One thing that's striking me recently is that I'm coming across more and more Blu-Ray demo pods and discs being offered for sale here, but hardly anything HD-DVD. Also, what is keeping the HD-DVD burner? The BluRay one has been out since April.
Post-XMAS HD DVD Sales Surge: #8 ranked HD DVD surpasses #1 Blu-Ray in sales
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The HD DVD burner? Are you talking about standalone HD DVD recorder or burner drives? Toshiba is selling a standalone RD-A1 HD DVD recorder in Japan with 1TB HDD. Burner drives for PCs aren't going to be sold anytime soon because nobody is going to buy them at $500 a piece even though the burners are already available (they are used in the RD-A1).
Why no actual numbers? Surely these are available. Makes you wonder if someone is trying to fudge the data. If the various titles are close to each other in terms of numbers of sales, then the rankings mean very little.
As for the PS3 not having much impact, give PS3 owners a little time to go out and buy BD titles. They have just bought their PS3 and have probably only managed to buy a few games before Christmas. On top of that you need to give many PS3 owners time to go out and buy an HDTV before they buy BD disks, while every HD-DVD owner has an HD TV, since that is the only purpose of a dedicated movie player, the majority of PS3 probably haven't bought an HD TV yet.
As for the PS3 not having much impact, give PS3 owners a little time to go out and buy BD titles. They have just bought their PS3 and have probably only managed to buy a few games before Christmas. On top of that you need to give many PS3 owners time to go out and buy an HDTV before they buy BD disks, while every HD-DVD owner has an HD TV, since that is the only purpose of a dedicated movie player, the majority of PS3 probably haven't bought an HD TV yet.
No, your chart for December shows HD DVD just below 1,000 and ending just below 500. Further, as others pointed out, top sellers are not linear but would be closer to a bell curve, with a 500-salesrank jump from 1,000-to-500 being a magnitude larger than, for example, 3,000-to-2,500.
Actually, if you go to the October timeframe HD-DVD has indeed lost ground, and at best has stayed effectively static. Bluray on the other hand has been increasing rapidly since August. Of course, these are just sales rankings that have poor relationships to actual sales. Still, it looks inevitable that Bluray will surpass HD-DVD in the near future.
That doesn't make sense.
I think this conclusion is based on the huge disparity between the numbers of HD-DVD and BD players that will be out there once the PS3 ships in numbers, and the fact every major player manufacturer apart from Toshiba is manufacturing BD players. This is like Sony vs Betamax except in reverse where Sony manufactured Betamax players and everyone else manufactured VHS, as a result of which VHS won.
I am a bit cautious about prematurely declaring a winner. It will take another year or more to tell. Personally I think BD format will win - certainly for movies - but that HD-DVD will survive as a niche data storage due to Microsoft's support, in the same way as the Digital Audio Tape format failed for media use but found a niche as a computer data storage format.
Plus the fact the sales ranking are consistent with a rapidly growing user base, which is currently just beginning to grow with its severals weeks of sales.
Actually the smaller disk size of HD-DVD probably makes it impractical as anything other than a low cost HD movie format. If it cannot do this, then it probably will have no future.
It doesn't matter AT ALL if it's 30GB or 50GB, they are both too small for anything else than movies.
When the smallest laptop disks are now about 100GB (new machines) they both fall way short on size for backups. And the prices are way too much and are going to be for a long time.
This is one case where size doesn't matter, it's how you use it
When the smallest laptop disks are now about 100GB (new machines) they both fall way short on size for backups. And the prices are way too much and are going to be for a long time.
This is one case where size doesn't matter, it's how you use it
It doesn't matter AT ALL if it's 30GB or 50GB, they are both too small for anything else than movies.
When the smallest laptop disks are now about 100GB (new machines) they both fall way short on size for backups. And the prices are way too much and are going to be for a long time.
This is one case where size doesn't matter, it's how you use it
With compression you should be able to back up a 100GB hard drive on a 50GB or even a 30GB disk especially if it has some empty space on it, and you could do a multi-session back up of a useful set directories or files on a 30GB disk. Also for BD anyway a 200GB disk is planned. BD and HD-DVD are definitely an option for archive back-up of data, although you are probably better off getting a USB hard drive for backup against disk failure.
How will BD "inevitably" surpass HD DVD? It's not like nobody is buying HD DVDs or standalone players or the addon for X360.
There will be standalone $300 HD DVD players by the end of 2007 according to Toshiba and every one of those will be used to watch HD DVDs.
If anything HD DVD burners will be cheaper than BR as well as the media. The HD DVD-ROM drive is already on the market for $200.
Actually the fact is there are only a few companies making BR players and they're all higher priced than HD DVD players. Only Panasonic, Pioneer, SONY, Samsung are committed to sell BR players. None of the other companies have released any players even though they keep declaring support.
Personally I think HD DVD will win because it will reach the magical $200-300 mark sooner than BR. Fact is you can buy a HD DVD drive today for $200. I don't see any BR drives for $200. Another fact is HP, Acer, Toshiba, Fujitsu are already selling computers with HD DVD drives in them.
How will BD "inevitably" surpass HD DVD? It's not like nobody is buying HD DVDs or standalone players or the addon for X360.
Sales of HD-DVD have been stagnant for over 3 months. Bluray sales on the other hand, has continuously increased over the same period. That should speak for itself.
They're $400 right now, and they haven't done anything to boost HD-DVD sales. Also, sales of such of device will be massively outsold by the PS3. Not to mention standalone Bluray drives are already at $500-600, so it's not like Bluray drives are vastly more expensive.
Not likely. Construction of both devices are very similar. Only that Toshiba is willing to push the envelope on costs if not outright subsidizing the product. There's very little chance a single manufacturer can carry an entire format. So if it loses the media format wars (implying a Bluray win) then it's Toshiba versus dozens of Bluray makers, a nearly impossible scenario to win.
