Blu-ray outpaces HD DVD in U.S.

Sales of Blu-ray discs totaled 1.6 million units from January through July, compared with 795,000 HD DVD discs, market researcher says.

The story "Blu-ray outpaces HD DVD in U.S." published August 15, 2007 at 5:00 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[umbrae]

Its a sad day when we let Sony rule the HD space...

Its amazing people have not learned their lesson.

As for Blockbuster, the comment is funny since the ONLY store in my area to sell HD has been shrinking in Blu-Rays sold and beefing up their HDDVD stock. And this is after Blockbuster said they were not going to rent HDDVD's anymore. *shrugs*

Honestly, I really doubt the sales numbers...

[onlyauser]

BLOCKBUSTER in my area does more BluRay business

BLOCKBUSTER in my area does more BluRay business by far. Yes, I asked them.

[Ilgaz]

They _already_ rule HD Scene

Everything used in HD in professional/semi professional environment has "Sony" brand. It was same in SD (e.g. NTSC)/Digital ages too, Betacam Digital immediately became the standard leaving only rapid editing/rapid broadcast to DVC-Pro by JVC.

The best professional HD Camera for a long time is Cine Alta, a subdiary of Sony.

They earned the respect at Professional scene, they should learn from experience and carry same attitude in consumer products. If Sony consumer division made professional products, every Betacam tape would have serial number embedded in recording :)

[snewp]

Really

Its a sad day when HD-DVD thought it could compete with Blu-Ray

[thedreaming]

Have we forgotten?

1. Sony tried installing a rootkit on your computer, just to play their music cds on your computer.

2. Their batteries kept exploding.

3. They had a white sony psp ad where a white woman was beating up a black woman.

4. Their ps3 is either the world's cheapest blu-ray player or the worlds most expensive game console.

Did I miss anything?

[webdev511]

PS3 not the cheapest br player anymore

That would be the Samsung stand alone unit for $50 less.

Just think, you save $50 and lose the PS3+PS2 game functions, memory card reader and added functionality. That just makes me not want to buy either one.

[onlyauser]

If you throw enough at the wall...

If you throw enough at the wall something will eventually stick.

It looks like Sony will finally win one.

[Ilgaz]

Is this a negative PR campaign?

I keep reading same message over and over at various sites, Digg, Slashdot and now CNET.

The stuff you mention has nothing to do with Blu-Ray.

To describe how huge Sony is, their Audio CD/Music company almost sued their CD-REcorder company. Yes, it would be really funny if it happened.

[webdev511]

How many actually SOLD?

Granted the numbers for 300 are impressive, but how many of each format were actually sold not the freebies people got with their players?

Now that Samsung has released the bargain basement BluRay player for scant $450 you just know the tide is against HD DVD. There is no way the $200 HD DVD player is going to compete with the cheaper BR player.

Yes, that was sarcasm.

[onlyauser]

BluRay player at Walmart under $500

I thought HD-DVD would win this war. I don't think so anymore.

All media places/stores are telling me that BluRay has already won and that HD-DVD has been cooked by BluRay. I believe it considering the endorsement from Steven Spielberg and Dreamwork (I think George Lucas is behind BluRay too). A bigger nail in the coffin of HD-DVD is that BluRay player prices are dropping a great deal, especially after seeing a new BluRay player in Walmart for under $500.

[ArbitraryThinker]

Still a niche

At current prices for players these incredibly low volumes for disk sales are not surprising.

When players get < $200 it will het interesting, for now both formats are still in the laser disk, SACD, and DVD-Audio category - a niche market that may never get widely adopted.

Right now the "format war" is with DVD, and DVD is kicking butt.

[bookshire]

Good for Blu-Ray but it doesn't really matter

I don't get why people get so militant in these absolutely futile format wars. I've been listening to people screaming about which is better for the last two years, and I don't understand why either side think's their going to outright kill the other side.

This exact scenario has played out before in very recent history remember? DVD-R vs DVD+R. Both sides screamed themselves hoarse about how their format was better, and how it had better advantages to the opposing format. What happened? Universal players and recorders, that's what. Once people could buy a unit that supported both, the two sides couldn't fight any more no matter how badly they really wanted to because the consumer no longer cared. They could buy a unit that had the advantages of both formats for the same price. Argument solved...whether the opponents liked it or not.

True, Universal players for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are just on the cusp of becoming reality, but the point is the industry's moving in that direction. Give it another year or so, and universal players that completely support both sets of Hi-Def features will invalidate this war as well.

