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.
- Defiant 'til the end. The world is not flat...
- 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.<br />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.<br />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.
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