NPD Group Says "Wait! HD-DVD Isn't Dead Yet"

The NPD group, owners of the not-quite-as-popular-as-they-had-hoped HD-DVD format, attempted to battle back against the tide of "naysayers" who claim that the format war is over and have declared Blu-Ray Disc the winner. "While select articles have implied that HD-DVD as a format is doomed and the sky is falling for the format's supporters, the NPD Group this afternoon reinforced that sales results from a single week do not necessarily indicate a trend, and that the week in question had several intriguing variables that have gone unreported."

Re:A Modest Proposal

[BosstonesOwn]

They need to get burners to market in mass quantity as well as offer those licenses for free or very very small royalties.

Like pennies per unit. Plus they need to get the consumer on their side. The more hd-dvd players out there the more the industry has to listen. Unfortunately with the economy tanking this is hard. Right now I personally would put money making on the back burner and just look to break even. Make hd-dvd discs cheaper to buy then a normal dvd and make the players cheaper. At that point this whole thing can turn around , with consumer demand the studios have to listen. If smaller studios stick to the format then there really can be a price market , smaller studios usually make lower cost films and don't need to recoup so much back.

The reason I say they need burners in high volume asap, is that whether they like it or not piracy is often times a real boost to sales. It's been proven that it helps.( http://www.stargeek.com/item/41324.html [stargeek.com] ) ( http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=243454 [com.com] )

The american and canadian dbs providers , even cable can thank piracy for large subscriber growth. They really should get those burners out in high volumes fast.

Not so fast...

[Anonymous Coward]

As an insider I can attest to the fact that the online world has been nailed by one of the most successful viral marketing campaigns ever waged in a digital format war. An unnamed company (or three) got together before the recent announcement by Warner Bros in the weeks before CES to orchestrate this domino effect. The game plan was, in a nutshell, that Warner Bros would announce their support for Blu-Ray (even though they will continue to make HD-DVD for some time) and their subsidiaries would follow closely with announcements. Then it was revealed that Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and Twentieth Century-Fox Home Entertainment would reaffirm their commitment to the format. This information was fed into the biggest gadget blogs with the underlying message that the war is over. This was parroted near verbatim by submissions to all of the major technology and social bookmarking sites. Major audio video forums had been primed with posters working for the viral marketing firms employed to pull this off. Overnight every major site on the internet along with mainstream media was singing the Blu-Ray song. To make sure the statistics following CES would confirm the "Blu-Ray has won" story manufacturers were heavily discounting Blu-Ray players. This week, much to no ones surprise, this came true.

So why am I sharing this? I am firmly in the Blu-Ray camp but the techniques employed in this war have been rather unethical. Which blog or news agency will be the first to hunt down the facts in this story to confirm my story?

Don't buy it? Then read this article on TechChrunch [techcrunch.com] which describes the same techniques used to market viral videos.

Re:Might as well ask the same in reverse

[BosstonesOwn]

No , but read further down , right now hd-dvd is the lesser of 2 evils.

If i have to buy imported stuff at least let it be the lesser of the 2 evils.

Re:too bad, so sad

[BosstonesOwn]

I agree , I would like to see content distributed on read only memory cards. I seen 32 gig cards were do out soon. Why can't we see a new format using these instead of optical discs ? Supposedly they are cheap to produce and the newer flash memories can provide enough read speed to watch movies off them. Why not a little more investment in it to make it even faster then optical discs, and completely be done with optical discs.

But that would fail because they probably couldn't pack as much DRM on them to protect the "content".

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Re:Might as well ask the same in reverse

[doctor_no]

You gotta be kidding. Sony is certainly more American then Toshiba, Sony's biggest share-holder is American (Dodge & Cox), not to mention its run by an Welsh-American CEO. By comparison, Toshiba has to be the most un-American company in existence. During the Cold War, Toshiba was found guilty of illegally selling the Soviet Union and helping build propellers for Russian nuclear submarines that could sneak past NATO's defenses, which is against the COCOM agreement that the US and Japan are both part of. Congress almost past a bill that would ban all Toshiba products being sold in the US.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19871201faessay7874/george-r-packard/the-coming-u-s-japan-crisis.html [foreignaffairs.org]

Re:A Modest Proposal

[ZorinLynx]

>Blu-Ray at this point is simply too expensive to be any good for backups

Just wait a little longer. If history teaches us anything, it's that tech never stays expensive for long.

And consider hard drives for backups. Less expensive per gig, faster, and more versatile.

Re:A Modest Proposal

[RetardsForRonPaul]

Have you seen the Transformers HD DVD? The extra features are amazing. And the tech they used to do it all has been in the spec from day one. It's one of the few HD DVDs I actually own.

Particularly high quality with great DRM. The HD-DVD's failure in DRM is a big reason why they lost. If you are so opposed to DRM, then you need to give up on optical movies. Perhaps that's a shame, I don't know, but it's the truth.

Fine, but keep in mind why that DRM is there. It's not to prevent piracy. Its so you can't format shift it to your iPod and they can charge you a buck for the pleasure. Its so you cant make a backup for when your kids scratch the disc. It's so you can't find a better price from an overseas retailer. It's so you can't do any with the disc you just purchased unless the studio wants to (and gets to milk you for more money). And I dont know what you mean by HD-DVDs failure in DRM. AACS has been cracked on both platforms. Yes, Blu-Ray has that abomination called BD+, but that will be cracked. The only failure is that HD-DVD actually had the consumer's interest in mind, too, which makes studio execs cry.

Futureproof the discs

[Xian97]

HD DVD has the ability to press a DVD and HD DVD on a disc. I would start including the HD DVD version on every standard DVD. Anyone that doesn't have an HDTV but is planning on getting one sometime in the future can still continue to build their DVD collection, and then enjoy them in HD when they upgrade. That will also provide an incentive to upgrade.

There are still a lot of people out there that do not have the equipment to play either Blu-Ray or HD DVD. Since I work in the tech field, most of my coworkers do, but there are only two of us in my neighborhood that have HDTV. I am the only one in my immediate family that has HDTV as well. Not having to worry about your DVD collection being obsolete by having the HD DVD version as well would be a good selling point.

Re:A Modest Proposal

[Cyphertube]

I personally hate Blu-Ray about as much as I hate DVD. I can't stand the region encoding, primarily because I have travelled a lot and I'm a linguist. I like to be able to buy foreign films, or foreign releases of films so that I can have subtitles in languages I want or be able to see the films I want. I don't know many places that will release Finnish films in a US region format.

That's one of the beauties about HD television, in that we use the same standards. So I love HD-DVD. If I buy an HD-DVD in the UK, Finland, China, or Australia, I can watch it in the US. Yeah, that sucks for the studios who want control, but the reality of the DVD region-coding was that it increased piracy. Every cent they try to recoup from creating the encryption raises the price and the market will not tolerate it. It's just like with music, where the market thinks $10 is a good price for a CD and Wal-Mart sells out of CDs priced like that for their release, but too many companies try to get $15-$20 for CDs with maybe two good songs. Well, the market reacts, and piracy abounds.

Most of my region 1 DVDs I reward the idiot consortium by buying them at Blockbuster for $5, instead of buying them brand new. If I have no region-locking, I will pay more, as when I get tired of a movie, or think it's not so great, I can trade it with a friend for another film. I will pay for good product, but not for product that fails me when I move again.

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