Post-XMAS HD DVD Sales Surge: #8 ranked HD DVD surpasses #1 Blu-Ray in sales

[Ruined]

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/

Just a day or so after Christmas, HD DVD has experienced a sales surge on Amazon.com with its current #8 highest sales rank title having better sales rank than the #1 highest sales rank Blu-Ray title. Further, HD DVD's #12 sales ranked title has surpassed Blu-Ray's #2 highest sales rank title. HD DVD is experiencing its highest ranked sales since late November with every single of its top10 selling movies breaking into the Amazon Top1000 list, and its top5 within the top500 - compared to Blu-Ray who only has 1 title in the Amazon Top1000 list and none in the top500. It is also telling that Batman Begins, an older HD DVD, is the #1 selling title - simply because this means these sales are most likely from new customers who did not have HD DVD when Batman Begins came out.

Looks like a lot of people got HD DVD for XMAS

 

[Geo]

I'm looking forward to what each side has to say at CES.

 

[Rangers]

The PS3 appears to be having little effect as a Blu-Ray player. Buyers apparantly dont care about that aspect yet.

HDDVD if it wants to "win" really needs to concentrate on lowering the price of the Toshiba stand alone players to $299 and less. From what I have seen the price of the Blu-Ray players has already dropped from 1,000 to 800, where the HDDVD camp simply came out with a second gen model that is still 499. If I'm HDDVD I focus on price reduction more...

 

[Geo]

I'd buy a good HD DVD player for $300 tomorrow. . . (XB, on sale, is roughly $550 and no HDMI --not interested in no stinkin' "Core").

 

[jamesnmandy]

I'd buy a good HD DVD player for $300 tomorrow. . . (XB, on sale, is roughly $550 and no HDMI --not interested in no stinkin' "Core").

why the insistence on HDMI? i have tried every component i have with both component and HDMI options, from my Upconverting DVD player to my Comcast Motorola DCT 6412 III DVR/HD Tuner and have yet to notice any difference whatsoever in IQ, and i always run a separate Toslink or Coax audio cable to my receiver for the digital surround, so to me HDMI is pretty useless

i also have a Xbox 360 Premium (i do agree from an overall standpoint the Premium is the only way to go), and have found that playing back a HD movie downloaded from Marketplace on my TV results in very good IQ over component, better than my Upconverting DVD player on HDMI actually, on the Marketplace movie via 360->component there was zero artifacting or macroblocking in fast motion scenes where it was present on DVD's played via said standalone player->HDMI

i myself have been debating buying the 360 addon drive, still not convinced yet, i have seen Marketplace HD content compared to HD_DVD sources and there seems to be practically zero difference in IQ, with the only noticeable difference being black levels, but i can get better overall IQ from HD channels on Comcast cable of course with fast action macroblocking artifacts, which piss me off, but not 100% sure truer black levels and lack of these anomalies is worth $200 plus purchasing my movies all over again

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home...place-why-theres-no-big-difference-222337.php

would be interested in any more in depth comparisons to help me make a well educated purchasing decision

 

[Babel-17]

You can now get a Hewlett Packard PC with a HD drive (even from Best Buy or Circuit City).

If they configured the system correctly this will help that format.

In related news, Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7.2 Ultra now supports both formats.

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_112_ENU.html

Prices of the hardware are going to be the big factor imo.

I don't see any sizeable contingent of users who are dissatisfied with the disk size limitations of HD-DVD.

It's up to the Blu-Ray camp to somehow leverage their advantage in what they can pack onto a single disk.

If monster size 1080p panels were common it would possibly help them. I'm making a big assumption, to wit, that a hypothetical higher bitrate encoding would produce less block noise.

Ditto that if content providers were inspired to get crazy with extras.

But I think that now HD-DVD looks to be around for a while content providers are going to be considerably less motivated to authoring to Blu-Ray's strengths.

Too many consumers think the DVD format is quite good enough.

This could be a long drawn out situation.

I have to wonder, hybrid players would be cool but what would be the overhead of "forever" maintaining backward compatability with whichever format lost out?

Lol, how long till Ultra High Definition players come out ..... ten years?

 

[jamesnmandy]

Too many consumers think the DVD format is quite good enough.

agreed, that is until they get their brand spankin new HDTV and find out that standard broadcast cable and DVD's now look like a horses ass on it and actually start asking questions as opposed to blaming it on the TV itself

 

[Geo]

Oh, I'm not insisting on HDMI. Just as the price goes up, the more I'd expect to have it. I'd less expect it on a $300 player than a $600 player. . . because a $300 player I wouldn't mine replacing in two years. A $600/player I'd be a little more bitter about that. (Yes, I know, I replace $600 video cards more quickly than that. . well. . . that's different! )

 

[Ty]

The PS3 appears to be having little effect as a Blu-Ray player. Buyers apparantly dont care about that aspect yet.

