...so I think most of the sales figures aren't worth squat.

If anyone in the BD or HD-DVD industry is slightly worried by the low figures then it just goes to show how quite a lot of companies seem so out of touch with their consumers on a first try.

Still a long way to go, it ain't over till the fat vulture crows (c'mon HD-DVD, kick sony's arse).

That's the point. Forcing an inferior format on users when there already is a wide estabilished Blu-Ray user base worldwide and its prices keep falling thanks to many more manufacturers producing hardware for it, it's just going nowhere.

Transformers is not selling good on the HD-DVD format at all, despite all the marketing hype Paramount/Toshiba/Microsoft could put behind it. It's not going to sell million copies, unless Bill Gates is going to buy all of them for himself and his employees, maybe...

Spiderman 3 and Spiderman Trilogy on Blu-Ray will sell many million copies and will help boost sales of many more PS3 40GB units.

If Paramount CEO wasn't so blind to get "the gift" from Bill Gates and released Transformers on Blu-Ray as it was originally planned now they would be adding many more million copies sold to the DVD sales figures.

I see that Casino Royale High Def went on sale in HMV for £25 - the equivalent DVD was about £15.

Drop the price for all discs ro a tenner and they won't be able to make players or discs fast enough...

Wow, have Sony run over your kitten or something?

Great a grip and start caring about other things than what is ultimately a piece of plastic. They are all "evil" companies looking out for their profits, and if they happen to entertain you along the way, then fine, but they do not really care about that, except if it provides them with boatloads of money.

Having said that, it seems that Sony has become the new company to hate. I thought Apple (and somewhat Microsoft) were that company, but I guess I am just not fast enough to keep up with "who are we hating today?" trend...

Let's face it, when you take into account the format war (not al titles availlable on any single format), the need for axpensive DRM (digital link + HDCP TV/Monitor + HDCP video card for PCs), the immaturity of the DRM technology (when BD players refused to play BD+ discs last month) and the fact that the quality improvement are not that great over interpolated DVD unless you have a very big screen, and of course the price (both of players and media) you can see why not many peoples are purchasing this technology.

When players will cost $100, play both standards flawlessly, when the DRM and MMC is actually implemented and a large choices of cheap movies and TV series are availlable on the format, then it will probably take off.

I have to say that from my point of view HD-DVD seems further along than Blu-ray: the standard is more stable, disc dupplication less expensive etc... I think blu-ray's advantage in sales only comes from the PS3.

It appears that people aren't being blinded by the lower price & lower spec of HD-DVD and see Blu-ray as the true next generation (higher bit-rates, greater disc capacity etc). Sales in Europe and Japan show an even higher bias towards Blu-ray. Sadly, the £150M pay-off by Toshiba is only adding to consumer confusion and extending this 'war'.

Surely this won't bother anyone with a brain? So the 3rd quarter (i.e. the summer) had slower sales of an expensive movie format that you watch indoors. Wow. Big shocker.

You need to look at year on year sales for any relevance (obviously impossible for the time being), and also consider the amount of films available.

I'd like to have seen this graph mirrored by a graph of DVD sales back in the 90's when people had to make the choice to phase out their VHS collection, having just jumped onto a new technology.

With regards to the gap between the 2 formats, I really hope BD doesn't come out on top. From the discs I've seen side by side, HD-DVD seems to be a far better format... shame that Sony is getting so many players to market via the PS3

I love my home cinema experience. Got a 50"" full HD tele, HDMI amp, PS3 etc. However with upscaling the difference in my opinion between a Blue Ray disk and a standard DVD is not miles apart.

However in the local stores here in Holland where I'm presently working a Blue Ray disk costs twice as much, but it ain't twice as good. So personally I won't buy a Blue Ray disks until the price falls.

It seems like when the industry pushed DVD's originally over VHS they saw it as an opportunity to set a new higher price point (even though DVD's were cheaper to make and ship).

