Does anyone else think that HD-DVD is blowing it?  

Not me.

Me either, but I am suprised by how many new posts with this same topic get started.

False. Unless you count PS3 consoles as "Blu-Ray sales" even though the majority of them aren't being used for Blu-Ray movies.

BluRay outsold HD-DVD 2:1 the first 2 weeks of 2007.

I'm tired of this whole PS3 is not being used crap cause obviously if HD has the stand alone player advantage over BD somebody has to be using the system for BD playback for sales to be double and rapidly catching up to total of HD sales. Everything the original poster says is identical to my experience as well and I want my HD movies now. This whole wait and see and we are not beating our chest about our format like the BD guys are thing that the HD guys are saying is hurting my chosen format. I also own a PS3 but the thing is just sitting there collecting dust cause overall the movies just don't offer the over all quality and features that HD-DVD movies do and thats counting the value of HD costing on average less that BD's.

Come on Amir the silent treament is not working. We need release dates on alot of movies especially ones that are not getting a BD release.

No,

People are getting nervous about the current sales numbers favouring BR. Some even panic. The BR markerting is designed to feed FUD into the early adopter market.
The reason for the inrush of titles is a tactic to mask the fact that the G1 and even players are still not matured. Even the full BR specs are not official yet.

It's just a spike because of early BR adopter buying frenzy. It will level off when they have satisfied this urge.

HD DVD shows sustained sales numbers after the early adopter spike.
People with 50+ titles are now waiting for new releases thay are interested in.

This will happen for BR too after the initial rush from 0 to 50+.

2:1 Big deal.
Although some have to explain how the gap can be almost closed in just a couple of weeks after a HD DVD headstart of several months.


A HD DVD release might sell 500 copies and BR a thousend.
The BR release constitutes a bigger loss as authoring BR is about 4x as expensive and disk production 3 times.

Cheaper players will trigger mass market adoption of one or both of the HD formats.

Until then it's just a drop in the ocean of SD DVD sales.
Casino Royale on SD will outsell the HD be a gigantic margin.

If every PS3 owner is buying a copy it will swamp current production capacity several weeks delaying other releases.
This will trigger the monthly happy-upset-happy-upset cycle in the BR camp too.

you talk as if bluray is gonna be expensive to produce forever. Prices will come way down as production ramps up. Besides, i'm sure its nomore then to produce then Combo hddvd seeing 50gb bluray movies are cheaper. Also talk as if buying blu ray is a fad or something, like movies will go stale. lol

Well the 3rd weeks numbers just came up and surpreise HD DVD outsold Blu-ray 2;1 the other way.


Ooops.

Beginning of 2007 may well be the date it was stated HD DVD lost the format war. It was theirs to lose and not blu rays to win. The almost vapour-like releases for this new year are an embarrassment. Of course that's the whole premise of going format neutral. If one begins to dog it then the other takes over. HD DVD is dogging it. Not because it can't perform when you put a disk in. Its fantastic pq and aq is second to none. But content rules.

is it possible that the BR cabal is putting "behind the scenes" pressure on studios to back off the HD-DVD releases?

It's really hard to say that the PS3 is not being used as a BR player. The number of standalone BD players sold is very low. Yet the software is now outselling HD DVD. So the PS3 HAS to be where the numbers are coming from.

And you seem to forget that HD DVD replication will become cheaper too over time.

At this moment ramping up HD DVD production capacity is about 10x cheaper.

Economics of scale favour HD DVD.

BR camp knows this and that's why the influx of premature title announcements during CES.

For a while after CES I thought HD-DVD was in big trouble. Then I went back to my original thinking before we got bombarded with content announcements and reminders.

I think player price will make the difference. Right now they are still too expensive for j6p to start buying. Yeah, content is very important, but if you look at history, it doesn't matter how much better something is or how much content it has. Get the device cheaply to people, get them to buy them for family members as gifts, get impulse buys. This will in turn get them to buy content. Content follows $$$$. Simple as that. If the PS3 was cheaper, I'd say this war is over and BD won. But it's not.

While I say that, I do think it is important for HD-DVD to have a good amount of quality content available by the time their players drop below $200. they will also have to increase their marketing dollars at that time as well. I think if Universal releases it's bigger hits, and you have the Matrix, LOTR, Harry Potter, and top Paramount and Warner releases... this is still enough to lure the average consumer into a player, getting them purchasing content, and floating the boat long enough for BD exclusive studios to question their loyalty.
Just my opinion.

As if there is no content released this year on HD DVD at all...

I see the full effect of the 'feed the fud' BR marketing campain in several posts.

only FUD, i've got was from HDdvd owners. Hence my regret of buying a hddvd player. You keep watching them "half baked" "the jerk" exclusives. I'll be watching the "The Rock" and "Pirates" in HD.

Can someone elaborate what "overall quality" means in the above statement? Is the poster saying that Blu-Ray exclusive movies don't have good PQ?
I have a PS3 and HD-A2 and use both.

Its a FUD hddvd guys like to use. I just sold my hddvd player for a PS3. "Crank" and "Open season" PQ trumps any hddvd i've seen so far.

LOL.... I don't care about "HD-DVD Exclusives" I care about quality content. Of which both BD and HD-DVD have plenty. I'll be watching "Happy Feet" and "The Matrix" and personally, while I'm not big on The Jerk or Half Baked... I do enjoy Caddyshack and The Breakfast Club and while I wont have Cars on HD-DVD.... the Toshiba players do a very fine job at upscaling. Both Pirates and Cars looked excellent upscaled on my player and I didn't have to wait an extra 6 months to see them.


