Blu-ray/HD DVD Disc Sales Numbers Revealed 321
An anonymous reader writes "The High-Def format wars finally have a yardstick against which to measure who's winning with the first public release of VideoScan sales figures for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. The first two weeks' worth of data seem to back up what many predicted — that the Blu-ray-enabled PS3 is helping Sony quickly close the gap with HD DVD, with almost three Blu-ray discs sold for every one HD DVD during the first week of January. HD DVD still leads in overall discs sold since inception, but that lead looks to be quickly dwindling. While they do show a trend, the results from VideoScan are still fairly vague. Why are consumers being denied the information they need to make a considered choice?"
Haven't we been here before? (Score:5, Funny)
Yep...and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yep...and... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take the "Duh!!!" in regards to everyday folks. But, what if you are in a position with a security clearance? The powers that be take a dim view of any legal violations, civil, state, or federal. Would you risk YOUR job and/or retirement over a movie? The option you suggest doesn't work for everybody...
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Why are consumers being denied access to this data (Score:2)
Here's some data right in the open (Score:2)
It's really not at all surprising Blu-Ray would be pulling substantially ahead and growing, with every PS3 sold being another Blu-Ray player in a consumers home. I know two people at work that have bought PS3's and they moth make extensive use
being denied information (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, the Blu-ray/HD DVD squabble is not actually important. You rights aren't being trampled on. Most people couldn't care less about it; they're happy with their DVDs and don't mind letting you *philes hash it out with your disposable income.
Get a grip.
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And what would make them even happier is not a new format, but a DVD "Redbook."
KFG
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DVD doesn't look great, its essentially the same quality as broadcast TV. Now if you believe broadcast TV looks great, then sorry, but we can do a lot better. I don't pay to go to the cinema to stand on sticky floors, put up with belching behind me or for the overpriced condiments, its for the higher quality sound and picture.
For the price
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Re:being denied information (Score:4, Informative)
You should probably get your eyes checked or maybe buy better equipment. DVD's horizontal resolution about 720. Broadcast "quality" is 330 and VHS is 240. Even without a progressive scan display it's pretty far from "essentially the same quality".
LG will win with dual format players (Score:3, Insightful)
"Well this is more like it. After waiting forever between the initial announcement and first retail availability of the first wave of HD disc devices, LG's BH100 really rocketed to the shelves, and has just participated in its first unboxing (that we've heard of) mere weeks after the announcement at CES. We're a little disconcerted by that big front-and-center dent on the box, but the unit itself looks just dandy, and gadgetaholic promises a full review in the coming days. But that's not what you're here for, you just wanted to see this little guy ripped from his Styrofoam cocoon and flap his little Red and Blue wings, so hit the read link for the whole event. Fly, BH100, fly."
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/22/lgs-bh100-supe
Re:LG will win with dual format players (Score:5, Insightful)
I have mod points and I figured this would be a good discussion, but I'll reply to you instead.
First, dual format players CAN'T WIN the war. They are not a format. Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format. Dual format PLAYERS may win the PLAYER WAR, but the disc format war has no real hybrids right now.
Second, these discussions constantly suppose that someone will win. I've seen one comment so far that I agree with: by the time these things reach something akin to a critical mass or become big successes, I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close. These things may just be failed. Too early for cheap prices and large HDTV adoption, too late to enjoy a long advantage over internet distribution.
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That is utterly impossible in a world in which no broadband provider will let you download more than about 90GB per month on a regular basis; That's what, a couple of Blu-Ray discs? Even at the rates we go through netflix, I would use that up just downloading DVD ISOs, let alone HD video.
We are going to have to see a broadband revolution in this c
PREEMPTIVE CORRECTION (Score:2)
Of course I meant to say country. Of course, as such it applies to both the US and the UK, and most other places on the planet besides. About the only people who could pull it off right now are Japanese who live in major metropolitan areas.
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Sorry dude, but that's just ridiculous. Internet distribution will be (heck, already is) certainly interesting for SD material, but for HD, there is no damned way Internet distribution will make any inroads. Or did you really want to download 25GB of data?
And this is ignoring the fact that broadband penetration in the US is still relatively dismal.
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I doubt it. Dual format players are just a way to cash-in on hesitant early adopters. Once Blu-Ray or HD-DVD wins there will be absolutely no point in perpetuating the life of the other format. As Blu-Ray looks increasingly likely to win, why waste money on a dual format player, especially when they are considerably more expensive?
