HD DVD disc sales hit lowest level yet in HD DVD vs Blu-ray war
By Sean P. Aune
The numbers for last week’s sales of HD DVD disc have come in, the first since the mass exodus of several studios to Blu-ray, and they aren’t pretty.
Home Media Magazine has released the sales numbers for high definition disc sales for last week, and HD DVD only captured 15% of the market. Blu-ray dominated all the slots in the top 10, and the top selling HD DVD, The Kingdom, was outsold 10 – 1 by the top Blu-ray disc, 3:10 to Yuma.
These are the first sales numbers to come in since studios such as Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema made the announcement that they were going Blu-ray only, and those comments obviously had their desired effect. Until now, Blu-ray had been outselling HD DVD in a 2 to 1 ratio on discs, but everything changed last week.
Even in the face of such news, Paramount, one of the last studios supporting the format, has announced their line-up of HD DVD discs for this quarter, including titles such as Beowulf and a set of Jack Ryan-related movies. So there is some new material coming to the format, but will it be enough to keep the format afloat?
With diminishing sales, retailers will be less willing to dedicate floor space to a format that is obviously losing ground. You have to admire the HD DVD supporters who won’t give up, but the writing on the wall seems to be getting clearer with each passing day that the party is over.
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Stumble It!
January 17th, 2008
Is this a joke or are they really trying to revive this thing?
Maybe they’re trying to the remainder of the HD-DVD stock on more unsuspecting consumers.
January 17th, 2008
Super not only are THEY trying, THEY still have a good chance to do so!
Viva La HD DVD! Still the one and only complete HDM format!
January 17th, 2008
@ The_Omega_Man
You are clearly insane if you think they have any chance at all. Like the article says, retailers are not going to give floor space to a losing format when they can give it to BluRay instead.
There is a very interesting article written from a stores head of DVD purchasing about his views on why BluRay would win over the retailers. It was actually written before the Warner decision but is even more applicable now;
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/jeffkleist/editorial010108.html
January 17th, 2008
If they really want HD to go mainstream (whether BD or HD-DVD), the industry needs to get movie prices down (or close) to current SD DVD levels faster. 40bucks a disc is really too much, especially given the recession coming up. Maybe 19.99-24.99 is more reasonable, only 5 bucks more than standard SD.
January 17th, 2008
With the terrible publicity HD DVD had it’s no surprise.
Then there’s the usual empty release schedule they always have jan – mar (last year was exactly the same).
I hope HD DVD stays in there, the recent price cuts have stimulated excellent sales numbers of hardware.
Go HD DVD.
Give the b@stards nothing!
January 18th, 2008
well let’s just review how this war has gone so far. first when all the first generation players were released they were all expensive. hd-dvd had all of their hardware requirements in order blu-ray did not. blu-ray comes out with the ps3 with a blu-ray player on board only problem with the ps3 is it can’t decode dts-hd master audio. and now at this time the players in the store of the blu-ray players are a mix of profile1.0 and 1.1 so you better really look them over if you want full features. then when they come out with profile 2.0 in all of their players they will finally be caught up to where hd-dvd was to start with. only the people who bought into blu-ray with profile 1.0 will not get pip or internet connections. what is it that draws these people to blu-ray. do they like to be lied to? maybe it’s the storage issue. if that’s the case consider this . nearly every movie out so far is on the singlel layer disk. so even storage is not an issue. ican’t see one advantage to blu-ray and yet the studios have gone roughly 70 per cent bluy-ray go figure. now the prices of the hd-dvd are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of blu-ray and the quality of picture and sound is the same it’s time for people to wake up to what is going on. toshiba is a big enough company but they have a lot of money behind blu-ray and they can afford to advertise their way to get you to buy an inferior product. don’t be fooled.
January 18th, 2008
well let’s just review how this war has gone so far. first when all the first generation players were released they were all expensive. hd-dvd had all of their hardware requirements in order blu-ray did not. blu-ray comes out with the ps3 with a blu-ray player on board only problem with the ps3 is it can’t decode dts-hd master audio. and now at this time the players in the store of the blu-ray players are a mix of profile1.0 and 1.1 so you better really look them over if you want full features. then when they come out with profile 2.0 in all of their players they will finally be caught up to where hd-dvd was to start with. only the people who bought into blu-ray with profile 1.0 will not get pip or internet connections. what is it that draws these people to blu-ray. do they like to be lied to? maybe it’s the storage issue. if that’s the case consider this . nearly every movie out so far is on the singlel layer disk. so even storage is not an issue. ican’t see one advantage to blu-ray and yet the studios have gone roughly 70 per cent bluy-ray go figure. now the prices of the hd-dvd are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of blu-ray and the quality of picture and sound is the same it’s time for people to wake up to what is going on. toshiba is a big enough company but they have a lot of money behind blu-ray and they can afford to advertise their way to get you to buy an inferior product. don’t be fooled.
January 18th, 2008
just who is the unsuspecting consumers? maybe it is all the people who bought profile 1.0 blu-ray players. maybe it’s the ones who are buying the 1.1 profile blu-ray players. maybe it’s all the ps3 owners who can’t get their player to decode dts-hd master audio. sony has really pulled the wool over the eyes of you blu-ray fans and you just keep waving the banner. and another thing if the disk storage is such an issue why is nearly every blu-ray movie out on a single layer blu-ray disk? so much for that argument. blu-rays only advantage is studio support and if they see a large number of hd-dvd players being sold you can bet they will follow the money. also there a lot of places overseas that sell hd-dvd {even some that are supposed to be blu-ray exclusives} movies. so i this is an option for hd-dvd movie buyers.