Compared to exactly 1 maker of standalone HD-DVD player makers, that's a lot. And I don't know of any company thinking of getting into the HD-DVD side.
Sales of PS3 will overwhelming any HD-DVD player sales by at least an order of magnitude regardless of price, nor is the lower price particularly helpful to it right now even though it's pretty close to those price points already. Overlap between video players and movie buyers are pretty high so it's not like only a few percent of PS3 buyers will get Bluray movies. PC makers have virtually no advantage here compared to the advantage of the PS3. Add in the significant content advantage and manufacturing advantage, this looks like a very inevitable Bluray win.
And you know this how? You have sales numbers?
What are you talking about doing nothing to boost sales? They are selling as many as they can make. HD DVD players will reach the magic $200-$300 mark before BR will.
So what? Why do you pretend everyone who buys a PS3 will use it as a BR movie player?
What are talking about? standalone BR players are $1000 and up. The cheapest one out now is the crappy Samsung player that has a retail price of $1000. Only reason why the price is $600 now is due to the fact nobody wants to buy it since it's so crappy.
And you know this how?
And you know this how?
Toshiba has 4 models out now and there is also the RCA model. Sure the RCA is just a rebadged Toshiba but people don't really care as long as it's cheap and gives them great HD video and audio.
You could have 10 companies with BR players out there but nobody cares if they're all $1000 and up.
That's irrelevent because like I said not everyone who buys a PS3 will use it for watching BR movies. Everyone who buys a HD DVD player or HD DVD drive addon will use it for HD DVD movies.
Got proof?
Got proof?
What manufacturing advantage? I can get a HD DVD drive for $200 and a standalone HD DVD player for $400. Where can I get a $200 BR drive and standalone $400 BR player? Like I said HD DVD players will be $300 by end of 2007 and then it will be all over for BetaRay.
In terms of sales rankings. I guess you can say relatively they are stagnant.
If that's true, why are they totally stagnant in terms of relative sales?
A very significant percentage will in all likelihood.
So an example of a cheap Bluray player doesn't count because it's too "crappy"?
It's the obvious truth. Both are virtually identical in terms of construction to existing DVD drives except for the blue-violet laser. This has been discussed numerous times before on this board. There's no reason to believe one type of player will forever be more expensive than the other.
It's still one company versus many. And they're not all over $1000, and the eventual weight of competition will create cost competitiveness.
The overwhelming majority of Americans watch, buy or rent movies. It's absurd to think that PS3 buyers are in the tiny majority that don't, or continue to buy DVDs when they known they have a Bluray drive sitting there. The only meaningful argument here is that fewer PS3 buyers percentage-wise will buy Bluray disks that HD-DVD buyers will buy HD-DVD disks. However, if the marketshare difference is huge, like over an order of magnitude, and the majority of the sales are to regular or semi-regular movie buyers, then there's simply no way the smaller group could ever hope to win. The sales rankings of Amazon.com strongly suggests this.
What's there to prove? PC buyers are in the same group as PS3 buyers, but they will move a much smaller number of units.
What manufacturing advantage? I can get a HD DVD drive for $200 and a standalone HD DVD player for $400. Where can I get a $200 BR drive and standalone $400 BR player? Like I said HD DVD players will be $300 by end of 2007 and then it will be all over for BetaRay.
I'll let the fact speak for themselves. I think you'll be in for a rude awakening in the near future.
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The firmware update released sometime ago, fixed the issues. It is no longer considered "crappy".
No, your chart for December shows HD DVD just below 1,000 and ending just below 500. Further, as others pointed out, top sellers are not linear but would be closer to a bell curve, with a 500-salesrank jump from 1,000-to-500 being a magnitude larger than, for example, 3,000-to-2,500.
They are likely to be close together not an order of magnitude apart.
We are talking about about the 500th (highest HD-DVD) and 1000th ranking (highest BD). Both HD-DVD and BD are way down the ranking on the flat part of the bell curve. Therefore it is likely that all the HD-DVD and BD are close to each other in numbers of sales.
I don't pretend to know what true overall sales numbers are. All I know is the fact 42,000 HD DVD addons were purchased within two weeks and they were used to watch HD DVDs.
Conjecture.
The point is when it launched it was selling for around $1000 which was the retail price. When the reviews came in the player turned out to be crap compared to what you got with a Toshiba that's half the price. Months later the priced had to be dropped due to poor sales. It didn't drop due to economies of scale since nobody was picking them up.
If it's the obvious truth then how come I can't buy a BR drive for $200?
There are currently 4 standalone BR models, a Samsung, a SONY, a Pioneer, a Panasonic. Competition among them isn't enough to compete with the low cost of HD DVD players. By end of 2007 there will be $300 HD DVD players and HD DVD drives will likely be $100.
Sales rankings of Amazon.com doesn't translate to overall HD DVD sales.
If that's true then how come there are more PCs with DVD drives worldwide than PS2s?
The fact is I can get a HD DVD drive for $200 and a standalone HD DVD player for $400.
Sales rankings says that either was not enough or it is not true.
I've explained it later in that post. Simply put, it's is virtually impossible for only a small percentage of PS3 buyers to buy Blurays. It is likely very to be rather significant.
And yet it is still $500-600 right now.
No one makes a completely barebones disk drive for Bluray.
Again, one producer versus many cannot sustain a lower price forever.
They pray tell, what are the sales? Amazon rankings are all we got right now, and they're pretty definitely showing a rapid closing of the gap.
That's as big of a non sequitur as any I've seen. Perhaps when there is a clear winner, PC makers will move millions of that format in their systems and not any earlier.
Marketwise I mean.
