Rob Enderle is the President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, a forward looking emerging technology advisory firm, and one of the most recognized commentators on tech. Before founding the Enderle Group, Rob held leading positions with Forrester Research and the Giga Information Group.

These are Rob Enderle's pick on the BD vs HD DVD war where Mr Enderle appears to be certain that Blu-ray will not be more than a PS3 game format and that the format's continued existence in the optical format war will result in NOTHING but the failure of HD DVD too. A loss to studios and hidef lovers and everybody with HDTV but have no hidef optical video to feed the expensive HDTVs.

Now, I know a lot of people still believe Blu-Ray is winning (though that number declined sharply after Paramount and DreamWorks jumped ship), but if you really step back, you’ll realize all it is doing is ensuring HD-DVD doesn’t win either, and the impact of that on the movie industry has to be in the billions.

Danger Sign One: It Can’t Stand on Its Own

I’ve seen this over and over again, and am surprised more of us don’t point this out. If a product requires substantial support from the parent to keep it alive, including funding levels that probably can’t be reasonably recouped, it has a very high likelihood of failing.

Successful products generally need some boost in terms of marketing and backing, but if they need sustained investment over long periods of red ink, at some point there is likely to be an executive change, and the new guy will immediately realize that the product needs to be killed.

Danger Sign Two: Key Competitive Advantage Unimportant

For Blu-Ray, the big advantages seem to be capacity and special features (something HD-DVD shared). On capacity, the reality was that you really didn’t need as much as Blu-Ray offered for movies; since game developers (most of them) develop for several platforms, they were limited to standard DVD capacities, anyway. For backup, initially they had an argument, but with the growth of storage and the speed of writing to optical discs (which is very slow), both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray became impractical as backup and transport media for PC files. Portable hard drives are cheaper, easier to use (all you need is a USB port, not another Blu-Ray drive at the other end), vastly faster, and actually more portable.

For special features on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movies, folks simply didn’t care. They just wanted to watch the movie. So arguing who had the best features quickly became a waste of time.

Danger Sign Three: Excessive Cost

While HD-DVD had a heavy focus on cost, both from the standpoint of media and drives, Blu-Ray did not — it was more of a technology pure play. Blu-Ray has, in terms of retooling, already consumed massive amounts of investment on the manufacturing side. Most of this is actually done now, and this was pointed out as a serious problem at the front end.

But on the player side, the HD-DVD players are now close to high-volume pricing, which kicks in at $200; Blu-Ray is still 12 to 24 months away from these price points. Why this is critical is up-converters (scalars) are both getting better and coming down in price. A scalar takes a low-definition image and electronically augments it so it looks like a HD image. Right now, DVD players in the $200 range have excellent scalars which most find look more than adequate on their new HD sets. The cost advantages of the old technology remain high, as the media for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are substantially higher than standard DVDs.

Next year, good scaling DVD players will be well below $200 and that gives both formats limited time to start building a base.

Wrapping Up

Getting excited about cool technology is great; letting that excitement get in the way of good judgment can be expensive. In looking back, I actually wasn’t asking the right questions either, and know better (I initially supported Blu-Ray and assumed Sony wasn’t foolish enough to sacrifice the PS3 for Blu-Ray). So this is as much a reminder for me as it is for you. Remember if a product:

1. Can’t stand on its own;
2. Has competitive advantages that actual customers don’t care about; and
3. Can’t possibly meet cost targets on time.

Then don’t invest your money in it, and for your company’s sake, don’t invest your company’s money in it, either.

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/rob/?p=145

Guys, is there any way we can start really checking the front page before posting the same link over and over? Not yelling at you sharpyie, but this is continuing to happen on both sides. This link was posted a while ago:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=902228

This article is so one-sided it's ridiculous. Why is it so important to constantly find affirmation you chose the correct format? This analyst is speculating based on his opinion about the formats. Analysts do it on both sides of the fence, so I'm certainly not insinuating this type of article only happens with one format.

Why not let both formats speak for themselves through their performance in the marketplace?

I'm sure we can all agree, this holiday season will be a big one for both formats. Let's come back in January or February and analyze the sales data ourselves to see how each format is doing?

Correct me if im wrong but didnt this guy predict HD DVD would be dead by now?

Doesn't matter, in the end both are losers. In 3-4 years, you all will finally come the conclusion that the 1000 arguments a day on this were the most foolish, time consuming wastes that the internet has ever seen. The majority of posts on this entire board seem wasted on this technology "war", foolishly looking over every number from both camps and completely ignoring the fact that all media's future is to be digitally transported right to your home.

