Battle of the stats: Blu-ray beats HD DVD
But the war continues...
IFA 07 Another month, another consumer electronics show, and once again the backers of the rival HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats come to attempt to persuade us their favoured format is winning the war. The IFA show in Berlin last week was no exception - so how is battle faring now?
The BD boys were up first, pointing to their format's lead in US for the 12-month period from 12 August 2006. According to Nielsen VideoScan sales stats, HD DVD outsold BD until around Christmas, but since then BD has been ahead - though it's come very close to falling behind on a couple of occasions.
Blu-ray big in the US: Nielsen VideoScan stats from the Blu-ray Disc Alliance
Over 2m BDs have been sold in the US up to 12 August 2007, 1.71m of them in 2007 alone. Ignoring sales before 1 January 2007, some 66.3 per cent of next-gen discs sales were BDs. That figure rises to 70 per cent in Europe, according to numbers from market watcher GfK, whose stats were used by the Blu-ray camp to claim BD has been outselling HD DVD here by a factor of 3:1 since the PS3 arrived in Europe in March.
The following day, the HD DVD team had its chance. It claimed HD DVD has 70 per cent of the European IT market - drives for PCs, basically - and 70 per cent of the European "standalone player" market.
HD DVD's success, according to the HD DVD Promotion Group
That focus on "standalone players" was a key theme for the HD DVD Promotional Group's presentation, and its representatives were at pains to point out how they're a more important metric for success than console sales. Why? Because, they claimed, every HD DVD player owner here has bought, on average, four discs. BD hardware owners have bought, on average, half a disc.
That, the HD DVD PG's Ken Graffeo said, proved that HD DVD is a better bet for content providers, because HD DVD players owners buy more discs than BD player owners do.
COMMENTS
China adopts HD-DVD equivalent
Check out this article I've just read:
http://n4g.com/industrynews/NewsCom-66305.aspx
Seems that China have come up with their own format called CH-DVD which builds on the fundamentals of HD-DVD......
So with the country with the worlds largest population adopting a HD-DVD format, will this shift the High-Definition war away from Sony?!?
Surely a country that can mass-produce HD-DVDs and their players for cheap will mean that they can flood the market with their wares?!?
Interesting article (check alternate sources too).
Although I've read stuff on N4G before, I'd rather wait till a site like The Reg picks up on it and gives their opinion!
Yes. that must be it.. no one bought a PS/2 to play DVD's either
I am all for the better format winning out. Heck, I could care less if its Sony, et al... or Microsoft et al. That leads their forces of HD Glory to the win.
But the nonsense about not counting PS3's as BD players is pretty stupid. AS if one would say the same for Xbox 360's w/ HD DVD add on.
Not only is the PS3 a BD player, but in many reviews it is cited as one of the best commercially available BD players. So should it be counted towards installed base of said players? Damn straight.
With the PS/2 Sony combined the now uber famous, and universally accepted DVD player with a game console. How many are willing to argue that this did nothing to help both PS/2 sales, and the advancement of the DVD format?
Christmas time has come and gone many times since the initial release of PS/2, and for those of us without "boatloads of money"; we could aquire a game console, and a dvd player... for less then the cost of both separately.
With the PS/3, yet again we can choose to purchase a game system, and a multi-format media player for less then the cost of both. In one sleek package.
I personally do not, and probably never will own a PS/3... Thats mainly because I am a PC personality through and through. Of my friends that have a PS/3, one of the largest 'turn-ons' tends to be the quality of the device, and the quality of the Blue Ray video... No RROD, or equivalent issue adds lines to their collective brow.
Furthermore, for the one that posted about how Sony products require Sony formats... Could not we reverse this 'criticism', and complain that non-sony products don't use Sony media? I mean, the memory sticks I recently purchased for my GF's PSP aren't far and away more expensive then SD. Additionally, go out and purchase some of the higher-end memory cards for higher end devices. Memory stick is not the most expensive on the landscape, but it does allow sufficient data transfer rates to meet the specs of the player / game device in question. Also, the MS's I purchased weren't Sony... they were Lexar. Does that make Lexar SD cards evil too?
We could extend this some complaint to Apple, and the plethora of their media products if we really wanted to write about exclusivity, and being left with a beta max in the living room. How about a certain bunch of non OS X capable multiple thousand dollar macs? that really must have hurt getting dumped into obscurity by the very company you supported.
BD and HD-DVD will both more then likely co-exist for a while. Manufacturing costs for both will come down, and both coalitions of the stubborn will hurt for the lack of agreement on one format.
But to sit and beat on Sony for being aggressive in bringing to market an innovation, and then utilizing its expertise in associated products to enhance the experience is kind of silly. We are after all seemingly in agreement that their products are of high quality, and usually better then the competing (in VHS case winning) format. When did that become a negative?
To say most consumers aren't aware their PS/3 can play blue ray content is silly at best, and condescending and disingenuous at worst. Not because I believe any major segment of the population that consumes these devices is tech savvy, more so because the marketing engine behind these sorts of devices don't quite let you forget it.
Count the PS3's and watch as that installed base lets parents decide to upgrade both the home theater, and grant their kidlings one more Christmas wish at the same time.
it's all in the name
BD may be the better format, but so was Betamax... and that was Sony too.
However, world+dog know what a DVD is, everyone is now familiar with HD since there's the HD-Ready stickers on new TVs. Logically an HD-Ready telly will work with an HD-DVD player. BD may be a better name, with better tech (funky blue lasers ftw) and be a better quality format but basically, it doesn't say "BD-Ready" on the stickers, the mental association isn't so readily there.
Hogging Technology surely not the way to go.
I think we can thank our lucky stars that Sony did not win the betamax / VHS war, since things might've looked very different today.
Sony has time and time again proved that they intend to approach any market they enter extremely aggresively. Although we cannot deny Sony's right to do so, I'm surely not going to buy any electronics product that only supports media/hardware manufactured and sold by the same manufacturer ONLY. Sony do manufacture excellent products, but I surely don't like their marketing approach: Conquer all without mercy and force consumers to conform to what we sell.
I mean let's look at this logically. You buy a Sony Digital Camera. You want more storage space to be able to take more photos. You HAVE TO buy a Sony memory stick...sorry, Sony says, no support for SD Cards, just SONY memory sticks.
The obvious conclusion. Sony determines the price of the media be it memory sticks or blue ray discs, and if you go have a look ALL Sony media is comparatively MUCH more expensive than it's counterparts eg Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD etc.
No, I'd rather stick with devices that support HD DVD and SD Cards since I believe this will benefit us as consumers, financially and from a technological viewpoint. The more manufacturers to complete research and push technologies, the better I say.
Support Sony at your own peril, or if you have boatloads of cash. I surely don't do the former or have the latter.
PS3
Why it counts i'll never know... the last stats i saw something like 70% of PS3 owners worldwide didn't know their PS3 could play Blu Ray disks, and something like 50% didn't know what Blu Ray was!
Even accounting for the PS3 as a sale hardware may be approx 10:1 in favour of BR, but disc sales are only 2:1 and that is decreasing rapicly...
HD DVD has a standard ,it has web content, interactivity, an easy to design for GUI, it's also not wholly owned by Sony with an incredibly high publishing content... those are also incidentally the reasons Paramount left BR, and nothing to do with a Blog generated load of tosh about MS paying $150 Million...
I think BR has it all to do to convince people their format is better, and given the cost differences, the fact you can dual sided discs with HD one side, DVD the other etc I personally think HD DVD will eventually win!
