Negative BD article in The Guardian

[JTK]

This FUD is a broken record by now. Nothing new.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by JTK

This FUD is a broken record by now. Nothing new.

The sad thing is, we know it...but the average joe (or MS/HDDVD Zealot) will preach it as gospel.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by BTBuck1

The sad thing is, we know it...but the average joe (or MS/HDDVD Zealot) will preach it as gospel.

Yup.

[Blu-Ray Buckeye]

Yeah, I would expect The Guardian to check it's sources and be more even handed when reporting

Why would you expect unbiased, factual reporting from that socialist pile of feces? They don't care about facts on any topic. BD v HD-DVD is no different.

[dialog_gvf]

Wow, what an unbelievably bad piece of reporting.

(1) What the heck are you arguing for?

Sony's dream of an early victory in the next-gen DVD format fight has been dashed by poor PS3 sales

Sony took a big gamble bundling the Blu-ray player with the PS3, a move that contributed both to delays in its release and higher prices for the consoles. Last week Ken Kutaragi, the "father of the PlayStation", paid the price and resigned as chairman and chief executive of the Sony Computer Entertainment unit.

Argue that they shouldn't have put the BD drive in, or that slow sales are hurting Blu-ray. You can't argue BOTH!

(2) Old dead news

On the retail side, the battle is also taking some interesting twists. In a recent blog on Digital Trends, Rob Enderle said that US retail giant Wal-Mart (which owns Asda in the UK) plans to bring in "a massive number of low cost (possibly sub-$200) HD DVD players for Christmas". Although unconfirmed by Wal-Mart, such a move could be decisive. Wal-Mart uses DVD sales as a loss-leader to attract shoppers and accounts for between 40% and 45% of all US DVD sales.

What did I say about Rob's article? It was a plant for being repeated ad nausea. That it was based on an AVS post based on a Chinese story that turned out to be completely false seems to have failed to register with the "journalists".

(3) Can we get the tired old attach rate argument into the story?

At the moment there are 180 Blu-ray titles available in Europe, coming almost exclusively from big Hollywood studios. But despite the weight of titles, the number of HD DVD discs that are bought against the number of players sold is much higher than for Blu-ray discs. In the UK, this so-called "attach rate" for HD DVD discs is 28 per year on average, while for Blu-ray it's five, says the HD DVD Promotion Group.

BINGO!

(4) Studio support

But the Blu-ray hard line has begun to crumble among Hollywood studios, where Warner Bros and Paramount are hedging their bets by making discs in both formats. And it may be significant that Warners will offer its much-anticipated The Complete Matrix Trilogy only on HD DVD later this month. Given the importance of the first Matrix movie to the adoption of DVD players, this may be significant for HD DVD.

How does an initial HD DVD-only "neutral" studio have a crumbling Blu-ray hard line?

Geez, if Warner is starting to support HD DVD, can Disney be far behind?!