Blockbuster Blu-ray announcement: Master Thread - Page 2

When does everyone think other retailers such as Bestbuy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart will follow Blockbuster's lead? I predict Bestbuy in Q4-2007, the other two in Q1-2008.

I think Wal-Mart has already stopped selling HD-DVD standalone hardware.

~Josh

Thumbs way up for Blockbuster for calling it correctly!


Thank you for being honest.

I'm quite surprised by this "news" since I just picked this pamphlet (in French) at a local Blockbuster (small town in Quebec, Canada). But still, a major blow if true.

Actually Wal Mart is apparently carrying their own badged version of the HD-A2 with an HD-A2W model number.

I doubt they would have their own model number if they weren't going to carry the players in some fashion for a while.

But, good job trying to do your normal "spin bad news into the apocalypse" thing.

Wow, this means I'm going to be able to rent Blu-ray movies from Blockbuster since they'll have them at more locations and more variety per location. Won't have to depend upon Netflix anylonger so will be able to get to see movies sooner. I've been trying to rent movies in Blu-ray to make sure I want to buy them, so this will definitely help alot.

Thank you Blockbuster for your business common sense. And, by the way, you're tearing Netflix a new one!

Hip, hip, hooray!

I am somewhat sorry for the HD DVD supporters out there but if true this is a very good sign for Blu-ray and makes perfect sense as well. After all if more than twice as many people were renting Blu-ray than HD DVD it only logical that Blockbuster would choose to stock Blu-ray.



It is not that Blockbuster has gone Blu-ray only and instead it is because of the rental ratio they have gotten for Blu-ray since last year which caused them to stock Blu-ray nationally. As bitter as some of the HD DVD supporters are because of this Blockbuster only made a logical decision based on actual rentals.

msft cold have done the same. if they had used halo (msft owned game) to lhelp launch the format. game console market is much bigger than high end ht market.

They said that they would still rent HD DVDs online.

I understand what you are saying, but Blockbuster did an experimental period to see what people would rent and according to that article the customers rented Blu-rays at a high enough ratio over HD DVDs to get Blockbuster to go with just Blu-rays for their bigger rollout. Maybe it wasn't the consumers you wanted or the most vocal ones, but looks like it was consumers who voted with their pocketbooks at selected Blockbusters during this period.

--Darin

Sorry, I did not know of this. I could not find it on their webpage.

~Josh

BB needs to be careful what they dont carry or there will be nothing for them to sell. Their music section is pathetic unless you are 18 and in need of bubble gum pop music. If they dont get their pricing in line, it wont matter what they sale, as no one will buy from them, in favor of going the online stores. i think they need to worry about getting people in the store, not keeping them from going in.

This is the kind of thing we need to resolve the format war.

Oh geez, what is it this time? At least we don't have to wait long to find out if your source is correct.

On the flip side I, and probably many others, will sign up for Blockbusters's Total Access plan if this is true. Also instead of switching to Netflix, which sounds like it is being done out of anger, why not just become a Blu-ray owner?



Well Blockbuster has had over half a year of data to work with so how long did you expect them to wait before making this decision?



Wow, a bit bitter aren't you? No need to attack the PS3 over this and Blockbuster only did the logical thing here.



Well the rental data is an important factor for a rental store like Blockbuster and the one they would care most about when deciding to nationally stock a new video format.



Actually considering that both Blu-ray and HD DVD are backed by multi-billion dollar companies this argument rings hollow. Now if it was Blu-ray vs VMD that might be different but don't tell me that Microsoft, Toshiba, and Universal aren't trying to force HD DVD into the consumer market. Neither side is good or bad they are just companies trying to get royalties.



No need for the Sony hatred and blaming Sony for something that has nothing to do with them doesn't even make sense.

They might rent more HD DVD titles if they actually stocked them. I have HD DVDs that have been in my Blockbuster queue literally for months with "long waits". These are popular titles that have been released for almost a year that they just can't seem to fill orders on.

It's pretty easy to say that you are renting more BD than HD if you stock 10X as many copies of BD titles.

