CNBC article on format war!!!

[Alan Gordon]

I don't see a place to vote...

Tried Internet Explorer, and it popped up!

~Alan

[jetydosa]

The poll just took off! LOL

Still shows very clearly for me. Looks like theyve gotten another 100 votes (almost all BR) in teh past ~30min.

[RUR]

Originally Posted by Blu-Ray Buckeye

Send them an email. I did.

I already did, but it will do no good as he's sucking off the company teat.

[jkwest]

Voted

[surfdude12]

voted and emailed

[jctash]

I'm tired of hearing his crap. That guy is just plain retarded...If you look at his picture he looks like he has a stick up his but. Blu ray is leading the poll 70-30

[Julman]

Originally Posted by lcseds

"Take PS3 out of the mix and there isn't even a competition here."

How is that? 700,000 HD units. 2.7 Million Blu Ray. Remove the 2 Million PS3 and it's still 700,000 BD units against 700,000 HD units. Why is there "No Competition Here"?

Fuzzy math.

In this hypothetical world that Goldman paints where there are no PS3's, most likely a large percentage of consumers who bought a PS3 for Blu-ray usage would end up buying stand alone players. In this fictitious world, the numbers would be more like HD units 700,000 and BD units around 1.5 million. In that world it would still be no competition. All Blu.

[cartier]

IF Universal goes neutral or even Blu exclusive next year, what will happen to this guy? Any ideas on his new article?

[jetydosa]

Originally Posted by cartier

IF Universal goes neutral or even Blu exclusive next year, what will happen to this guy? Any ideas on his new article?

Yeah, itll be called, "How to remove your foot from your mouth"

[wrnjr]

I voted. And I guess I don't count b/c my PS3 is mainly a blu player...

I'm just an odd ball for having more Blus than games.

[JackStraw]

Originally Posted by RickD

"The blogs say this is to be expected since HD DVD players are being bought by movie fans; Blu-ray players are acquired by gamers who may also want to watch the occasional movie."

I own the PS3, own a lot of blu rays but do not own a single game for it. As far as I'm concerned it's either a standalone or a blu ray machine that can play games, not the other way around.

I can't stand that logic of the PS3 being aquired by gamers who may also want to watch the occasional movie. That's just the type of "head in the sand" statement that comes from people who are running out of straws to grasp.

[Blu-Ray Buckeye]

My Email:

Wow, gotta love that uninformative pile of nothing.

Early on, Jim states, "But the fact that NBC and Universal and are partners doesn't color my handicapping of the ongoing format war". Yet he had already blown that cover from the start by hyping up 'Bourne' while failing to mention 'Harry Potter' which will inevitably be the better seller across formats; So sad to be wrong before you even start. Throughout the article, Jim employs fuzzy math and the"nu" logic to draw some rather illogical conclusions. Let's look at some examples.

Jim lays out a few facts showing that there are about ~700k HD-DVD standalone players in homes and 2.7MM blu-ray players, but if you exclude the PS3 then it's closer... in fact, Jim you're almost dead even if for some unknown reason you exclude the 800-lb gorilla. While we're at that game, the NBA is a great pro sports league if you exclude the NFL, the Pats suck if you exclude Tom Brady, and Mac would own corporate desktops if you exclude Microsoft. Ok so building on that base of info Jim says, "I say neck-and-neck because I haven't seen any hard evidence that consumers are buying PS3's BECAUSE there's also a Blu-ray player inside." Funny, because right after that he mentions that blu-ray has a massive 3:1 edge in holiday movie sales. Now with even numbers of standalones players out there, what could possibly be driving such a massive advantage for blu-ray? The advantage is so huge, in fact, that it has persisted all year long w/ blu-ray holding a 2:1 lead for the year and never having lost a single week... that's right, not 1. Hey, Jim, you think maybe the PS3 is the reason? Isn't that simple illustration hard enough evidence for you? If not, please explain what might be the cause.

Jim notes that HD-DVD has the momentum, obviously ignoring movie sales and of course PS3 sales (let's just ignore everything so Jim can make the point that HE wants to make, shall we?), due to the % growth rate in HD-DVD player sales. Well if HD-DVD players hit the market first and yet total standalones sales are about the same, then doesn't blu-ray have an even better growth rate over that time period? Mathematically I have to be right so no response is required here.

