CES Final Thoughts From Digital Bits

[ProvenFlipper]

It's going to be interesting over the next few months to watch how the positive buzz that HD-DVD enjoyed for much of 2007 continues to swing towards Blu-ray. All of these industry people who trash talked BD are now coming to their senses. Like others have said the criticism was needed to wake up the BDA, but once they got thier act together everything seemed pretty good.

What I find interesting is, pretty much everything that HD-DVD is getting BD is going to get with the exception of a few Weinstein titles, and whatever Universal has announced. I don't feel that Weinstein is far behind from releasing on BD, as a small company such as themselves can't continue to ignore all of the positive sales on the BD side and the amount of players there are. The same holds for Universal, except they can probably, (or may be contratually held to), hold out for a little bit longer as they are a bigger company, but eventually they too will realized the HD-DVD market is quickly becoming saturated and the BD market is on a steep increase.

I see the same customers in the HD-DVD section at work week after week, and see many different people in the BD section. I've even seen some of the usual HD-DVD customers purchasing BDs now.

As I was talking with one of my co-workers yesterday who is an installer for us, I mentioned the marketing departments of the two formats and how BD is killing HD-DVD in that respect. He told me about the tons of customers who buy HD-DVDs expecting them to play in their upconvert DVD players that advertise "HD" on the box. When they ask him why they don't work, he tells them that they need an HD-DVD player, and the customers always say "Oh that blu-ray thing". Of course he corrects them and sends them to me for a BD player, but that goes to show you how the marketing is working for the BDA. Many people also come in and see the HD-DVD and equate the DVD portion to something they already have. One customer told me that he thought HD-DVDs were just pre upconverted so people wouldn't have to buy upconvert players.

The Total HD disc is only going to help BD if they spec both sides the same. Why is this might you ask? Well anyone who has used a HD-DVD player can tell you about the audio dropouts and skipping and freezing. If they can get the same content on BD and not have to deal with those issues, why would they get an HD-DVD player? I think the THD disc was designed by Warner to help speed up the war. The studios are seeing the trends, especially Warner, whose Supermand Returns disc is smashing HD-DVD sales at all of the major online retailersm and I'm sure the same holds true in the B&M retailers. Whether the HD-DVD fanboys want to admit it or not, BD is on the rise. Especially if Universal starts to release on THD discs, like many speculate, the decision will be easy for the customer.