From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does the summary make Blu-Ray sound better by saying it outsold HD DVD by 3:1 in 1 week? Do I detect a bias?
Keyboard Error (Score:2)
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Interesting)
YES! But that's not precisely why. Here's what the FS says:
Now, here is what the FA says:
In other words, this is a momentary blip on the chart, and nothing to be excited about itself, unless it continues, in which case you can call it a trend. Right now though, it's not a big deal.
I sincerely hope that these people are not paid astroturfers, but if they are, it would explain why Sony has to charge so much for the PS3. I've had more people misinterpret my posts and tell outright lies in order to discredit them in the last couple days than I ever have before, and most of those comments are responses to things I've said about the PS3 or Sony.
Save yourself some time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Save yourself some time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Save yourself some time (Score:4, Informative)
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Nit: Phillips makes screws [phillips-screw.com]. Philips (one L) invented CD along with Sony.
Compact Disc was proprietary for its first twenty years.
25 years? (Score:3)
Re:Save yourself some time (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, I see you figured it out already.
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No exactly true, but oft-cited nonetheless.
-Eric
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Sony has never won a format war, haven't they learned their lesson? Just look at Beta and MD.
Not really... Both of these formats gained traction in Japan, just not the US/Europe/most of the world. MD players basically trumped regular CD players in Japan since their inception, and only started going away now with the addition of MP3 players and phones that can hold audio. Beta also survived in Japan, and became a standard for video cameras at least.
I imagine Sony considered these "wins".
Well, about Sony's format success (Score:2)
You mention it yourselve, the CD. What not everyone knows that the CD owns a lot to philips. The minidisk was a direct competitor to a Philips product, so was betamax.
Blu-Ray? Another Philips-Sony partnership. Mmmm, so by some extremely wide logic Blu-Ray must be a winner based on past performance.
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Thank you
Misleading? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Why do the summaries ask such stupid questions? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pricing? (Score:5, Interesting)
How can Little Man cost $29 but the Fifth Element is only $19!?
I've owned the HD-DVD drive for the XBox360 now since it's launch and the only HD disc I currently own is the free copy of King Kong that came with it.
I'm floored that new titles aren't being released in both DVD and in their respective HD format at the same time. The studios seem too busy trying to 'catch up', releasing titles already available on DVD. I know they're doing this in hopes that people purchase both the DVD version and HD version when it's released later, in an effort to double their money.
Makes me want to vomit.
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What's to say that people will buy the HD version when it's released? Look, I own an HD TV, and let me tell you, DVD is pretty good for those too. I d
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Because Little Man is a relatively new movie, but most people who would buy The Fifth Element already have it on DVD. I'm no videophile or anything, so I don't really know how good of a transfer is, but the movie looks gorgeous on DVD. Why would I care about buying it in HD? Frankly it doesn't have any truly amazing special effects, aside from some cheesy spaceship stuff (like spaceships moving as if they were in atmosphere - how amazing) it's
Impossible for HD-DVD to win? (Score:2, Interesting)
Whatever your feelings re PS3, you know it's going to sell 10 million units plus in a short time. In the meantime, only relatively small numbers of consumers are actually buying either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players. DVD is good enough for most. Although the PS3 isn't primarily a Blu-Ray player, it does have that feature.
So when you're a movie studio or retailer and looking at the current / expected install base of HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray capable
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That might in 10 years after the price is below $200, but in the meantime PS3 sales are looking rather poor compared to Xbox360 and Wii. I believe we might even see a Dreamcast/Saturn-esque situation if situation does not improve.
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HD-DVD needs to cut over to 1080p (both the players *and* the movies. ASAP, or the form
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Of course, whether it makes a visible difference is well beyond me. I'm quite content with DVD, even after watching a few HD-DVDs. It seems a tiny bit better, but I wouldn't have noticed it if I wasn't very familiar with the original DVD version, and I wasn't viewing it on the same TV either. I'd bet most people would be hard pressed to notice a real difference except in a side-by-side comparison, and
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Just because someone owns a PS3 does not mean they own a television that will benefit from the enhanced resolution over DVD...you forget, MANY MANY people still have standard def 480i tv's with NO hdtv's in their lives.
More like the Digg vs. Slashdot war (Score:2)
One thing is certain. Only one device can play 30Mbit H.264 HD files from a network and it's a BD player.
