Apparently PS3 owners know it's a blu-ray player after all

[Pilam69]

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/news/?id=17153

Blu-ray Outsold HD DVD 2-to-1 for First Half of '07

Is the tide in the movie format war turning? [Update: added PS3 survey results]

While Sony vehemently backs Blu-ray and Microsoft continues to support HD DVD with its own HD DVD player for the Xbox 360, new data from Home Media Research shows that it's Sony and the Blu-ray format that's winning the format war.

As reported by Reuters, for the first six months of this year (through July 1) sales of Blu-ray disc movies totaled 1.6 million units compared with 795,000 HD DVD discs sold in that period. Over the long haul, since both formats launched in spring 2006, the battle is a bit closer but Blu-ray is still ahead. An estimated 3.7 million high-definition discs have been sold, with Blu-ray accounting for 2.2 million and HD DVD accounting for 1.5 million, according to Home Media's data.

Blu-ray recently got a boost when leading rental chain Blockbuster said it would offer Blu-ray movies in favor of HD DVD at its stores. The company noted that Blu-ray rentals were "significantly outpacing" HD DVD rentals. Blu-ray also got a boost this month from strong sales of 300. Reuters spoke to Stephen Nickerson, senior vice president, market management at Warner Home Video, who said that 300 had sales of about 190,000 Blu-ray units versus 97,000 in HD DVD.

It's not clear how frequently PS3 owners purchase Blu-ray movies or what the real impact of the PS3 on this format war has been, but we've pinged Sony for some fresh data and we'll report what we hear back.

[UPDATE] SCEA's Dave Karraker, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications, replied to us with results from a May survey of PS3 owners:

# 83% of all survey respondents watch movies occasionally or frequently on the PS3.

# The average survey respondent owns 4.5 Blu-ray movies and 119 DVDs.

# 72% of respondents purchased at least 1 Blu-ray movie since acquiring a PS3.

# 87% of respondents intend to purchase at least one Blu-ray movie in the next 12 months; 62% intend to purchase at least one DVD.