100,000 standalone HD DVD players sold in U.S.
Is the HD-A2's sub-$400 price tag sparking sales?
(Credit: Toshiba)Just got an e-mail from the PR firm representing HD DVD, and the North American HD DVD Promotional Group has announced that "sales of dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players reached more than 100K units sold in the United States, ahead of any other high definition format." I'm not sure why, but that figure doesn't include sales of HD DVD PC drives or the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, which the group says, "are also selling strongly."
I presume that Team HD DVD may not want to compare total HD DVD hardware sales to total Blu-ray hardware sales, which includes sales of PS3 units. But that would be cynical of me. For now let's just applaud the 100K figure, leave it at that, and wait for The Big Lebowski to come out on HD DVD next month. (There was something in the press release about The Complete Matrix Trilogy coming in May from Warner Home Video, but that's not "The One" I'm looking forward to).
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter. 
When Microsoft didn't add HD-DVD drive to its Elite Model, you know it's the end for HD-DVD format.
On the one-year anniversary of HDDVD, a popular forum for the format encouraged everyone (and many did) to band together and pre-buy as many HDDVDs as possible, so that they HDDVD sales figures would jump in one day. It worked -- for one day.
It's kind of a desperate attempt to make the format look more accepted than it actually is. You can read about it here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=818991
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/
Fact is, without the PS3, Blu-Ray would be Dead-Ray. HD DVD is competing on price and is winning. Rumor has it that $100 to $200 players will be out by Christmas. Not a stretch given that you can already purchase a standalone player for less than $300 on-line.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the 5 free movie deal doesn't factor into sales like Sony's PS3 voucher did.
Did we include the PS2 as DVD hardware sales??
by degenerazn (See profile) - April 18, 2007 9:10 AM PDT "
Last time I checked the PS3 can in fact play Blu-ray movies. So whether you agree with it or not there are MILLIONS of potential buyers or renters for blu-ray movies. Even if only 10% of PS3 owners use the blu-ray player for movies that still outnumbers HD-DVD in all forms COMBINED.
This number will only get bigger as more PS3s are sold( most likely at least 3 million total sold in the US by the end of this year) and as more people get HDTVs and more blu-ray titles come out and the prices drop or rental store start carrying them a higher % of PS3 owners will use the blu-ray player for movies.
Second, you can talk about potential buyers all you want but being a potential doesn't equal hard sales numbers. The fact is the Playstation family has always and will always be a gaming console.
Why are we talking about PS3 and Blu Ray when this article is about HD-DVD reaching 100k?? A couple months ago he talks about not being bias towards Blu Ray and now he releases an article like this. You tried not to be cynical, but you are.
For me I'll congratulate HD-DVD and Toshiba for single handedly beating out Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Philips, and Pioneer standalone players COMBINED.
Hmmm. I wonder who is goign to win the war?
- Wal-Mart HDDVD Player aims to confuse Bluray name?
- by dfichtner April 22, 2007 6:23 PM PDT
- Here's one for Crave to look into...
- Reply to this comment
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(28 Comments)This is my hypothesis.
In response to the babelfish-translated article found here:
http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools
I remembered that in the French discount store, Carrefour, we had "Bluesky" brand players. We had Carrefour here in Korea until late last year, when they sold out and moved out.
Could the Chinese article everyone is referring to mean "Bluesky" instead of "Bluelight" Player? I'll check with my Chinese students when I catch up with them.
[B]Even still, what would the ramifications be for Bluray if Wal-Mart marketed an HD-DVD Player which included the name, "Blue" somewhere in the title?[/B]
Imagine the typical John/Jane Doe shopper, who has heard his friend mention Bluray and High Definition TV, stumbling across a cheap "Bluesky HD-DVD" or "Blue Light HD-DVD" player in Wal-Mart? Or if someone were told what to buy another person for christmas, and they got this by accident?
That could be what's going on here. A wise marketing attempt to get uninformed people to buy their cheap player.
Here is a link to some French site selling regular Bluesky DVD equipment (made in China):
http://www.ciao.fr/Lecteurs_DVD_254216_3-bluesky
[IMG]http://images.ciao.com/ifr/images/products/normal/062/Bluesky_DS_8315__184062.jpg[/IMG]