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Okay, just having some fun. But, I much prefer Slashdot over Digg. There are an awful lot of Slashdot folks who have been around a long time and actually give enough of a fuck to post intelligent thoughts.
Woo hoo!!! Off to my Pr0n collection now!!!
Recent statistics will be flawed (Score:2, Interesting)
The more interesting comparison would be the number of HDDVD's sold against the number of Blu-Ray discs sold - vouchers used.
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Where are the good movies? (Score:2)
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Oh well, you missed out.
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Format War hurts consumers Helps MPAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the content companies (Motion Picture folks) have to buy in. If there was just one format the consumer electronic companies could say, high def disk, take it or leave it. However since there are two formats the Studios can choose the format the offers the most protection. In a way because of the format war the studios got to say "Add DRM" or we'll go with the competeing HD format here.
It doesn't help that sony owns electronics and content, and the content part is clearly running the company.
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Because Sony (the consumer electronics company) also is Sony (the movie company). Take a look at the holdings of Sony Pictures Entertainment [wikipedia.org]. They own Columbia Pictures [wikipedia.org], TriStar Pictures, [wikipedia.org] MGM [wikipedia.org], and a slew of other motion picture companies. They'll be happy to sell you a new DRM'ed copy of Singin' In The Rain [wikipedia.org] on BluRay.
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Well, it also gives consumers the power to say "screw this", at least they did with the DivX format (which the DivX
But rentals may tell a different story? (Score:2)
Are pornos included? (Score:2)
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[1] http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216742&
Of course they outsell HD-DVD (Score:2)
Anonymous Schmonymous (Score:2)
Yeah, an anonymous reader who just happens to work for Sony.
Almost one post (Score:2)
What, like 2.4 discs sold? Somebody just dropped a Hamilton and took off with a BR?
What's that? The rest of the sentence? Oh, I just assumed...
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PS2 won this round (Score:2)
It's not over yet, and there hasn't been a format war that Sony has won
Anonymous Coward mentioned Compact Disc Digital Audio, Microfloppy (the ubiquitous-until-recently 3.5" disk that beat Mitsumi's QuickDisk), and Video8 (beat VHS-C). In addition, how about the large-screen video game format war? In the console generation that included the PlayStation 2, Sony's format has beaten those of GameCube, Xbox, set-top Lenovo-compatible PCs, and set-top Macintosh computers in terms of number of discs sold.
Format, not platform (Score:2)
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Re:Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
you won't find any hard sales figures here
In other words, we have no idea how either format is doing on an absolute scale.
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It is really hard to see how HD-DVD could possibly win in those circumstances.
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Re:Surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with that argument is that the PS3 is not a Blu-Ray movie player, first and foremost : it is a gaming system.
The fact of the matter is that, yes, there are more Blu-Ray capable machines at the moment. But what is of question is how many of those machines is being used largely for watching films. By contrast, every single XBOX 360 add-on is exclusively for watching films, as MS has explicitly stated that no games will come out this generation that utilize the add-on. When you keep that in mind, the supposed install base numbers look much closer. Beyond that, it must be recognized how tiny the numbers we are talking about anyway - neither of them are signifigant at all at this point in terms of mass consumers.
The truth is, the format war is far from over. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are both going to remain niche formats for quite some time. Just because Sony shoe-horned a Blu-Ray player into the PS3 that most of their target audience would have bought anyway, does not a format war win. Especially since PS3's are rotting on the shelves (my local BB has signs up all over saying, "WE HAVE THEM!" and the signs are actually getting dusty they've been up for so long...), their impact over the life of the formats just may not be that signifigant.
Remember the race between the turtle and the hare?
AE
Re:Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite all the hype surrounding HD-this and High Resolution-that, there hasn't been a major push by consumers to move to the new High Definition televisions. As it would seem, the vast majority of consumers are happy enough with their TVs as they are today. The real consumer push has been a much different one than quality.
Consumers today are looking for convenience first and quality second. They want to be able to sit in their living room and chose what they want to watch (or play!), when they want to watch it. Nothing makes this more apparent than the popularity of the TIVO and other DVR players.
These players timeshift shows from their regular schedules to a time that is more convenient for the viewer. Thanks to thier ties with online TV schedules, a user can setup his DVR to record dozens of shows. When he feels in the mood to watch something, he can then chose from the options at his disposal.
