Quote Originally Posted by hermanv
Total sales penetration of both hardware and software is less than 5%, the current argument is whose sales are the most dismal HD or Blu-Ray. Currently there are no winners, period.
This is a horrible mischaracterization of what is happening NOW. Bluray is officially less than two years old. When it was OFFICIALLY launched(most manufacturers got players to market) didn't really occur until November of 2006. That makes this format 1 year and 1 month old. It is no small feat(DVD couldn't do it) to sell 600,000 standalone players during a format war where you are the price underdog. Your assesment assumes that the end has happened for bluray, and that is just not what is happening. It is just beginning. Since November bluray player sales are steadily increasing. Disc sales have already shown strong growth since the Warner announcement. Everyone in the film and video industry has declared bluray the winner, you need to catch up with current events


This industry can not and will not survive on 5% penetration. You may be as long winded as you wish in an attempt to squeeze just one more grain of wheat out of all that chaff, but until those sales numbers change, all bets are still on the table.
It can survive 5% market penitration this early in its life. It is a little illogical to think that everything has to happen this moment. Ever heard of growing a business?

The epitaph may well read "Shortly before the formats death and withdrawal from the market Blu-Ray was declared the winner". I certainly remember all the articles about how superior BetaMax was as if that mattered, most of them were published after its' death.
You sound just like the DVD naysayers verbatum.

Some of you made an early decision to support and adopt one format, now you seem determined to grasp any wisp of smoke to assure yourself that decision was the right one. I said I'll wait, and I am still waiting. I have a favorite, but have no problem in eventually changing to purchase the survivor if there is one, with one caveat. I still won't spend $30 or more just to buy the HiDef version of any of the junk that is supposed to pass today as a good movie.
Great, wait. But there is no need to spread poison while you are. You sound like you are justifying not purchasing, and there is no need for that. If you don't want in, don't. But what you are attempting to do is to not make a move, and convince others they shouldn't as well. I do not think that is fair or right to do this.

Not only did I buy a PS3, but I purchased over 250 movies as well. Thats how I show confidence in a format. If I had any inckling it would not survive, I would quit purchasing right then(like I did with HD DVD). But all of the information I see from NDP, all the market research done in my industry, and the trends of the market point to bluray.

Just to show you how strong bluray is relationshipship to its alternative. The final figures for 2007 came yesterday. Downloading did $123 million dollars in revenue, bluray all by itself did $290 million. It surpassed downloading in revenue in August of 2007. Downloading dropped from $212 million in 2006, with the biggest hit to VOD on cable. Apple was the big winner with 80% of that downloading revenue. So while the market for downloading and VOD shifted towards Apple downloads, the disc market shifted towards Bluray. In one year(2007) bluray blew past downloading to a little more than twice the revenue. So not bad for a format you think is dead. You are not really keeping up, the format war is over, and the market shift(and growth) has already begun.

When you look closer than from the moon, you can easily see how you are reading this quite wrong.