HD For Indies

My friend Paul Alvarado sent me a link from the Times about the format war status, but also mentioned that the rumored "one format only" decision from Warners may tip the battle.....to Blu-ray?

In the DVD War Over High Definition, Most Buyers Are Sitting It Out - New York Times: "According to research by NPD Group, only 11 percent of HDTV set owners strongly intend to buy a Blu-ray or HD DVD player by next spring. Almost three-quarters of those HDTV owners surveyed said that standard DVD was good enough for them.

“This may emerge as a premium, luxury item, not a successor to DVD,” said Ross Rubin, director for industry analysis at NPD."

from later in the article:

As an indication of their owners’ enthusiasm, Blu-ray users are buying twice as many discs as their HD DVD counterparts, according to Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research.


...or perhaps because early adopters of Blu-ray were buying the substantially more expensive format (not the case so much now), and thus have more disposable income...to buy more movies.


The HD DVD camp is playing up its new interactive features, believing that the next generation of viewers wants to combine TV viewing with video games.

In Universal’s just-released HD DVD of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” viewers can play a game that tests their memories, and then upload their results using a broadband connection to a Web site and compare their scores with others.

Booooooring. Gotta do better than that. As evinced by:

Those features will do little to increase sales, said Richard Doherty, an analyst with the Envisioneering Group. The market consultants’ surveys show that just 3 percent of consumers want interactivity, he said.

Some hope, though. If one format doesn't pull ahead,

“When high-definition DVD reaches its tipping point, studios will have to release their movies in both HD DVD and Blu-ray,” Mr. Adams said. “No studio will be able to afford not to.”

....which would be a hassle ("Hey I got Superman 9!" "Kewl, lets watch it at my house!"--later---"Aww, damn, wrong format!").

But all of this sounds somewhat familiar, especially the earlier line about “This may emerge as a premium, luxury item, not a successor to DVD,” said Ross Rubin, director for industry analysis at NPD..

Hmmmm, familiar? Laserdisc 2.0, anyone?