However, this process does have its drawbacks. The first one is that DVRs cause a drop in show quality. In order to balance real-time recording with space constraints, these devices must throw away a lot of information about the television stream. As a result, the quality drops.
The second drawback is that these devices have limited capacity. Once they are full, you must remove some material in order to make room for more material. This biases the devices against consumers who watch television on few, rare occasions, but enjoy a wide variety of entertainment.
The solution on the horizon is not digital transmissions over the airwaves, by digital cable, or even by plastic frisbees. The solution is to stream the video directly to the consumer over a broadband internet line. This allows the consumer to access a wide variety of quality material, but without the same storage drawbacks that limit DVR devices.
So what you'll see in the future is that the Bluray vs. HD-DVD war won't matter. The real winner will be Internet ala carte providers, who give the consumers what they want, when they want it. Sony shouldn't fear HD-DVD. They should fear Apple iTunes.
Re:Surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Not always. If the channel is coming in to the box digitally, it does not usually get transcoded. It's much easier for the box to record the bits directly. Video quality and ease of use are vastly superior to VHS.
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I'd like to amend that a bit - in consumer DVRs, high-def content NEVER gets transcoded. It is always simply dumped to disc without decoding and/or reencoding. The transport stream is only decoded for playback.
Realtime high definition encoders simply do not exist, at least not at the price points needed to be put into a consumer device. The closest thing is the Slingbox PRO, but that downscales to SD before
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My myth box, for example, transcodes the OTA MPEG-2 stream to save space after the recording is done. 90% of the time, when I watch a program it has happened to have completed transcoding.
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Perhaps next generation. But for this revision of video delivery, there still a monolithic population of technology impaired with too much money and too few techno savy people. There is a lack of easy to use downloaded data to TV appliances. Easy to use being t
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What, like an XBox 360 [wikipedia.org] or an AppleTV [wikipedia.org]? Not to mention those awefully convenient DVI ports [wikipedia.org] on modern TVs and computers. I think you'll find that as the market expands, there will be even more compatible devices showing up on the market.
Besides, I don't think you give consumers enough credit. They'll spend the time to figure something out (or get the kid next door to set it up for them) if they REALLY want it. It's only when they don't care about
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I work in customer service and tech support. I am aware of exactly how much credit I need to give them. Which is slightly more then my dog.
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MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
And Microsoft (Score:2)
In other words (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, storage is a solved problem. Harddisks get bigger every single day. It's simply not an issue. Granted, existing DVRs are a little lean on storage, but that will change with time (my Myth box at home has 250GB, and there are many with 1TB+ setups).
Third, the very idea of Internet distribution of HD, which can be upwards of 7 *gigabytes per hour*, is simply laughable. There's no way in hell that would get popular enough to sway the HD-DVD/Blu-ray battle in any way whatsoever.
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Re:Surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus a minor quality upgrade (e.g. iTunes is 480p) coupled with a major increase in convenience is going to win the day; not the High Def frisbees. In addition, consumers will soon be able to have their cake and eat it too. Microsoft is already showing that Hi Def downloads that take advantage of more modern compression methods are possible on the higher end of the consumer bandwidth scale. The quality isn't quite as good as a $30 frisbee, but that's not going to swap most consumers. They can get the movie or TV show they want, when they want it, and for the price they want it.
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Except that it's crippled with region coding, which kills my interest in it... at least until someone releases a region-free Bluray player.
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They still could lose it (this is Sony we're talking about here). But at the end of the day they're dumping 100,000 PS3s into the market per week so pragmatism alone suggests they'd need to have a monstrous screw-up to lose at this point.
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From the Article (Score:2)
Even though both movies were awful, and I secretly hope people were buying the discs to smash them in order that no one will ever be forced to watch that crap again, you tend to see a massive spike in movie/book/music sales when a pro
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Subconscious copying (Score:2)
Basically, the only people that believe information wants to be free are parasites who use that as justification for stealing stuff they have no right to, such as pirating movies.
What about the people who created something, found that someone had already created the same thing a decade ago, and had to cease and desist or (worse) pay damages? It happened to George Harrison (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music), it happened to Michael Bolton (Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton), and it happened to Ross Williams (whose LZRW family algorithms were later found to have patent problems [ross.net]).
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What, there are still people around who don't get the saying? Information wants to be free in the same way as water wants to leak.