HD For Indies

"Fought and won at the retail level, not by the consumer."

Well that just sounds like sour grapes from the HD-DVD people.

More Blu-Ray movies are being sold than HD-DVD movies. In other words the consumer is deciding which one to get.

And those of use that have been following this for years have always wanted ONE FORMAT. The quicker we get the better.

Martin

MCT IMAGES Blog
 

It's almost shaking down like the VHS - BETA wars. BETA as Betacam took over TV production as a recording device and now XDCAM, industrial Blu Ray, is sweeping the broadcast industry.
 

So let me see.
I can still buy HD DVD movies at Target
I can still by an Xbox HD DVD (now at 179.99)

Yet this is supposed to be some decisive factor in the war? Let me pick myself up from the floor laughing.

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/index.cfm
9pm pacific standard time.

HD DVD leads Top 10 avg Rank 154 / Blu-rays 168
Blu-ray leads Top 25 avg Rank 433 / 856

What were seeing here is a comarketing event. Target has bowed out of the low cost HD bonanza for this Holiday season. Smart idea...let Sony fund expensive end caps and try to sell a player that will be twice what HD DVD is selling for at Wal-Mart and other shops.

HD DVD certainly isn't going anywhere. I'm thinking I'm going to have to get two players or a Universal someday for full studio coverage.
 

You’re right Martin, it is sour grapes. It’s an attempt by some to marginalize the damaging impact of these announcements. I like using the analogy of people not being able to see the forest because of the trees. The real story is not about whether 360 add-on packs or HDDVD titles will still be available, but that Target, like Blockbuster before it, is moving towards BD exclusivity.

I don’t know, but if I were a HDDVD supporter, I definitely wouldn’t be on the floor laughing. There is an increasing trend lately of companies declaring their intentions to side with Blu-ray. These announcements in isolation are not really that important, but in its totality shows a downward spiral of HDDVD.

In addition to Target, the following companies recently announced support for BD: Denon, BJ's Wholesale Club, Questar, Inc., Razor Digital, Tartan Video.

The format is hemorrhaging BAD. HDDVD may not be going anywhere soon, but there is no doubt in my mind that the outcome of this war will be firmly decided by CES next year.

Here is a good discussion with a HDDVD panel.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/ema2007/Intro.html
 

Wrong. Target are still going to be selling HDDVDs in stores
 

Mat - players or discs? I think the news here was that players were going to be Blu-ray, discs are still being sold.

-mike
 

I think this "war" will be won with the consoles. I don't know anyone who's got a stand-alone player and there's not really any reason to buy one right now.

Now, if the Wii had an HD drive, it would have been over already. That thing's been selling like hot cakes and it would mean one format was covering 2/3rds of the console industry.
 

While Blu-ray does seem to be gaining an edge, HD DVD players dropping as low as $250 or so does make for a compelling case for those to be out there.

Wii with high def drive? Lets see, Sony makes Blu-ray and PS3 - do you think they'd let Wii license that and compete as an HD enabled game platform? No way.

That only leaves HD DVD. Cheapest players are still $250 or so. Add a large fraction of that to the Wii, and it loses its largest selling advantage - low price.

So it is a neat idea, but I don't think practical.

-mike
 

My comment was hypothetical. The Wii is so damn fun that no-one really cares what the graphics look like. But if they had chosen one or the other, it would be very different. One format would dominate 2/3rds of the industry as opposed to the 50/50 split we have right now. It's the 50/50 split that's stopping people from buying HD discs and players because there's no clear winner.

But you're right: Sony invested in Blu-ray, MS invested in HD-DVD and Nintendo invested in neither. But as it's selling well without HD, it would probably be in Sony or MS's interests to license their format to gain market dominance. Plus a little extra profit on every sale of your competitor's products does no harm.
 

To Pengun: Betacam and Betamax have almost nothing in common except the cassette shell and (at least in the original Betacam) the tape formulation. (Oxide)

In the early 1980's, Panasonic brought out a professional ENG format built around the VHS cassette, tape formulation AND transport, called M-Format. It like Betacam did not record a color-under signal like those of Betamax, VHS or U-Matic. Instead, it was component.

It almost impossible to draw an analogy to the consumer market in my opinion. The professional formats were incompatible with their cousins and were chosen for reasons that ran counter to the consumer's choice of tape format. In the professional realm, Sony was more established with better support for broadcasters. Panasonic took almost two decades to catch up on that front. Making parts available is a huge part of this.

Also, I'm not sure how the current format war is going in the professional world. I know the TV station I work for is going P2 and the competition is both P2 and JVC-HDV. From what I heard, they tried XD-CAM, but later went to P2.