That was fine (well not really but If I was them I would have tried the same) DVD's were a major improvement but its not the case between High Def disks and standard DVD's.

Both hi def formats need market share not only from each other but mainly from standard DVD's so CUT THE PRICE.

...in the upcoming holiday sales season, and that's Transformers.

However, there are numerous BD-only titles. Meet The Robinsons, Rent, Life of Brian, The Rock, Cars, I Know Who Killed Me, Ratatouille, SpiderMan 3, Hostel 1&2, and Pirates of the Caribbean/Worlds End just touch the top of the list.

Just trying to make sure both sides of the story are properly told.

@Eric Van Haesendonck: Really. If you can't see the obvious quality increase of a 1080p MPEG-2,VC-1 or better than everything else H.264 encoded video stream over SDTV MPEG-2 DVDs which don't even have a real 16:9 resolution but 16:9 is re-constructed at the decoding stage and the picture encoded in a 4 :3 format... then you either never watched any HDTV stream yet.

The quality difference is huge, anyone can see that. Upscaled DVDs can look good but nowhere near real HDTV sources.

have you guys even looked at your graph? HDDVD isnt gaining anything. Its just got a smaller drop off rate than Blu-Ray.

@Mark Jones: You are just spreading nonsense, really. Telling people that an upscaled DVD is nothing worse than a Blu-Ray it's telling lies. Do you like a lack of high-frequencies (=details) in movies ? Then go ahead, watch the upscaled DVDs and save a few bucks but don't tell people that there is no difference and they wouldn't notice, maybe you don't or don't want to but the difference in quality is so huge between upscaled SDTV and native HDTV streams that it's not possible to tell otherwise.

@Tony Barnes: Which Blu-Ray discs did you watch compared to HD-DVD ones? Maybe the early MPEG-2 720p and 1080p releases ? Nowadays practically all new Blu-Ray releases are 50GB discs and use H.264 codec delivering the best quality, and studios still don't take advantage of full available bitrate on BD format. Expect to see Superbit-DVD-like Blu-Ray 50GB re-releases in the next future with H.264 encoded at almost CBR-like settings to maximize the bitrate and increase quality even further.

HD-DVD limited bitrate constraints and available space don't let it store streams at the same quality allowed by Blu-Ray discs.

I see that we have a couple of the Sony fanboys out in force with the usual "inferior" format, and pushing the Sony line that Blu-Ray is the true next gen.

No comment on the drawbacks of Blu-Ray though? Increased costs, region coding, an unstable specification....?

Both formats have their pros and cons. BD has a bigger capacity, HD-DVD is region free and cheaper to produce (both disks and players).

The market will decide which is best.

Just one correction.

It's BLU-ray.

*rolleyes* LOL

Seriously, with HDD media falling in price daily, with capacities going up to 1TB, and with tiny solid-state flash drives munching through the GBs quick than a fire-sale, why am I looking for a new format?

I don't want physical disks for my films, I want virtual files that I can move from room to room, device to device, and if I was offered films for £3-£5 like this, I would buy everything that I could - and the physical cost of manufacturing the files would be, well, zero. The cost of distribution, over secure P2P would again be effectively zero, so me paying £3 would represent quite a margin to the studios (sod the distributors, they'll go the way of the music industry, kicking and screaming).

Obviously there needs to be alternatives to satisfy all markets but I've found the winning new format, and maybe, one day (it really should have been five years ago) the big boys will catch up, once they've finished throwing the DRM rattle out the cot.

So I got no interest in either format and I scratch my head over these multi-million-pound polished turds.

If it weren't for the PS3, Blu-Ray sales would have got no-where. Consumers don't care about higher capacities or bitrates unless they can see the difference, and most wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, except for the price of the players.

Given that Samsung have announced the imminent arrival of 64 gigabit chips how long is it before we get rid of this stupid idea of spinning fragile discs round at high speed to get a movie to play?

The fact that I have some DVDs which no longer play due to some sort of degration in the surface material I'm certainly not going to shell out silly money on BuRay or HD DVD just to have them go the same way.

