Rob Enderle article: "Why Blu-ray should never have existed"

[Mr. Joshua]

Reply I got back from Enderle - do you notice he still talks nothing but unsubstantiated crap in his e-mails too?


Quote:
Problem was, as we later found out, the technology was simply too untested and too expensive. The HD camp spent a lot of effort making a technology that would slipstream (interesting that Disney actually helped with most of it and then switched, I understand the back story on that may make for interesting reading when it comes out). This blog is for a technical audience to prevent another mistake like this in the future, and as a reminder to me to not make the mistake again (I argued that Blu-Ray was certain to win at the start). ITBusiness Edge pays me to write here, not Toshiba and the constant libel gets very old after awhile. The PC side of Toshiba US was a client at one time, not the media division. My advice to the PC companies has been consistently to support both and let the customer choose HP and Gateway follow that advice most others don’t.



I think I clearly said Blu-Ray was superior, it was also too expensive and can’t ramp to volume in time and will likely become one of the biggest white elephants of all time. It’s quite latterly bleeding Sony dry and the studios are not happy at all with total HD volume as a result. It’s only a spoiler now and I’d like to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Can it be forced to win, certainly, with enough money anything is possible but it has cost several Sony execs their jobs already and speculation is it will take their CEO out by the end of the year.



So I stand by what I said, and look forward to the day that discussions like this can happen without the need for personal attacks.



Rob Enderle
Principal Analyst
Enderle Group




I respond


Quote:
I chat with the HD Media team at Warner quite a bit and they seem very happy with Blu-ray providing 70% of their HD discs sales and look forward to taking their interactivity even further.

Disney helped develop HDi, that is hardly when speaking about the technology “most of it”

You are right, studios are not happy with the overall volume, nor will anyone when two technologies go at it fighting for acceptance. I see two major studios supporting HD DVD exclusively, three major studios supporting Blu-ray exclusively and one neutral. It seems to me that Blu-ray is not only the consumers choice based on units sold, but also the electronics manufacturers choice and Hollywood’s choice.

Can’t ramp to volume? Which HD DVD has sold the most discs? “300” and it hasn’t even moved 100,000 units yet! “300” on Blu-ray moved 165,000 in its first week.

Casino Royale on a BD50 disc has sold over 100,000 in North America AND has 500,000 copies given away to initial registrars in Europe to the PS3 Home network.

This comment is baffling and that you make it with no supporting facts or figures is pretty typical of your editorials and blogs.

If you want discussions without personal attacks then you should seriously try looking at facts when your write your articles instead of hearsay. The second link in your article goes to a site maintained by “rdjam” from AVSForum who is one of the biggest fanboys on the site and certainly not a credible source.

The sharply declining number of people supporting Blu-ray has certainly not dropped since the Paramount announcement. In the first full week of sales since the announcement Blu-ray had 68% of the disc sales. http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ques...hp?startpage=4

The only people that approve of your articles write comments like “I hope Sony dies” et cetera. That speaks volumes.

I have yet to read an eloquent, factual and well though out piece by you on the format war or on either format and I rarely read factual information in your pieces like manufacturing costs of Blu-ray, yields from any of the 8 factories now with Blu-ray 50GB lines, etc.

If you don’t want personal attacks, try backing up your writings with real facts because otherwise it will just be another long article in a series of statements on Blu-ray by yourself that can only be considered propaganda.



After all this was said, Ron Simmons walks into Enderle's office, looks at him for about 20 seconds, pulls his cigar out of his mouth and says, "DAMN!!!"