Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

An anonymous reader writes "Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the high-def format war can officially be declared over. With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1 Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"

Re:Why?

[Pluvius]

Because BluRay is inextricably linked with the PS3. If one succeeds then the other is likely to follow, and the same if one fails. I agree that this still doesn't belong in the Games section, but that's the rationale.

Rob

Two major advantages

[elrous0]

The two major advantages that Blu-ray has right now is

1. EXTENSIVE marketing. It's almost impossible to watch an HDTV cable network and not be innundated with Blu-ray ads (they should rename "HDnet" the "Blu-ray channel"). And Best Buy and other retailers all have blu-ray kiosks touting the glories of blu-ray. I've yet to see a single HD-DVD ad or kiosk, by contrast
2. Studio support. HD-DVD just doesn't have the support to turn out enough titles. Warner and Universal alone just aren't going to cut it.

Oddly enough, what everyone THOUGHT was going to be a big advantage for blu-ray--the PS3, hasn't really been that great, as so few people are buying them. Conversely, the supposedly big HD-DVD advantage of price (both HD-DVD players and media are cheaper) hasn't really helped it, apparently.

-Eric

My thoughts exactly

[Weaselmancer]

How many coaches at halftime ever say they're going to lose the game?

That being said, IMHO this won't be a VHS versus Betamax thing. There is too much manufacturing set up for both sides to simply abandon one format. What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format.

The loser in this format war will still make money, but it will have to do it by underselling the winner. Lower prices, bigger numbers. When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.

Free Movies, really sales?

[Innova]

Also to note...All PS3's came with a coupon for a free Blu-Ray movie. How many of those were included in the strong sale numbers?

Re:Number of movies

[Ucklak]

Doesn't really matter.

As crappy of a movie it is, I still want The Incredible Melting Man [imdb.com] on DVD and it's not available legally in the US of A.

I remember seeing that at the local grindhouse with trailers for Suspiria and other shlock fests back in the day.

Re:Number of movies

[bdr529]

Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic

True. However, it can be used as a tool to gage the trend to try to predict WHERE the winning format will fall.

Re:Number of movies

[packeteer]

Its not idiotic, its smart. That is, it's smart marketing for the people involved with Blu-Ray.

And he's right

[melted]

The primary thing that decides the success or failure of a format is content available on it. There's only one HD-DVD exclusive studio (Universal). There are quite a few that are Blu-Ray only, including all of the Sony studios and Disney. There are rumors of Universal throwing in the towel on HD-DVD.

Besides, Blu Ray is a better format. 50 GB per disk allows for lower compression ratios and uncompressed multichannel sound. The only advantage HD-DVD has is the "extras" and "interactivity features". I don't know about you, but I don't give a shit about picture-in-picture that they push so heavily. I just want to watch the goddamn movie.

As if this wasn't enough, Blu Ray also enjoys much broader industry support, including Apple (which gives you a hint as to what Final Cut / DVD Studio types will be using) and Dell. PS3 is by far the best value on the market as far as 1080p players are concerned. The fact that it plays games as well is gravy. Xbox HD-DVD add-on has an abysmal attach rate, and even if it did have a better attach rate, Xbox doesn't support HDMI, so it's not an option for folks who want an entirely digital signal path.

So there you have it.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[Yakman]

From that list it looks like both formats got the new release (The Departed), and Blu-Ray got a bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway.

Re:Number of movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I know that was intended as a joke, but you're absolutely correct. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are barely in the battle at all. The winner (by an indescribably large margin) is either DivX, XVid, or something along those lines. Of course, I know that they're only referring to next-gen disc-based media formats, but still, as far as newly released movies go... it's a valid point.

Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[MrJynxx]

So, I actually own both Blu-ray/HD-dvd players (PS3, and HD-dvd addon for 360). I have both systems hooked up to a 50" sony SXRD LCD projection TV and so far . . . I think HD-DVD looks better even though it's displaying at 1080i. (My PS3 is @ 1080p)

I've now come across quite a few instances of really grainy video with the blu-ray movies I have. This has not been a problem with HD-DVD.

In terms of quality both are identical (except for the annoying grainy video on blu-ray). I've shown this to quite a few friends and they all see the exact same thing (so I'm not crazy). So from experience, I'm hoping HD-DVD overcomes blu-ray.

***SIDENOTE***
So far I've been really disappointed with the PS3. It's probably been the worst purchase I've made in years. Sony had better get their shit together, and get it together FAST!!!

Re:Number of movies

[StikyPad]

There are plenty of players which either natively, or through minimal reconfiguration, play region-free. There are also a variety of sources. If there are no retailers near you, I used (Buy-it-Now) eBay to purchase the Philips DVP-642, which plays almost anything you can throw at it, including VCDs, DiVX, xvid, etc. for $50-$60. Additionally, I purchased the "Planet Earth" DVDs online (BBC, Region 2, PAL) and it played them flawlessly doing realtime PAL->NTSC conversion.

VLC player will also ignore region codes. Unfortunately it's not the most user friendly player, but it gets the job done.

So it isn't entirely hassle free at this point. You still have to find and buy a specific model of player (and possibly unlock it), but those are generally trivial one-time hassles which will provide you with years of unrestricted DVD playback.

3x1

[spwolfx]

Actually, in the week ending Jan14th, BD outsold HD-DVD almost 3x1, not 2x1.
And those are strictly retail movie sales, they dont include games or free movies.

40 days after PS3 is released, BD has 3to1 advantage over HD-DVD.

Sony sold 1mil PS3's in US in 2006, while MS sold 92,000 HD-DVD addons for Xbox.

Obviously Sony has won this war. In fact, the whole industry has won this war. Everyone but Microsoft, Toshiba and Universal is part of BD camp.