Blu-ray Disc Players Lead HD DVD 2:1

[Go Blu]

Here is a great article from Hettrick over at Hollywood In High Def.
Explains how people are being misled by HD DUD Standalone sales.

Blu-ray Disc Players Lead HD DVD 2:1

I guess as long as forums, bloggers, media and consumers are gullible enough, HD DVD promotion people will keep capitalizing on that by putting out these ridiculous announcements every 90 days or so about how HD DVD players are outselling Blu-ray players.
The European HD DVD Promotions Group did this in mid-July and they were hammered by myself and others (see July 12 Blog: "My Crumbs..."). Now the American team is doing the same thing, trumpeting NPD's report showing HD DVD stand-alone players with a 53% share of the market in September.
As long as media keeps creating headlines of their greatly misleading claims, why shouldn't they keep doing it?

Once again, for anyone responsible enough to care to print the actual numbers, simply measuring stand-alone players is enormously misleading. (And by the way, even in that game, Toshiba should have mounted a sizable lead in the category months ago since it has been selling players for at least $200 less than Blu-ray players all year -- they should be embarassed that it took them this long to eke out a tiny lead even in this single category.)

The only measure that should really matter is the overall number of Blu-ray capable players of any sort, and HD DVD capable players of any sort in the market. (Actually, the overall numbers are still so tiny compared to DVD that the only thing that should matter is the combined number of homes with hi-def disc players of either format, but as long as HD DVD continues to put out press releases trumpeting their 53% portion in September of a tiny slice of a small pie, I feel compelled to address the misleading data.)

There are about 120,000 HD DVD stand-alone players in the North American market, according to NPD. If you add the entire base of HD DVD drives for the Xbox 360, that number grows to about 320,000. (I still can't believe anyone is bragging about such tiny numbers -- there are about 90 MILLION DVD homes. A number like 320,000 gets your show canceled on the Oxygen network!)

The number of combined homes with Blu-ray stand-alone players and PS3 game machines that play Blu-ray Discs: 2 million! That's 84% of the overall hi-def disc player market, not even counting computer drives, which would surely tilt it even more in favor of Blu-ray.

That's not even a race. A 7-1 margin like that makes HD DVD an extremely dark horse. And that's even considering that PS3 machines didn't gain anywhere near the early traction that was hoped. Watch what happens if PS3 sales pick up steam as anticapted over the next few months, and as Blu-ray stand-alone player prices drop even further.

Once again, there is no reason not to include PS3 numbers in the mix because that was a big factor in the whole Blu-ray launch strategy, and that is a big reason why the vast majority of consumer electronics companies and studios favor Blu-ray, because it clearly gets Blu-ray an instantly and far greater installed base of Blu-ray capable players in the market.

Now, in order not to be misleading, we all know that not every owner of a PS3 machine uses it to play Blu-ray movies. (It's still better to have all those Blu-ray capable machines in those extra 1.5 million homes compared to zero additional homes with HD DVD-capable machines.)

Sony's own research based on results from 5,000 PS3 owners who responded to the survey in May shows that 83% of PS3 owners play movies in their PS3 machines occasionally or frequently and each respondent owns an average of 4.5 Blu-ray movies. So we could say that 1.5 mil. of the 1.8 mil. PS3 owners use their machines for Blu-ray movies, making the lead over HD DVD player owners almost 5-1.

But don't even use that very strong number.

Take the most conservative number out there: NPD says their recent research shows just 29% of PS3 owners regularly use their PS3 for playing movies. OK, so 522,000 of PS3 owners use their machine for playing Blu-ray movies.

That's a total of about 640,000 machines and homes playing Blu-ray movies with regularity.

That's still a huge 2-1 lead over the number of HD DVD homes, despite HD DVD's huge price advantage.

Case closed (again).

Now, let's get back to focusing on the most beneficial message for the overall market: the fact that about 2.3 million homes have hi-def disc players, a number that continues to grow and is expected to grow even faster over the next 3 months. That's a reasonably solid starting base and cause for cautious optimism about the future of this market in general, and should provide incentive for CE companies and studios to start serious spending of marketing dollars.