You must like edge enhancement?

I understand there isn't much game content available yet for the PS3 and that sales are very slow. That combination suggests a relatively large proportion of the initial buyers are actually using them to play BD, the BD sales currently support that. I'm guessing that when it becomes more attractive to gamers (spelt game titles), then we'll see their relative usage as BD players decline.

Universal has already announced 100 releases for 2007, including some specific titles. Since we haven't seen well-in-advance title schedules previously for the HD DVD studios, I don't really see why that should be expected to change -- unless this is all really just about a spitting contest with BDA (I hope not).

Given the HD DVD announcement of 600 or more worldwide titles by end of 2007, I really don't see why the situation is half as distressing as many here seem to think. I guess it's like the BDA is cast fishing and the shiny lure is driving the fish crazy .

What Me Worry?

I don't think HD DVD is blowing anything at this point. Really, at this juncture their plan is already in place and running..THere are no quick tweaks to tip the scales back. Today's situation for Toshiba was largely decided months, if not a couple years ago as they put together their strategy.

Same with Sony. It was preparation on their part as well and there is little they can do to further their position. The race is half over and anything can happen......but there is little either side can do to to significantly change what will happen as the plan is in place.

For either side, it would like turning the Titanic on a dime.

Uh... Why must you post a 5 Megapixel image inline?

EDIT:

I see you resized it now. OK.

I'm also going to see half baked Jaws, Jurassic Park...

Perhaps you and I get lucky if Jaws 5 is BR exclusive.

Whoa!!! Call the Mods!!! Someone hijacked thebland's account

Just good humor my man

Doubt, it'll come out this year if at all. Give you the benefit of the doubt Jaws and Jurrassic park is gonna come out this year. For a movie is about 30years old and the other is over 10. Neither one set set sales record on dvd. I'm sure it'll save the format from sinking.

In quality I would doubt they "TRUMP" anything in HD...

In Quality of filmmaking they second to everyone, as opposed to second to none, I have seen them both and they were both made for the 16-19 year old crowd.. ICK!

Ok Open Season for the YOUNGER YOUNGER crowd... but I digress...

We're talking PQ, not the movie. Blu ray has garbage movies just like HD has Garbage. Personally I loved "Crank", I"m sure you can't understand. Just like I don't understand how anyone could enjoy brokeback and Crash. Which i put both in the top 100 worst films i've seen ever.

[quote=John Menoni]At first I was neutral, just wanting the best product to win. I did lean toward HD-DVD just because I don't like Sony. I jumped to the HD-DVD side when I saw that the players were less than half the price, and the releases and PQ were better. When I saw that the PS3 was dissapointing and the sales were less than expected, and that the porn industry seemingly leaned toward HD-DVD, I was very confident that HD-DVD was going to win the war. After going with HD-DVD, I'm dissapointed with the releases of the last couple months. Every time I go to the HD-DVD area on DVDempire.com, it's the same releases over and over. QUOTE]

John -- I would have to agree with you. I have been a staunch HD-DVD supporter from the beginning-- and I'll go down with the ship probably---but this is playing out like the fable of the tortoise and the hare-- with Sony being the tortoise and the Toshiba the hare!

Toshiba got out of the gates (no pun intended) early with their product. After rapidly fixing some firmware bugs-- the got great press and support from this forum's members-- myself included. I was excited to build an HD-DVD collection and replace any SD-DVD's with their HD-DVD counterparts.

Sony on the other hand -stumbled and bumbled its way through the summer and into the fall. Their release of their player was always just another month off-- little did anyone know that they were really hoarding the blue laser diodes for their launch of the PS3.

There was plenty of HD-DVD's released over the summer and into the fall and I found myself buying some almost every week.

But now here's the catch-- that no one on this forum--neither Robert at VE or Amir at Microsoft or anyone at Universal or Warners can explain. Just as Sony was putting out the PS3 and its players in December and ramping up release of Blu-Ray movie disks-- the entire release pattern of new HD-DVD media STOPPED! Yes there have been a couple of disks released each month in Dec & Jan -- but a complete reversal of the release pattern of Aug-Nov.

It was clearly the time to push out as much high demand catalog material as possible -- Back to the Future, the on-again-off-again Matrix trilogy, etc. The opportunity with the release of the outstanding hardware in Toshiba's G2 players was calling for a massive blitz of HD material-- but all that has been announced is promises for later in 2007.

I think when you examine the calendar-- we may be talking about at least a 4-month dry spell (Dec-06 to Apr-07) when NO HD-DVD material was released with wide mass appeal like Batman Begins, Superman Returns, V for Vendetta, MI3, etc.

Will this gap of nearly 1/3 of a year affect the final outcome. There are some on the forum that discount such a gap so early in the race/release of a new format. I on the other hand feel that the CE community will look back on this dry period as the reason that the Blu-Ray association could seize the press attention at CES2007 and beyond and recover from what should have been a series of fatal engineering and marketing decisions.

By the time more HD-DVD material enters the retail chain, Blu-Ray will have a significant lead in sales. And I'll bet that alot of HD-DVD owners consider purchasing a 20GB PS3 for Blu-Ray play as a backup.

I wont disguise how I despise Sony as a company for bribing the various movie studios not to let the free market determine if HD-DVD or Blu-Ray should be the winner. But I'm disheartened by the lack of media now-- the exact argument that Sony and the Blu-Ray association has put forth as why they will win-- is exactly the condition that Toshiba, Universal, and Warners have given them.

Talk about playing into someone's pocket. So while Universal sleeps on the sideline, Sony will pass it by and cross the finish line. What a crummy turn of events.