What the industry is failing to understand with this trend is that so long as your opposing formats are both stored on the SAME physical 5" metal/plastic disc being read by a laser, creating a universal player/recorder to handle all of them is instantly made easier for 3rd parties, just from the stand point of being able to use the same loading mechanism that drives have been using since the advent of the CD over 20-25 years ago.

Sure, with VHS and Beta it was different. The tapes weren't even the same size, making a universal machine highly impractical for the home user. One was going to bomb out of exsistence. But these days with everybody focused on that little 5" disc format, universal machines will continue to be a fact of life.

[drfrost]

It's not quite that simple....

The price difference between a DVD that can read -R and +R and one that can only read one or the other is insignificant. Technically, the two formats are VERY similar. It's simply not very difficult to support both formats at the same time.

This is not the case with Blu-ray and HD. The media may be the same physical size but it has significant differences from a technical standpoint. The head, in particular, is going to be very difficult to merge. They use different frequency lasers (you could probably deal with that) and they focus at different depths (this pretty much requires 2 different lenses at the very least), etc., etc.

So, the price difference between dual format players and single format players is very significant at the moment. And it's going to drop much slower than it did with the dual format DVD drives of the past. I suspect it will, eventually, drop below $50 and if the format war HASN'T been decided by then.... then, and only then, will it be a moot point. If, on the other hand, more companies like Blockbuster decide they are only supporting Blu-ray.... well, who's going to spent more money for a player that supports a dead format?

[zeroplane]

Format pointless, direct download the future

I agree with you that format will become a non-issue. I think that very shortly people will view their movies and media on-demand, pre-cache and download, or stream media in real time. Especially if the open wireless effort actually comes to pass. Then you won't need to download you can just stream the content in real-time.

Regardless, hackers will find a way to copy, remove drm, and distribute content for free. But the publishing houses will still get a big chunk of the revenue using this distribution model.

Articles from the future:

Because of the bill passed in Congress today, any content having DRM constraints or found to contain a COLD (Content Owner Lock Data) Signature that is not sanctioned by the CCISE (Copyrighted Content Industry Security Exchange) government body could result in 15 to 50 years in prison and a $350,000 to $1.5 Million dollar fine. Which means next time you decide to hum a few notes of your favorite song you better do it in a sealed, sound-proof compartment with filtered air or you may be instantly fined and have Patriot Officer knocking at your door in five minutes.

You have been warned citizen.

[tienkou]

Blockuster offers HD-DVD????

I have never, ever,ever,ever,ever seen an HD-DVD in Blockbuster or Online. They were swayed by the Sony cash cow. They even carry more Sony games than XBox games. When I asked why the guy told me it was part of a contract deal and that certain 360 games may never become available for rent. Like the Harry Potter game. When asked why, he told me probably because of the Sony deal. In other words until Sony can have their version ported you will not see it from the competition. Such corporate BS.

Hey Blockbuster you got some brown stuff on your nose you might want to wipe that off.

[Yukimi Konomi]

Mine does...

but they have twice the number of br.

[ElmoKajaky]

HD-DVD available on Blockbuster Online

They have 'em, hundreds of 'em. Check the Collections, you'll see both Blu-ray and HD-DVD collections.

[jcm774]

Blu ray vs HD

This is all nice and everything, but until the cost of the players goes below $100, no volume will be achieved. The video and audio quality of both formats are amazing, but as a consumer I am not jumping aboard until the players are priced right.

[Ilgaz]

Good news for standards

What concerns me is the movie,content format inside the media. Not the company doing it.

HD-DVD got Microsoft on board and MS already brags about Wmedia used.

Blu-Ray either uses MPEG-4 AVC or H264, both are standard, published standards by MPEG guys. For tiny applications and additional interactivity, it uses sort of J2ME, kind of Java which is also an open, platform independent and even GPL standard.

There is NO driver for HD-DVD devices on Macintosh, the platform which many of content is created on. It is not like very old days, everything Mac uses is some standard. USB, Firewire, PCI flavours. The "Xcode" is open and free to download from Apple. If there is no device driver on OS X, someone from that board is preventing it. Guess who?

You can burn even dual layer BD media via Roxio Toast or professional tools on OS X. A board, companies who can't (or doesn't) even code a simple device driver for Mac needs respect from movie industry. Guess what? They can't even READ your media on OS X let alone create it.

[Dingbattie]

I'm holding out for the holographic versatile disc format

or Protein-coated. Much more space. ;-)

[lcrabs]

I'm holding out for the holographic versatile disc format

Might be a long wait, the drive alone will cost $18,000. Also it appears, from what I've read so far
and correct me if I'm wrong, that holographic discs
will only be recordable and not stampable meaning it
will never be a media for distribution, only backups.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/18/0546244