Jim ends with the humorous line, "Take PS3 out of the mix and there isn't even a competition here." Maybe he didn't mean for it to be funny, but how else can we take it? We certainly can't take it seriously. I mean after all, it was Jim who had to jump through so many fuzzy logic hoops to get the standalone players to be on even terms... remember ~700k to ~700k. Well to me, if you assume Jim's "special mix" Kool-aid treatment is accurate, ~700k to ~700k seems like a pretty good competition. Well that's because it WOULD be a pretty good competition IF the PS3 didn't exist, just like Mac WOULD dominate the computing universe IF Microsoft didn't exist. However most of the logical folk among us have quite an issue excluding the 800-lb gorilla in the room because it just doesn't make sense. The real tag line to this article is, "If you include the PS3 there isn't even a competition here."

Heck, Jim, I don't mean to be so hard on ya. We all know you guys over at GE/Universal are as inbred as it gets. Universal is forcing your hand. We know. I mean even your best comedy, '30 Rock', is little more than a primetime spot to plug other GE/Uni properties. BTW how many times do you guys have to re-use that gimmick before you figure out it's no longer funny? So in the end, I know you can't help it, I just have an issue when you try to pretend you're somewhere higher in the gene pool than good ole' inbred Eefus & Cletus, the 1-eye twins from Double-Y, WV.

With all of that brainpower of geniuses like Jim at work, it's no wonder that special short bus over at GE/Universal keeps chug-chug-chuggin' along... stock was $37 in 1999 and is $37 today. Gosh, I think that even the aforementioned Eefus & Cletus tag team can invest better than that.



Sincerely,

An observer who isn't buying the GE/Universal hype.

[Cwoodall334]

Originally Posted by JackStraw

I own the PS3, own a lot of blu rays but do not own a single game for it. As far as I'm concerned it's either a standalone or a blu ray machine that can play games, not the other way around.

I can't stand that logic of the PS3 being aquired by gamers who may also want to watch the occasional movie. That's just the type of "head in the sand" statement that comes from people who are running out of straws to grasp.

Well put. I'm the same way. I own a PS3, yet I own waaaaay more blu-ray movies than I do PS3 games.

Another thing that irritated me about the article was his reference to the surge in HD-DVD players thanks to walmarts price cuts. While HD-DVD might have gotten a shot in the arm, the people that bought those players really got the short end of the stick. Those players can't do full HD ie 1080p, nor do the audio decoding that blu can.

[CptGreedle]

I voted, up to 70% Blu-ray, 19% HD DVD

[ellldiablo]

what an uninformative article, i expected better. It's funny, i work at cc and they other day i met a nice woman who must have been 60 years old or older and she was asking questions about the ps3. Right away i thought this was a gift for her grand kids or something when to my surprise, she told me she bought it because as she put it " It's the best Blu-Ray palyer" and that she loved her movies. I wonder what the writer of this article has to say about that?

[Bizdady]

Voted for my boy Blu!!! Your my boy blu!!!! 70% 18% pwnage!

[Amel]

where is the logic

I bought the PS3 mainly as a bluray player, its future proof and when a game that really interests me comes out I will go and get it....why would I miss on a full equipped media box?!

[Curumo]

i also bought PS3 60 for BDs. I bought 3 games, but still gaming mostly on PC. Console gaming didn't catch me, i like to play strategies mostly. But i have 30 BD movies and 90 percent of my PS3 usage is movie watching, BDs and upc. SDVDs.
This guy is a hypocrite and complete moron. I suppose he is one of those who found out just last monday that PS3 has a blu-ray player included.

[bajor27]

Take PS3 out of the mix and there isn't even a competition here.

I love it when people assume that if something were different, things would have played out the exact same way. It's like saying if a hockey team didn't have their star goaltender, than the net would just have been empty. I think maybe they would have gotten a different goalie and put him in net.

If Sony and the BDA didn't have the PS3, I'm 100% postive that they would have done things differently.

Also, since I bought a PS3 specifically because it has a blu-ray player instead of buying a standalone (is that evidence enough) - if there wasn't a PS3, I would have just bought a standalone player. Did they ever think of that? Without the PS3, the total blu-ray players sold would be less, but I'm quite confident that the standalone player sales would be a lot higher.

[w_tanoto]

voted: BD