@Kevin Peacock: Promoting the Toshiba/Microsoft/DVD-Forum nonsense telling that HD-DVD is better it's telling lies to people, really.

1) HD-DVD does have region coding. They will enable it if they win the format war for sure.

2) HD-DVD format specifications just changed with the 3-layer 51GB added specification, that practically no one will really be able to read although they claim otherwise. Region coding addition also changes format specifications.

3) HD-DVD being cheaper to produce is a false myth. Toshiba is producing at a loss, way more than other manufacturers with the Blu-Ray format. Also, Toshiba is practically alone producing HD-DVD players and drives, Blu-Ray has many manufacturers on its side, not just Sony. If it's so cheap to manufacture then how comes that you can buy Blu-Ray burners at just $400-600 with 25GB disks in the $6.99-$11.99 price range and prices keep falling while there are no HD-DVD burners on the market and media practically doesn't exist either ?

@eddiewrenn: And only a few can afford buying RAID-5 and RAID-6 capable controllers for their PCs then adding a minimum of 4 HDUs and losing 30% due to the needed redundancy. NAS RAID-5/RAID-6 units are even more expensive.

Blu-Ray 4-layer 200GB have just been announced and expect them to get quite cheap in the next few years to ensure quick adoption.

I know in theory BD is superior, all I'm saying is I haven't seen it in practice. The discs I saw were Swat, and some chick flick - didn't watch all the way through, but they were side by side and BD looked inferior.

When I saw Transformers at the cinema my first thought after the movie ended was: "If there's one movie I want to own on high definition, this is it (and the Pirates Trilogy)" - well... turns out it will be released on HD-DVD and so I ordered the regular DVD version. One day it will come out on BD format and then I'll buy it.

I've pointed my bets on Blu-Ray since the beginning and this stupid war that should've never started (remind you of any other war?) is taking toll on both sides, but at the end I'm sure BD will win.

I'm 100% behind Betamax, its a better format so of course its going to win the format wars!

@Anonymous Coward: Don't expect it to happen anytime soon. Seagate just recently announced 300,000GB HDUs available in a 3-4 years time. As soon as they start releasing HDUs with the new technology to boost capacity sky high compared to nowadays... the already currently seriously bad price/size ratio which is against Flash SSD units and in favour of HDUs is only going to get worse. When in either a couple of or 3-4 years there will be 25TB and 50TB HDUs on the market in a $150-$500 price range there will be just no way that Flash memories will have dropped in price so much to allow SSD units to replace HDUs. Look at current prices, they are insane, only some Corporation and the military could afford buying them for some specific uses. Also, flash memory it's still too slow. A couple of HDUs in a RAID-0 config on a pretty cheap PCI-E controller can deliver more than triple the bandwidth than flash SSD units.

Joerg, HD DVD does NOT have region coding. Never has, never will.

Also, don't confuse extension with unfinished. The 51GB HD DVD hasn't even been approved by the DVD forum and may never see the light of day unless all older players are compatible with it. Conversely, Blu-Ray came out unfinished knowing full well that they were going to implement features later, namely the accursed BD+ and BD-Java.

HD DVD may not be cheaper to produce, but it is cheaper to get started. Existing DVD fabs can be converted to HD DVD fabs. Whereas, Blu-Ray requires new expensive fabs. Of course, if people can claim Toshiba is subsidizing HD DVD fabs without proof, they I will also claim Sony is subsidizing Blu-Ray fabs without proof.

Finally, Joerg, when does "breaks opening day sales records" mean "not selling well"? Because that is what Transformers did, sell more HD copies day 1 than any other HD movie, ever.

There is one thing that makes HD DVD far superior. It has nothing to do with price, or capacity, or studio support. What makes HD DVD better is the fact that it has less DRM. That and that alone makes HD DVD the best next gen format.

