The Format War

[matts]

Originally Posted by joeorc

why do you think that is..the very simple answer is THE cost of the Movies in HD themselves..people esp. J6P does not want to pay $30.00+ for a movie no matter how much extra content it has. unless HDM get's to the price of DVD its fighting an up hill battle. people can buy that $200.00 player all they want but if they are only renting the HDM its not what studios's want to hear..they want the DISC's sold. in my OPINION that is exactly what Silverberg was talking about the consumer has not decided because right now both HD DVD and Blu-Ray both have player's out that are affordable right now . but which side is selling more DISC's.

the example if Toshiba sells through alot of those HD DVD players but still Blu-Ray still maintains their lead of 2 to 1 what does that say to Warner Bros...?

The big problem is the stores. SRP is also a problem. If Amazon.com can sell titles at pretty reasonable prices, why can't the stores? Studios just need to drop SRP so that titles are still above DVD, but not twice the price as many titles are.

And if Toshiba sells a lot of players and it doesn't have an impact, that certainly says something. But I do think one thing that is more easily measured is how HD DVD player sales translate into HD DVD movie sales.

As far as renting - I agree its not as good as people buying, but it still does help. I'm sure there's some formula where x number of renters = 1 buyer.

Originally Posted by J6P

So in order to keep scoring 2:1 ratios with a larger and larger pool of adopters on both sides, Blu-ray has to grow its base at a much greater rate than HD DVD is growing theirs.

They simply have to keep growing 2x the amount of HD DVD.

I really do think the rest of this year will show what potential HD DVD has. And that will determine how things shape up next year.

Another thing people forget is that the number of titles sold is not the only thing to consider. Take last week for example. Blu-ray beat out HD DVD by a 51:49 margin. I think we can all agree that the BOGO offer certainly had a significant impact on this. So which format made more profit for the week? Without a question, HD DVD made more profit.

Profit is a big factor that the studios look at. I have no doubt that over the year, blu-ray has made more profit, but last week, I also have no doubt HD DVD made more profit. Most people saw blu-ray as "winning" the week, but I think the studios can see it for what it was. And there's really nothing wrong with HD DVD "winning" a week in profit considering the release of a huge title like transformers. But it does clearly show interest in the format. This is why I think things will continue on as they are.

As I said though, the next 2 months will be intresting and tell us a lot.