Blu-ray v. HD-DVD War Heats Up
Author: AF Duncan
April 9th, 2007
According to High-Def Digest, Sony recently released a research report with some surprising news: Blu-ray appears to be outselling HD-DVD.
Focusing on sales data for the week ending March 18 (the same week that Sony’s ‘Casino Royale’ smashed high-def records by shipping 100,00 units to retail), it should come as no surprise that the VideoScan numbers released by Sony are favorable to the studio, with five of its releases ranking among the top-selling next-gen discs that week.
The numbers that week were equally as impressive for Blu-ray, which outsold HD DVD by a ratio of 9:2, and dominated the list of top-selling next-gen discs — the HD DVD edition of ‘The Departed’ was the only HD DVD disc to appear among the top ten best selling high-def discs.
But while abstract ratios and percentages like these have been bandied about for several months now, the Sony report goes one step further, providing the first public release of hard sales figures for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs from Nielsen VideoScan, the home entertainment industry’s leading source for competitive sales data.
Among the numbers revealed: as of March 18, VideoScan put the cumulative number of Blu-ray titles sold since the format’s inception at 844,000 units, versus HD DVD at 708,600.
The article mentions those numbers don’t include some larger retailers, but still, 844K? 708.6K? Doesn’t look like regular old DVDs are going anywhere anytime soon.
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4 Responses to “Blu-ray v. HD-DVD War Heats Up”
April 9th, 2007 at 8:28 am
I think the marketing for both technologies has been horrible. My sister-in-law bought Casino Royale on HD-DVD and didn’t understand why it didn’t work on her plain old DVD player.
One of the driving factors for TV adoption was placing it in bars…people gathering to watch sports events really helped drive adoption. One of the reasons for the slow adoption of HDTVs is that they were (1) really expensive and most importantly (2) marketed horribly. They weren’t put in bars immediately, and floor displays didn’t even feature HD content, so people didn’t know what the new benefit was! Now, prices are coming down, there’s plenty of HDTV content on TV and in stores, and every bar has one.
But how many Blu-ray and HD DVD commercials have you seen? If you’re a techie, or at least really into movies, you know about them, but the value hasn’t been communicated to people yet. Plus, the price must come down.
April 9th, 2007 at 8:31 am
You have a brother?
April 9th, 2007 at 8:42 am
From another mother.
April 9th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Dan, the bars had little to do with HDTV conversion. Lack of content had everything to do with it.