Somebody here is forgetting that when the first DVD-R came out it was sold on the market for $5000 (and people, some, bought it).

Stop whining about high prices of BD and HD-DVD, it's normal, new technology costs. Prices will come down in the future when more people puchase and the Second Generation of devices is out. It happens with every format.

That said: long live BD. ;-)

HD DVD discs are supposed to be far cheaper to produce - and the initial costs are a lot cheaper. Some low volume producers such as the US porn makers have switched from supporting BluRay to HD DVD because of this.

As for the greater capacity of BluRay being used for increased bit rate it does not seem to be happening. Companies producing both formats seem to be using to the same Codecs and bitrate for both the HD DVD and BluRay versions so the video should be identical.

Neither format seems to have a major advantage either technically or in market share. I reckon whoever has the deepest pockets will win the 'war' but both were released far too early for either format to truely win the general public over. imo

@Wade Burchette: The DVD-Forum is working on the adoption and inclusion of region coding for HD-DVD. They planned it since the beginning but obviously delayed adding and finalizing the specifications in a hope to push the format against Blu-Ray.

Also, telling that HD-DVD has less DRM it's a silly lie. The fact that they made an "hacker" appear in some forum to provide a partial cracking code for AACS (since they could change the keyspace and make it almost useless anyway...) it doesn't mean that AACS it's not a strong DRM protection. They need to push the format on the market, so they gave a temporary backdoor to crack the encryption code and make people do copies. Although the lack of a Transformers unencrypted HD-DVD release on the 'net for so long can only make you wonder who is really distributing copies on the 'net then...

Here are some links:

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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060526-6927.html

HD DVD to carry unwelcome DVD baggage

By Eric Bangeman | Published: May 26, 2006 - 01:25PM CT

Perhaps capitulating to studio pressure, the DVD Forum has moved to burden the next-generation HD DVD format with region coding similar to that of its predecessor. Called Region Protection Coding, the new specification will function in much the same way as current DVDs do: restricting players from showing content from discs purchased outside of the player's region. The number of regions and the geographies they each will cover are not yet known.

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http://www.n4g.com/industrynews/News-72604.aspx

HD-DVD Forum Inadvertly Reveal Plans to Enforce Region Coding?

frizshizzle - contributor

Published: 17 days 23 hours ago | Rumors | Industry News | Tech

Info Report

4

The lack of region coding on HD DVD has caused studios such as New Line to delay releases months later from their blu-ray counter parts. Till now HD DVD hasn't chose to use region coding but has always been an option.

Though at the DVD Forum Japan Conference 2007 from one of the slides show a region coding technology for HD DVD that is stronger than that of DVD, the discussion of this would suggest region coding may make their way on newer releases.

---------

BETAMAX!!

Carry on...

I'm gonna invest in a HD-DVD player this weekend when I get my LCD tv... I'm hoping it beats Sony... so far I have managed to boycott Sony completely since they destroyed Liksang.... I'm hoping HD-DVD winning will give them the message they suck and to stop being evil bullies.

Mark Jones is right - There is not a massive difference between either HD format and upscaled DVD, so its not worth paying a fortune for it, but I doubt many people pay full price for discs anyway.

Many Blu-ray films can be bought for under £ 15 in the UK if you shop around and also the internet rental site I use, offers 4 films a month for around £ 8.

All this wittering about DRM, production costs, technical superiority is totally irrelevant. As someone else pointed out, Betamax was technically superior to VHS and that lost out. Does anyone remember Super Audio CD? No? There's a surprise...

Consumers will buy based on price of both players and discs, availability of their favourite films, and other cosmetic factors. Seeing as price and title availabilty wars don't look like being settled anytime soon, I think that Blu-Ray will win. Why? It has a cooler name and the discs come in sexy blue boxes rather than an old-people's-home reddish-brown.

