Hi-Def In New Zealand

[PS3_Kiwi]

Hi All,

I thought you may like to know how the Hi Def "war" is going in this part of the world.

Unfortunately for us Kiwi's it has been very slow to gain momentum, but I do now see some retailers with a few BD's on their shelves. Until now Kiwi's could only buy discs online at sites like Amazon or Ezy DVD Australia.

Players are $NZ1500 to $NZ2000 ($US1120 to $US1495), which puts them way out of reach for the average person. The best buys are PS3 @ $NZ1199 ($US900) and Xbox 360 @ $NZ650 ($US485), the HD DVD add-on is $NZ250 ($US185).

PS3 buyers/owners are using their consoles for games and BD movies, whereas 360 buyers/owners could care less about HD DVD.

Only Sony and Warner are releasing Blu-ray here, which is annoying for me as our neighbour Australia has support from all Blu studio's.

My local video store began Hi-Def rentals about four months ago with five HD DVD and three Blu-ray titles. Now they still have five HD DVD, but their Blu-ray titles now number 27. The manager told me that Blu-ray is the only format that is renting, and that they have no plans to stock more HD DVD titles.

I recently bought a PS3 60G, which had Resistance: Fall Of Man, Motorstorm, Need For Speed Carbon and a second controller included in the deal. I bought Apocalypto (brilliant movie) and Flags Of Our Fathers (US release) which I also really enjoyed.

The Spider-man Trilogy amd Spider-man 3 have been released here, so I logged on to my online DVD and Hi-Def store www.moviehouse.co.nz, and ordered the Trilogy for $NZ83.95 ($US62). I have to wait until October 3rd before they will be able to ship. What was interesting to me, is that their top ten selling titles include five Blu-ray and two HD DVD, the other three spots are taken by DVD box sets.

To sum up. although it is early days here, there does seem to be a definite leaning towards Blu-ray, and people with little technical knowledge are aware of Blu-ray, but are surprised to hear that there is a competing format.

I hope that this post is of some interest to you all.