It's not far away, not at all. Millions, if not billions, will be spent by each side attempting to illustrate it is the winner, when by the time any resolution comes where companies can profit over re-releasing past titles on the new formats, digital technology would have caught up making the portable technology obsolete. And yet, instead of discussing THAT, we have thousands of posts a day arguing over which color of glorified CD they happen to like best.

Well let's laugh at this one...

Just observe the Blubot responses..I can't stop laughing.

Some responses LOL:

So… who paid you to write this?



This should have been posted on April 1. You are an embarrassment.



How much HD DVD camp paid you for such irrelevant article ?



Precisely the sort of baseless PR drivel to be expected from a paid consultant from the Toshiba/HD DVD group.



Rob…. you are a pathetic little man you knew?



You should disclose that you’re a paid Toshiba consultant.



simply LOL

Correct me if im wrong but didnt this guy predict HD DVD would be dead by now?

Yup, IIRC he did -- and in prior columns he stated that he was a strong Blu supporter. This is part of the reason the Blubots are foaming at the mouth with outrage...nothing's worse in their 'religion' than an apostate who's seen the error of his ways and renounced Bluism. :p

Yup, IIRC he did -- and in prior columns he stated that he was a strong Blu supporter. This is part of the reason the Blubots are foaming at the mouth with outrage...nothing's worse in their 'religion' than an apostate who's seen the error of his ways and renounced Bluism. :pKinda like Paramount/DreamWorks :p

Rob Enderle

LOL!

http://www.google.com/search?q=Rob%20Enderle%20shill

Yup, IIRC he did -- and in prior columns he stated that he was a strong Blu supporter. This is part of the reason the Blubots are foaming at the mouth with outrage...nothing's worse in their 'religion' than an apostate who's seen the error of his ways and renounced Bluism. :p

When was this? He predicted HD DVD victory 12/06

http://www.technologypundits.com/index.php?article_id=373

Most recently he predicted neither side would win

http://www.technologypundits.com/index.php?article_id=433

I don't see anywhere where he predicted Blu-ray would win, but he seems to change his stance with every press release so it might have been in there somewhere.

1. Can’t stand on its own;
2. Has competitive advantages that actual customers don’t care about; and
3. Can’t possibly meet cost targets on time.

Then don’t invest your money in it, and for your company’s sake, don’t invest your company’s money in it, either.

Sound advice to me :)

This is a dupe.

Correct me if im wrong but didnt this guy predict HD DVD would be dead by now?

Robert Enderle is known for nearly always picking the wrong horse. Seriously, he picks incorrectly so often that you could make a living off of picking the opposite of his predictions. As a pundit, he's as off the mark as often as Dvorak is, and probably more, as even Dvorak gets one right now and again.

Of course, now that he's picked both formats to win, I think he's finally got it right: neither format is going to win for a long time.

When was this?


Here's one that a couple of seconds on Google yielded...more, you can find yourself. :cool: http://www.technologypundits.com/index.php?article_id=217

Here's one that a couple of seconds on Google yielded...more, you can find yourself. :cool: http://www.technologypundits.com/index.php?article_id=217

Ah, so he predicted BD victory before the launch. but ever since has basically been pro HD DVD. Anything from this year?

Ah, so he predicted BD victory before the launch. but ever since has basically been pro HD DVD. Anything from this year?


Hey, you said: "I don't see anywhere where he predicted Blu-ray would win." I gave you one reference, and noted that there are more -- but since this question seems to be of interest to you, and not to me, I'd ask you to do your own research. It would seem that you're characterizing his stance(s) over time without knowing the facts...never a good position to find oneself in. :)

Isn't toshiba losing money too ?
To rephrase, aren't they ALL losing money trying to make both formats important? In the end, DVD wins.

Hey, you said: "I don't see anywhere where he predicted Blu-ray would win." I gave you one reference, and noted that there are more -- but since this question seems to be of interest to you, and not to me, I'd ask you to do your own research. It would seem that you're characterizing his stance(s) over time without knowing the facts...never a good position to find oneself in. :)

If they are there they are aren't obvious. There is this classic from April though:

Wal-Mart Names HD DVD the Winner
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

So I'd like to know how he can be characterized as a "strong Blu-ray supporter'

Continue discussion in the above-referenced thread, please.