Unless you actually sit down and watch the same film on each media you can't really make authoratitive sounding assertions like 'oh I saw Bullet on BD and it quality was rubbish but The Matrix on HD-DVD was way better'. It all depends on the quality of the original prints or masters/audio tracks and how much time and effort is spent cleaning them up for HD transfer. Older films may not have been as well looked after in their cans (or whatever they get stored in). A good example is the reports of the Mission Impossible franchise. The MI-1 (11 year old film, pre-DVD) is reported as being not much better than watching on DVD , MI-2 (7 year old film, DVD era) not bad and MI-3 (HD era) rather good.

At the times these films were made they were filmed using the prevelant technology of the day.

Comparing watching Bullet on BD and then The Matrix on HD is as useful as comparing oranges with apples, you have to see the same film on both formats to make that judgement.

Personally I bought into the BD format because they're in Blockbuster and the PS3 is a pretty good player (and I wanted a new console) and excellent value for money to boot. The first BD film I watched was Pearl Harbour and it was pretty mind blowing in terms of visual and aural experience compared to DVD. And...unless you have a 1080p telly and a decent surround amp and speaker combo then how can anyone possibly begin to offer an subjective opinion about which standard is better than the other. All I can say is I'm pretty bloody amazed so far with BD. I'm sure HD-DVD is the same.

There's some comments around here and elsewhere about how the current media format, i.e. a round 5.25" disk is an obsolete format, and folk moaning about not being able to download HD content instead. Well sorry folks, there's still plenty of us in the UK stuck on 512k -> 1mb ADSL connections due to line or exchange limitations. Downloading a 30-50Gb HD movie to watch on a whim just isn't practical! I find nothing wrong with disks and provided you treat them nicely like vinyl or CD's and put them away after use then there's no reason they should get damaged. Jeez.

Just 2c from someone that actually does own the gear.

Kev

All the companies involved with this HD crap just see me as a mark with a wallet. Their goal is to jack up the prices of the videos they sell, get me to replace all the perfectly good videos I already own with new copies, and better prevent me from copying the content. It has nothing to do with selling a good product at a reasonable price. It's business tactics with minimal substance. I'll be damned if I buy a single HD DVD from these guys who are trying to shove the HD "lifestyle" down my throat.

This is like coming out with a new format of vinyl record. Maybe it's better than the old one but nobody cares.

Once DRM battles finally kill off the existing entertainment industry we can get on with some real progress. Create an open-source player and put the movies online for purchase.

My gran was a bit of a technophile and bought a laserdisc player back in the 80s. It had a resolution nearly twice that of VHS and suffered from less degredation of quality over time. It was going to be the next big thing... However, the prices were high, and you couldn't get a recordable version - the result was that VHS came to dominate even though it was a far inferior quality.

Blu-Disc / HD-DVD offer clear benefits in terms of quality, but quality is not the only factor here. Firstly, most people do not currently have a TV capable of seeing a difference. Secondly, a surprising number of non-technophiles I have talked to really don't care that much about quality . Thirdly, in a competition between quality and price, price is pretty important - especially if low price means free from P2P. Finally, is physical storage really the way to go? Imagine how how badly a new high quality audio CD format would have fared if it was released a year or two before iTunes took off.

Do these sales of HD movies only count the ones where cash was exchanged for a disc? Most players offer coupons for 1-5 free discs when you buy the player. Are those free discs counted into those sales numbers? What about the Spiderman discs that are shipped with the PS3, do those count into that mix as well?

all this belly aching is already redundant.

the format of choice is clearly going to be VOD. Its a done deal. the Xbox and the PS3 are more than capable of delivering it. The discs are too late to the game, they are dead in the water.

None of these shiny discs are actually sold. They are being rented out to ignorant and unsuspecting punters. At any time the content owners can revoke the keys to these discs and it's just tough luck for those who spent their money on that crap.

Equally, the device keys can be revoked just as easily to add an expensive brick to the collection of coasters accumulated by the unwary connoisseur of HD.

Oh, and if you think they will never do that (because they are nice people, right) - go ahead and try.

