Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/09/03/ifa_bd_vs_hddvd_update/

Battle of the stats: Blu-ray beats HD DVD

But the war continues...

By Tony Smith

Posted in Personal Tech, 3rd September 2007 08:02 GMT

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 Disc Alliance slide
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 Promotion Group slide
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.

Maybe that is indeed the case, but if there are many more BD player owners than HD DVD player owners - which there are, because by all accounts rather more PS3s have been bough in Europe than HD DVD players - the more BDs will have been sold than HD DVDs: 2.3 times more, if GfK's 70 per cent media market share figure is accurate.

GfK numbers were also used by the BD camp to claim so far in 2007 among Europe's six biggest economies, 94 per cent of devices capable of playing next-gen optical media were compatible with BD, to just six per cent for HD DVD.

Blu-ray Disc Alliance slide
Blu-ray triumphant? GfK stats from the Blu-ray Disc Alliance

The BD supporters also pointed to Sony's claim to have shipped 1.3m PS3s in Europe during 2007. Since the vast majority of those are PS3s, that previously mentioned 94 per cent is a little over 1.3m units. Do the sums, and the equivalent figure for HD DVD device sales is just under 83,000 units.

Let's go back to the HD DVD PG's attach rate figures: half a disc for BD, four discs for HD DVD. If that claim is true, the above figures yield 332,000 HD DVDs (four times 83,000) to 650,000 BDs (half of 1.3m), so BD is outselling HD DVD. As individuals, PS3 owners may not be big disc buyers, but collectively they sure as heck are.

That's roughly 982,000 high-definition discs in total sold in Europe in 2007, giving BD around 66 per cent of the media market here. Sony and co. claimed 70 per cent - no so far from the result of our back-of-an-envelope calculations.

The pinch-of-salt factor here is that we're not using precise numbers. But they are based on third-party market stats, and given an indication where the market is going. And, for now, the numbers point to Blu-ray.

That may change: the arrival of a cut-price HD DVD player in Europe, and Toshiba's continued drive to offer HD DVD players with lower price tags that equivalent Blu-ray Disc hardware, could give the format a fillip, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. But Sony is still going to sell plenty of PS3s in the same period.