HD DVD Player Sales Grind To a Halt

Lucas123 writes "While the news may fall under the 'Duh' category, it's still relatively shocking how quickly the death knell for HD DVD player sales came on after Warner Bros. announced they were dropping dual hi-def DVD format support in order to back only Blu-ray. According to a Computerworld story, the week after Warner's announcement, sales of HD DVD players dropped to 1,758, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc players, up from 15,257 the previous week."

Take with a grain of salt or two...

[Wdomburg]

The folks at NPD [tgdaily.com] have already said not to make too much of these numbers. Not only do they reflect a single week of data immediately following the Warner announcement and prior to Toshiba cutting prices in half, there were also free Blu-ray player promotions from Panasonic, Sharp and Sony. Easy to "sell" a lot of units when the price tag is $0.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[AvitarX]

PS3 has been more than doubling that number [vgchartz.com]

So no, it does not include the PS3.

What I find most interesting though is the loss of about 7k sales overall. That would be the cost of a more expensive format.

I personally am happy blue ray wins (I want 50GB burnable disks, not 30GB). But I would have been pretty satisfied to see Sony lose to just because I like to see big companies fail when pushing things to hard (I guess Toshiba pushed pretty hard too, but they keep to quite for it to be as enjoyable).

Think of where you would go - the sales are there

[SuperKendall]

PS3 sales also spiked pretty well. Remember, if you are suddenly looking for a Blu-Ray player. the PS3 is a very appealing choice - even if all you use it for is Blu-Ray, with the remote it's good as any other dedicated player (and better really since it's future proof and so easy to connect to a network connection wirelessly).

Downloads vs. Discs

[Aardvark99]

I found this quality comparison of different HD sources (Cable, FIOS, Blue Ray, etc...) to be interesting:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=962 [zdnet.com]

Re:Odd numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind, it's generally agreed that the PS3 is the de-facto best blu-ray player (and shifting standards mean it's arguably the only one you should even consider buying, as it's able to evolve with the format), yet it's not included in these sales numbers as it's not a dedicated player. Hard to tell how many people picking up a PS3 are doing it because they want a blu-ray player and will only ever buy a couple games.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[Troed]

Correct me if I'm wrong

OK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc [wikipedia.org]

Re:Poor Bastards

[grub]

I have no idea how people got suckered into buying one of the two formats with no clear cut winner.

When I was buying my Xbox 360 at BestBuy it was some special where they included a 'flippy' disc of 300, one side DVD the other HDDVD. SalesDrone told me that I really needed to buy the HDDVD add-on drive to see 300 in HD. I said that I already had an x264 720p rip of it already and was waiting for my Popcorn Hour Network Media Tank [popcornhour.com] to arrive. Also told him I didn't need a fancy warranty as I was going to solder in the mod chip once I got home and the warranty would be void by the end of the day anyhow. It wasn't a good day for that lad.

You're right about being suckered, though. I had thought about it for a fleeting moment but common sense prevailed.

Re:P O R N O !

[the_rev_matt]

Actually, they already did. At CES there was announcement (it was carried by AP, but I'm too lazy to look for it) declaring that the major porn companies wouldn't be producing any more HD-DVD titles, citing a sales ratio of 4:1 in favor of BlueRay.

Personally I think this had way more impact than Warner.

Re:I bought a PS3, and only for HD movies -nt

[kwark]

There are good reasons to prefer a PS3 above a standalone player:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7187179.stm [bbc.co.uk]
is one own them, the fact that I could be a good mediacenter is an other (either give decent access to the video from Linux or increase the number of supported containers and codecs).

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[Jugalator]

No, I don't know where some get that from.

Here are the Blu-ray Disc Association members:
        * Apple Inc.
        * Dell Inc.
        * Hewlett-Packard Company
        * Hitachi, Ltd.
        * LG Electronics
        * Mitsubishi Electric
        * Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
        * Pioneer Corporation
        * Royal Philips Electronics
        * Samsung Electronics
        * Sharp Corporation
        * Sony Corporation
        * Sun Microsystems
        * TDK Corporation
        * Thomson SA
        * Twentieth Century Fox
        * Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group / Buena Vista Home Entertainment
        * Warner Home Video Inc.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[Sancho]

For the past several generations, Nintendo has competed for the same market as other consoles--and they've done so much less effectively. They were the leader in the 8- and 16-bit generations because they out-competed, got a huge initial marketshare, and had inertia. Once they got some real competition, in part by some companies that didn't try to censor 3rd party developers, they just couldn't make it.

They realized this. The Wii doesn't target the hardcore gamer, so Nintendo was able to cut down the system specs. Instead, Nintendo used a controller which is much easier for most people (basically two buttons and waving it around) and simple games. They're targeting everyone who isn't a hardcore gamer, although they're drawing in a small amount of those, too. The market is much larger, though, than the market that Sony and Microsoft are vying for.

I know grandparents who play on (and own) a Wii. Parents whose children have long left the nest play Wii Sports. These are people who have never owned a console, and never would have expected to. Rather than competing in the same market that they've been in for years, Nintendo is going in a different direction, and that's how they've managed to beat out Sony and Microsoft.

It's almost not even fair to compare the systems.

Re:Don't Count HD-DVD Out Yet

[TrickFred]

Once again - the USA is not the whole world. You must be a USAian.

http://www.hddvdfreak.com/2008/01/hd-dvd-group-pu.html [hddvdfreak.com]

"there are now more than 400 titles available in the US and more than 1,000 titles available worldwide"

And don't forget - no region coding on HD DVDs. Can we say 'import'?

Re:Who cares?

[pl1ght]

Nope. Samsung just announced they are discontinuing their dual-format players. And there are no new ones being announced from anyone else. HDDVD is dying such a quick death there is really no reason to ever go forward with more dual format players. Its just going to be Blu-Ray.

Re:"blue ray player" totals

[Chrutil]

>> I don't know a single PS3 owner who does not also own a BD movie. Not 1.

Well, I got 15 free blu-ray movies when I bought my ps3 (10 from wal-mart and 5 from the mail in thing), so as long as these incentives are out there, you probably won't.