You're talking rubbish, you're reposting pure speculation regarding region coding for HD DVD, they have zero interest in having region coding in their format as it'll prevent sales and i seriously doubt they'll fold to pressure from film companies as they're doing pretty well on their own.

As for the 51Gb disc, it has been accepted by the DVD Forum but it'll never be released until it is fully backward compatible... this is where HD has the biggest advantage, the same company that controls the standards for DVD controls the standards for HD-DVD, as such they actually have standards (which is something BR loosely has a grasp on) all players have to have certain connections in place - i.e. an internet connection. BR may have a higher capacity disc but they don't use bpth formats use the same codecs to convert the films, BR has extra capacity to run the add on features, but they take up huge amounts of space on the disc and being the new BD+ Java it isn't even compatible with many first gen players.

BR is being towed along by massive subsidies from Sony, i.e. free disc copying which is rumoured to be more than twice the cost of copying a HD disc, added cost of enforcing region coding... Sony want it to win, and the sole reason it is leading is due to the PS3, remove the sales of the unit from the classification of sales and the discs bought by people as a tester and then look at the true figures.

Sure some studios are insisiting on being BR Exclusive due to the region coding in place, but if and when HD takes the lead it'd be churlish of any studio to reject the format and cost themselves sales - they'd have some great comments to have to make to their board on that one.

My prediction is that HD will win... but i'm happy to buy either and do to get the film i want. I've actually only just bought an HD DVD player, the Xbox add on as it was £99 and i get 5 free films with.... i could sell the player and it'd have cost me about £10 for the films!!!

... if what an earlier poster said about the porn industry switching to HD-DVD as a preffered choice then the desicion has been made and HD-DVD has already won in the long run (or at least stopped itself from being obliterated by Blu-ray market forces).

As mentioned by other posters, the average joe thinks that watching Sky One HD on their HD TV is really High Def, when in truth most of the content is upscaled SD content. Maybe with a sports event (especially football) you might have a chance of seeing proper HD content ( and even more likely if the BBC filmed it).

P.S. @Jakob, yeah they sort of did and I do need to care otherwise I wouldn't be very good at my job, you reactionary numpty.

To set things straight, you've apparently all missed the fact that plain ol' DVD is still outselling both these lame ducks by 10 to 1.

And as long as DRM has its ugly fingers all over any format, I'm not buying in. As has been said, your hardware can be revoked on a whim with these new formats, because they can.

Well I refuse to run the risk of that. Besides, DVD is good enough for watching whatever drivel they're showing these days.

I keep hearing people say "There is not a massive difference between either HD format and upscaled DVD".

Well, some people can't tell the difference between the school band and a professional symphony orchestra either. Can't tell the difference? Maybe your PS3 or HD-DVD player is connected to your TV via A/V cables..

Its your right to say - "SD as good enough for me".

Its not a crime to have eyes as burned out as your childhod TV set.

BUT don't mislead others.

[ intro: CDs were developed first by Philips for release when their royalties on casette tape ran out. Sony was employed to help out with miniturization. Philips has been a company that always expected very low unit royalties. DVD was the logical extension to CD. ]

HD-DVD is the logical extension to DVD technology which was developed by an industry consortium. Sony joined this consortium, then sprung proprientary Blu-Ray onto it claiming "problem solved". Things like 10-base-T, USB, DD2, DD3, MPEG2, UNIX, LINUX, and many other technolgies are open and this is the way the world wants it.

DVD pressing machines can be easily modified to produce HD-DVD with a low-cost upgrade. This technology is so cool that it is now possible to produce combo discs (DVD on one side, HD-DVD on the other).

Blu-Ray pressing machines are high-cost brand new units. What's worse is that Blu-Ray discs are very fragile and are worthless once they're scratched (the info is stored close to one surface). Sony's solution to this problem is to bring back those disc caddies we all hate. I don't know how such fragile discs will ever be rented in retail outlets like BlockBuster.

So let's not get sucked into another proprietary technology.