There could be other extraneous factors at work here also. It could be that BD gets fewer "mis-rents" where someone rents the wrong disc, thinking that an HD DVD will play on their regular DVD player.

Additionally it is possible that Blockbuster gets fewer complaints of "bad discs" due to BD having a generally more robust error correction system than HD DVD.

Yawn.

Do people still rent from BB B&M's? One of the three in my neighborhood closed up shop, and every time I drive past the other two, it's a veritable ghost town.

I posted this elsewhere, but it applies to this thread and I would like to see if any of the people who push the importance of high attach rates is willing to stand up and take a position toward that with regard to this news:

In case people haven't figured it out, this is just one of the reasons that maximizing attach rates is not the goal for either side.

--Darin

The story is going live.

Another link:

http://www.elpasotimes.com/entertainment/ci_6164939

I'm hearing that is a big problem for retailers, customers buying HD-DVDs assuming they can play them on their DVD players and see their favorite movies in HD.

I guess this is where having the DVD in your name was a backfire.

I expect the people making the decisions for Blockbuster (not those working in stores) to have a handle on how many of each disc they have and how many requests there are in queues for each type of disc.

There is a Blockbuster just a couple of miles from Microsoft that rents both and from what I have seen, they have had about equal numbers of discs for both formats. Which was actually quite a few. I seem to recall maybe 70 or 80 discs for each format maybe a month or 2 ago.

--Darin

Josh i love your posts...funny stuff

I'm gonna get a BR player one day, but the FUD from some of the regulars here prevents me from buying one; I have to spend my time smacking them down so I don't have time to buy one Not going to buy a BR player until the price is reasonable, i.e. the price I got my HD DVD player. Another reason is lack of finalized mandatory specifications, I'd rather wait a year and get a $200 Blu-Ray player with finalized mandatory specs than a $500 one which may or may not be fully functional with all future Blu-Ray discs.

Plus Netflix offers more HD DVD movies than Blockbuster online does. So no it isn't out of anger, it is out of my capitalistic ways. If a company doesn't carry a product I want I will not give them my money. They have to earn it, Microsoft has (XBox 360), Toshiba has (HD DVD), even in some cases Sony has (My 7 Megapixel Cybershot) but since Blockbuster isn't going to be offering the products I want then I won't shop there. That is just the way it is whether Blockbuster likes it or not.

Well that's why you don't post statements as fact without knowing what you're talking about...

Was it 70/30 with the extra "mis-rents" for the HD DVD side included, or without those?

As your post points out, there are negatives to using such a generic name for their format that could be confused with what people are used to elsewhere (DVD players that output high definition signals for instance), besides the positives to that name.

--Darin

Completely fair and they understand that. Which is probably why they did the experimental period with 250 stores to see what would happen before making a decision for the larger rollout. It seems that there are enough people on the opposite side as you for this decision to be made.

--Darin

Maybe instead of a 'BUY HD-DVD DAY FROM AMAZON' fan campaign there should be a 'SIGN UP FOR NETFLIX TO SUPPORT HD-DVD RENTALS' campaign.

that's something bd really needs to address, players have to be functionally complete. at this point only ps3 qualifies as one.

While a valid question it's too bad that Blockbuster opted to call this when just now HD DVD hardware sales seem to be seriously picking up.

I'd like to keep up on this thread and discuss things in a reasonable manner, but the fan boy gloating has already commenced, so I'll leave people in peace to go hug their PS3s.

The one thing that I am wondering is what, if anything, the HD DVD camp will do to respond.

At this point it is going to be all or nothing time for them, as there's no question that the typical consumer will be greatly influenced by what he can rent at his local video store.

This is just awesome news.

I am. I'm watching my Spurs championship parade streamed live on the net.

But that doesn't mean I can't check in here and get a laugh at all the people getting giddy about what stores they'll never step foot in decide to put on their shelves. Though I guess I should say that if BB decided to go with HD-DVD for most of their stores I still couldn't care less. I guess I just don't have as much emotion invested as some here...

price cut was their response... didn't work.