HD DVD's ship is sinking fast
(Credit: The Digital Bits)When Warner Bros. announced it was becoming a Blu-ray exclusive studio, most observers of the format war agreed that it was a mortal wound for HD DVD. The only remaining question was, how long is HD DVD going to last? Well, according to the latest NPD data (as compiled by Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits), not very long. During the week of January 5 to 12--the first week the market had to respond to the Warner announcement--Blu-ray absolutely trounced HD DVD in hardware sales, grabbing 92.53 percent of the high-def disc-player market. That's pretty ugly for the HD DVD camp, but it only gets worse. The most damning aspect of these numbers is that they do not include the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive--only standalone players. We previously thought HD DVD's only road to victory was by selling tons of cheap standalone HD DVD players, so the fact that relatively expensive Blu-ray players are starting to sell makes it seem like this format war has been officially declared over--by the consumers.
Of course, Toshiba slashed prices on its HD DVD players just a few days after this data ends--and we're very interested to see what kind of impact that has on hardware sales--but it's going to be hard (if not impossible) to overcome Blu-ray's momentum. Blu-ray also continues to outsell HD DVD in software sales, largely because of the PS3 user base. We'll be weighing all these new developments in our next update to our Quick Guide to HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, which will go up early next week.
http://www.buzzillions.com/prd-260217-sony-blu-ray-disc-player-reviews/
One guy said "Great design gives it a sleek look. When turning it on, it takes longer than a minute for the tray to open up. I have heard this before so it may be common for these types of DVDs. With the HDMI connection, the picture is very sharp! I definitely noticed a difference in DVDs to HD Blue Rays.
Disadvantage on all HDMI connection is that you don't get closed captions signal through it. If the DVD doesn't have subtitles, then you need to use a different connection and the quality reduces, big time.
The manual section on hook-up is confusing a little on the variety of choices. HDMI is too simple and yet the manual shows to many wires with options that won't make sense to some users. You need to figure out the settings if you want PCM audio, mix-down, etc. You need to know which quality is better.
First couple of days on using it, it locked up once watching a movie. I had to unplugged it from the back to restart it. It could be a dirty DVD but it hasn't happened again.
My biggest peeve is when you turn off the DVD and want to continue watching where you left off next time, you at the beginning of the DVD again.
Not so sure about improvement on audio quality because I can't imagine audio sounding better than regular DVDs."
And don't blame Sony because Sony doesn't make the stand alone players that have these issues.
I may take the plunge for $99 bucks on an HD machine. But I damn sure won't pay $300 for a Blue Ray.
Don't get me wrong, Sony has a good idea with Blu-Ray, but it's horribly implemented. It might as well be called Blu-Beta.
All I( and 95% of everyone else ) wants out of player is TO PLAY MOVIES. We don't care about commentary, mini-games or buying merchadise pertaining to the movie.
Here's one with some actual evidence: VHS didn't beat Beta because of Hollywood plots or anything like that. VHS won becasue it could record an entire movie. People wanted to set their timer-recording for an entire two hour movie and come home to watch it. With Beta, you'd have to get back in time to put in a new tape.
I think the Blu-ray jump can be attributed more to the extensive amount of bad news for HD-DVD, declaring it dead long before any results pointed to such conclusions, rather than Warner's decision itself.
I still don't see why so many people are adverse to the idea of having both kinds of player. Yes, it's expensive and confusing to the easily confused, but so is Windows, and that hasn't stopped its sales.
for 20$ bucks on amazon and we spend at least 60$ for a game in HD,so if you look at the trend gamers spend more money on games and movies than the general public.If you don't trust me take Halo3 as a example 60$ for the regular game 120$ for the collector's edition I think gamers spend more money on TVs and general electronics than anybody,and the game industry just past the movie industry in $ made last year in retail sales alone were over 18 billion and thats not including down loadable content from the big 3,so sorry if we upset the general public but I guess if you want something you have to spend the money for it,as did 6.6 million PS3 sold to date and thats not including stand alone BD players so sorry hd dvd you were already dead before you started.
Also let's compare digital downloaded "HD" to blu-ray and HD-DVD. Blu-ray bit rate 40 mbps, HD-DVD 28 mbps. Xbox Live HD download 6.8 mbps. Apple Itunes HD download 4 mbps. Hell regular DVDs have a bit rate of 8 mbps. A regular DVD up converted to 1080p will look as good or better than these supposed "HD" downloads. Anyone that tries to tell you that a HD digital download is the same as blu-ray or HD-DVD is ignorant. In 2015 we'll still be talking about how digital downloading will take over in the "near" future.
I don't know about anyone else, but I cannot afford to convert my DVD collection to High Def just to convert it again to whatever else comes along in the next 2-5 years.
I bought an HD DVD player before Christmas and got a hell of deal plus the 10 free movies so I don't have a problem with it but don't know if I will buy a Blu Ray or not for awhile.
The discs are too expensive and not enough catalog titles are out now. I don't buy regular dvds anymore either since Hi Def is the only way to go now either way. But I cannot rent the Hi def discs around here anywhere yet. So I just rent dvds and if I like them alot I burn them. So I don't see blu ray catching DVD for along time to come and by them most likely HVD or something will be breaking out also. So it looks like neither is really a wise investment for the future. But if you have to have HD now I guess its Blu Ray but for how long???????
and that the majority are PC drives and burners, NOT players.
and that the majority are PC drives and burners, NOT players"
Don't use logic and facts; it's not conducive to staring flames - not what the topic creators want. ;-)
If this were Japan...well, there'd be no point to it, HD-DVD has been dead long ago over there. Thanks for the research though...
- Defiant 'til the end. The world is not flat...
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by Mikeybabes
January 24, 2008 7:28 PM PST
- The HD camp is defiant until the end. Instead of bowing out graciously Toshiba and it's fanboy boys are going down fighting and who can blame them. They've all taken a huge hit. The numbers speak for themselves. The article clearly says US, stand-alone players. If you have facts to the contrary and not some nihilistic rant, then post them.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (36 Comments)What they must surely realise, that with their desparate tactics, cut price players (probably at a loss), rantings of "we're still neck and neck", they are going to take innoncent new HD entrants - who don't have a clue and listen to their advise - down along with them.
If you want to save HD-DVD fine, go out spend like mad and buy players and movies at such incredible quantities that the movie studios execs everywhere will say "Hang on we've made a mistake, let's go back to HD-DVD". Of course we would think you a fool, when your HD player packs in and Toshiba announces discontinued support, and obviously nobody would be stupid enough to pay licensing to Toshiba for an obsolete format to make dual-players - and then you will be left with a massive pile of tea costers packaged in fancy boxes. Do that if you wish, but for God's sake don't makeup foolish rants like some religious extreme fundamentalist zealot looking for fellow martyrs to your doomed cause.