More Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war articles

[Woochifer]

All in all, the numbers in the format war have not changed much over the past couple of months. Blu-ray is still holding roughly 2/3 of the market, while HD-DVD claims about 1/3. So far this year, HD-DVD standalone players have outsold standalone Blu-ray players by about 60% to 40%, but the PS3 despite its woes in the gaming market continues to provide Blu-ray with a larger installed user base.

The studio support has also held steady, and the article linked below has some pretty compelling numbers indicating how the box office numbers break out by studio, whether you're talking about recent movies or "classic" titles, decidedly in favor of Blu-ray. The bottomline is that the total Blu-ray market (both exclusive and neutral studios) account for 89% of the total 2007 box office draw (YTD), while the HD-DVD market accounts for 47% of the 2007 YTD box office. And among the top 100 grossing movies of all-time, the total Blu-ray market potential comes out to 86%, compared to 42% for HD-DVD.

http://blog.pixelperfectproductions.com/?p=54

http://blog.pixelperfectproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/2007-ytd.gif
http://blog.pixelperfectproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/alltime.gif

For months, Bill Hunt at the Digital Bits has been arguing that HD-DVD cannot and will not win the format war if the market trends continue unchecked. More recently, he has posted his reasoning why Blu-ray is the HD format of choice. He wrote it in response to a post on Ain't It Cool News in favor of HD-DVD that he felt contained major errors and logical lapses. Again, I think Hunt lays out a very logical and convincing argument.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/soapbox/soap060107.html

For reference, here's the Ain't It Cool news pro-HD-DVD post (unfortunately, it does not speak well for the HD-DVD camp).

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32838

For better balance, here's a post from DVD Talk that argues why the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war is not over and that any pronouncements of a Blu-ray victory are "empty posturing." I disagree, but here's their article in favor of both formats.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/hd/index.html

And for another perspective, here's Audioholics' article arguing that both HD formats have already failed. (Of course, he actually wrote a similar article last year BEFORE either format had actually come out, and seems to be trying to justify his original article) Personally, I think some of the author's arguments are nonsensical because they are way premature. And he goes on with the fallacious SACD/DVD-A comparisons (it's a bad comparison simply because the music industry hardly ever did simultaneous releases with their biggest sellers, whereas nearly all of the recent top grossing movies will be getting concurrent releases on Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD). Unlike with high res audio, HD video discs are getting fair chance to succeed in the market. Unlike with SACD and DVD-A, if Blu-ray and HD-DVD fail, it won't be for lack of trying. The article's predictions might eventually come to fruition, but his reasoning as it stands right now leaves a lot to be desired. For anyone interested, here's the link.

http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/10-more-reasons-hd-dvd-failed

[Mr Peabody]

Have you seen this one, it was sent to me by a friend. It appears MS is putting some muscle into the project. This is a feature I personally would careless for but I could see how some people would enjoy it.


I was going to start a new thread but I seen this one and thought I'd just throw this in here:

http://my.earthlink.net/article/tec?guid=20070701/468726c0_3ca6_1552620070701-913825798

[westcott]

Well, it seems the EU is wading in with possible antitrust concerns. The focus is not on the hardware technologies but how exclusive agreements were made with the studio to limit available content choices.

EU antitrust probe continues (http://www.pcworld.ca/news/article/8c4fe83d0a010408011d3f0ba5bea12e/pg1.htm)

[nightflier]

Wooch,

Do you have any figures for Universal, by itself? It would be interesting to compare how many BR disks were sold as opposed to HD-DVD disks. Since the movies are all from the same catalog, it would seem to me that this would be the best indicator, since it would eliminate the consumer's movie title preference.

Another interesting detail that I just heard this weekend from a BB sales guy, is that the sales of both formats in his store are just about the same, even though 2/3 of the shelf space is for BR. I asked why the sales figures did not reflect the amount of shelf space, and he said that this is how they were being told to stack the shelf from management. (And yes, I also asked him if he owned either player and he said he hadn't made up his mind yet).

[Woochifer]

Wooch,

Do you have any figures for Universal, by itself? It would be interesting to compare how many BR disks were sold as opposed to HD-DVD disks. Since the movies are all from the same catalog, it would seem to me that this would be the best indicator, since it would eliminate the consumer's movie title preference.

Another interesting detail that I just heard this weekend from a BB sales guy, is that the sales of both formats in his store are just about the same, even though 2/3 of the shelf space is for BR. I asked why the sales figures did not reflect the amount of shelf space, and he said that this is how they were being told to stack the shelf from management. (And yes, I also asked him if he owned either player and he said he hadn't made up his mind yet).

Unfortunately, none of the published data gives you actual sales figures by title (you have to subscribe to the Videoscan data in order to obtain that info). Three months ago, Sony issued a fairly comprehensive report that did detail the sales figures by title, but I've seen nothing that tallies the sales since that time.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/files/sonyhdreport031807.zip

I haven't checked into it recently, but I know that Home Media occasionally publishes the high def sales rankings and includes the ratio of sales between the different titles. While you can get some idea of the magnitude by which the top selling disc outsells the #2 or #10 discs, there's not enough data to calculate the actual unit sales.

As far as Universal goes, I know that they have been aggressively releasing HD-DVD catalog titles, but I'm not so sure how much of an impact it has had on sales. The biggest uptick that HD-DVD got in its market share occurred in April when Universal had some appealing new releases on tap such as Children of Men and did the necessary promotion to spur sales. At that time, HD-DVD's week-to-week market share increased to about 48%. Since then, their market share has settled into the low to mid-30% range, which is about where their YTD market share remains.

If you want an indicator on the impact of Universal's catalog releases, look at the week ending 7/1 (release date 6/26). That week, Blu-ray had two new releases that simultaneously came out on HD-DVD (no exclusives), while HD-DVD had a much larger release slate that included 11 catalog releases from Universal. This is how the market shifted that week (source: Videoscan) -

Week ending 6/24: Blu-ray 70%, HD-DVD 30%
Week ending 7/1: Blu-ray 65%, HD-DVD 35%

Not much of a shift despite a much bigger slate of releases on HD-DVD (the Videoscan data includes sales from Best Buy). To me, this indicates that HD-DVD cannot survive on Universal's determined effort to empty their vaults. This really relies on Universal generating a strong slate of new movies, and their box office performance the last couple of years does not look promising.