almost everyone I know currently has a "wait until my current TV is broken" approach, since there's no compelling reason to buy a new one.
There was something of an HDTV push for the world cup, but that's about it. And getting HD signals for the world cup generally involved signing up to an expensive subscription, a new HD digital set top box, and a big fat bill for the pleasure of a few weeks of football. Doh!
So.... How many people who are buying PS3 are likely to be buying BR movies? Well, I'd have to agree that we're talking 1/4-1/3 as a realistic number here in Europe. And sorry, no sources linked or evidence to back it up, just gut feeling.
Heh... I haven't bought any disc-based thing since i got a fast intarweb connection.
I really don't think there will be a What-is-next format after HDDVD and Bluray... Digital distribution is for many reasons destined to win over silly disc formats in the long run.
I think thats a bit short-sighted in several ways. First, I don't see the need for increased storage capacity ending with this generation. Maybe the next big thing won't be an optical disc format anymore, but something will have to take the place of CD/DVD/BR/HD-DVD for data storage eventually.
Who knows how things will develop, but so far people and the industry have always found ways to make use of the radically increased capacities of storage media. 1MB used to be a huge amount of space. We all know how quickly things have changed. And times aren't standing still. What if someone finally matures technology for filming and displaying in 3D? The storage hunger and bitrate required by a fully 3D movie would probably be prohibitive for current broadband technology and any currently available sotrage medium.
Also, you seem to view the world through the eyes of a young chap living the big city life. What about the more remote, rural areas, without broadband access? What about older people, who didn't grow up with computers and internet? What about the many underdeveloped countries of the world? Are you gonna exclude all of them from the future of home entertainment? How are you going to make pure digital distribution work, if vast parts of this planets won't or can't participate?
Digital distribution will continue to grow and become more and more widespread and popular. But it will be a long time before its mature enough to replace taditional retail channels. Those are gonna stay intact for a long time to come IMO. Even if I don't use them much anymore, the majority of people still does and will continue to do so...
Who knows how things will develop, but so far people and the industry have always found ways to make use of the radically increased capacities of storage media. 1MB used to be a huge amount of space. We all know how quickly things have changed. And times aren't standing still. What if someone finally matures technology for filming and displaying in 3D? The storage hunger and bitrate required by a fully 3D movie would probably be prohibitive for current broadband technology and any currently available sotrage medium.
Also, you seem to view the world through the eyes of a young chap living the big city life. What about the more remote, rural areas, without broadband access? What about older people, who didn't grow up with computers and internet? What about the many underdeveloped countries of the world? Are you gonna exclude all of them from the future of home entertainment? How are you going to make pure digital distribution work, if vast parts of this planets won't or can't participate?
Digital distribution will continue to grow and become more and more widespread and popular. But it will be a long time before its mature enough to replace taditional retail channels. Those are gonna stay intact for a long time to come IMO. Even if I don't use them much anymore, the majority of people still does and will continue to do so...
Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a bloke on a bike with a rucksack full of Blu-Ray discs.
Cheers
<raises hand.>
I recently picked up the HD DVD add on unit and watched King Kong. It looked gorgeous but I thought it'd be interesting to compare it to the DVD version. Popped that in and about all I can notice is a that the HD DVD version had better depth and much richer colors, but myself and a few other family members didn't think the HD DVD version was head and shoulders better. I'm glad I bought the add on as spending $500 on the HD-A1 would have left me feeling disappointed (likewise, I'd be perfectly happy with the Blu-ray on the PS3 since the cost is also small.).
This was on a 720p DLP, so a 1080p set may look even better. But the problem isn't that the HD DVD version didn't look great--it did. The problem is that the DVD version actually looked pretty damn good. Also, I've only watched a small amount of HD DVD content, so I reserve the right to modify my opinion. :smile:
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