Possibly but I suspect having less than 200K units available for sale in the US for Xmas hurt more than anything else. Heck, the first batch was around 140K.

 

[Geo]

I'd agree with Ty there. It's a bit early to drape the shroud on BRD. Tho I think BRD's opportunity to get the early knockout has faded away. I think only BRD had that opportunity, but now it's gone.

 

[inefficient]

But look at the huge gains BRD made on HD-DVD this last month.

The trend is that BRD is closing in on HD-DVD. While HD-DVD is stagnent at best.

The lead is shrinking...

 

[RobertR1]

But look at the huge gains BRD made on HD-DVD this last month.

The trend is that BRD is closing in on HD-DVD. While HD-DVD is stagnent at best.

The lead is shrinking...

With the number of BR players out there shouldn't even be a lead to talk about. Like I said before, might as well start rooting for SACD since it plays on the PS3 also. Ofcourse the PS3 will have an impact on Blu Ray sales but it won't be anything spectacular as some would like you to believe. As the enthuiasts get their fill and PS3 trickles down to generic consumers, this attach rate will continue to decrease.

Cheaper media and cheaper (below $299) stand alone players is the key for reaching mass consumers.

 

[Graham]

What happened on the ~20th of december that can account for that spike?

[edit]

Also that graph wouldn't exactly be a linear scale. Reading that graph again, HD DVD have gone from ~1000 to ~500, thats a very significant change. ~2500 -> ~1500 for BD. If anything I'd say they are similar gains.

 

[Geo]

But look at the huge gains BRD made on HD-DVD this last month.

The trend is that BRD is closing in on HD-DVD. While HD-DVD is stagnent at best.

The lead is shrinking...

That's a salesrank chart. Bell curve theory would lead one to think that its much easier to climb spots from lower down than higher up. i.e. that the kind of unit increase that might cause one to go from #3125 to #2985 might not (probably not?) be enough to get one from, say, #125 to #124.

 

[inefficient]

What happened on the ~20th of december that can account for that spike?

[edit]

Also that graph wouldn't exactly be a linear scale. Reading that graph again, HD DVD have gone from ~1000 to ~500, thats a very significant change. ~2500 -> ~1500 for BD. If anything I'd say they are similar gains.

Your looking at particular spikes.

The overall trend for for the reporting period is a gain of roughly 1000 points for BRD. While HD-DVD position ends roughly at the same position it started with.

Regardless of the scale, zero gain is zero.

 

[Graham]

Well this is my opinion of how those graphs should be interpreted.

Christmas spike I guess.
will be interesting to see post christmas data over the next week or so.

HD seemed to have a cooling off period, where bluray was too spiky to form any conclusion. But both see very similar trends during christmas. Just HD is well ahead.

 

[J_Saint]

Perhaps Amazon's stock was replenished on that day leading to the sales spike.

 

[ninelven]

why the insistence on HDMI?

Because the output over component can be restricted down to 480p on discs in the future....

 

[Arty]

I'd buy a good HD DVD player for $300 tomorrow. . . (XB, on sale, is roughly $550 and no HDMI --not interested in no stinkin' "Core").

I'm looking forward to what each side has to say at CES.

Seems like they were listening after all

Toshiba Corp. is planning an aggressive push for the HD-DVD format at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a senior executive said last week.

A group of companies supporting the HD-DVD format will hold a news conference on Jan. 7 on the eve of the massive consumer electronics exhibition to announce their plans for 2007, Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Toshiba's digital media network company, said Thursday.

........

When asked if Toshiba would be announcing cheaper players, Fujii remained tight-lipped on the company's plans but said, "At first, I thought the price threshold is $499. Maybe coming next is $399 and after that is $299." He didn't give a time frame for this possible drop in prices.

 

[Pete]

HDMI would be preferable for HD DVD or BluRay simply b/c it's the only guaranteed way to get 1080p output in the future, right? I think you can still get 1080p via other connectors, but sooner or later the industry's going to put the clamps on unfettered high-res output. (Ah, ninelven already covered this.)

As for the Amazon sales spike, wasn't the 20th the last day for guaranteed Christmas delivery with free shipping? IIRC, the 22nd was the last for guaranteed ground or 2-day shipping Christmas delivery. Could be a last-minute thing.

Finally, though PS3 may provide a huge BluRay base, it could be that initial buyers are limiting their PS3 purchases to games. Considering its relatively high price, they may not have much cash left over to spend on extras. I don't expect things to stay that way forever, but I also don't expect a huge BD uptick for a few months yet.