Oz video rental giants go Blu-ray only
HD DVD camp 'missing the boat' Down Under
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Major Australian rental chains Video Ezy and Blockbuster - both of which are owned by the same company, Franchise Entertainment Group - have gone all-out for Blu-ray Disc, they said today. Neither chain - comprising 870 stores in total - will now offer HD DVD rentals.
According to FEG Managing Director Paul Uniacke, quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald, that the decision had been made because of what he claimed was the HD DVD camp's slow roll out of the next-gen optical disc format Down Under.
HD DVD, he said, was "missing the boat".
The Herald cited stats from market watcher GfK showing that some 2241 Blu-ray Disc players have been bought by Australians to date. But Aussies have bought only 609 HD DVD machines. The BD figure does not include PlayStation 3 purchases, of which 100,000 have been bought since the console when on sale at the end of March. Some 2461 HD DVD Xbox 360 add-ons have been bought too.
GfK's numbers show sales of 102,000 Blu-ray Discs in Australia but only 18,000 HD DVDs, though that figure doesn't include region-free discs purchased from US and European sellers.
COMMENTS
HD DVD all the way
ADDITIONALLY, the programming language used by Bluray, BD-J, is said to be giving the Studios hell to program, and is making it harder to release titles than the language used on HD DVD, called HDi. This was cited as a reason why Paramount and Dreamworks last week dropped the Bluray format and became exclusive studios on the HD DVD side. FURTHERMORE, the studios stated that it is GOOD that the HD DVD players are all built to ONE superior specification than the Bluray players, since this means that the studios can be confident that EVERYONE will get the same fantastic user experience out of any HD DVD discs they release to the market.
Remember why Betamax failed
If I remember correctly Betamax failed not because it was Sony but because it was Sony ONLY.
Customers always like a choice and Blu ray has the greatest choice available.
Q.E.D.
They're both proprietary.
Or neither. Both are standards that any manufacturer of players or discs can license, if they've got enough cash lying around. Both require substantial wedges of that money to buy into.
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