HD DVD: Time to quit? Opinion - The HD DVD camp suffered two major blows today and no matter you look at it, begins to look like the certain loser of the high-def format war. HD DVD better has a secret weapon that it can aim at Blu-ray now. Otherwise Toshiba can only hope for a miracle or actually admit defeat. But it is not only Toshiba that loses: A victory of Blu-ray may actually be much more painful for Microsoft.
If you own a HD DVD player and hoped that the format will win in the end, I can feel your pain. I am among those people who purchased such a player, although for different reasons than your typical HD customer: My player was actually cheaper than an upscaling DVD player, I got seven free HD DVD movies and I knew that even if the format doesn’t win in the end, I still can use it as a DVD player. I am still happy with that decision, but if I have to say that the 35-second startup time of the player and the loud fan noise (there’s a Pentium 4 processor inside) is annoying.
If you have spent $400 or more on a HD DVD player, you may be upset about the HD news recently hitting the web. But then, you’ll also have to admit that you should have waited with the purchase and if you are upset that those $400 and perhaps several hundred dollars more (because you obviously purchased HD DVD movies) are thrown out the window, you have to realize that couldn’t afford this HD DVD player in the first place. Part of being an early adopter means that you can swallow such a loss and you shouldn’t complain about it.
No one right in his mind (and a budget) would have bought an HD DVD player within the past few weeks after the Blu-ray camp began scoring one success after another. Interestingly, if you look at it, the pendulum started moving towards Blu-ray only two months ago. Right before CES 2008, Warner Home Video announced that it would begin backing Blu-ray exclusively (even if HD DVD support was a bit extended afterwards). This announcement sent a shockwave through the industry and was widely seen as a sign that the movie industry would begin focusing on Blu-ray. Following the announcement, Blu-ray player sales skyrocketed, HD DVD player sales plummeted and we heard more movie studios and retailers saying they would move towards Blu-ray. In late January, Gartner said that it expects Blu-ray to be winning the format war.
It is interesting to note that we are under embargo on some of these announcements, as they are planned to be made at the end of Q1 or in Q2. Given the situation, we can say that a handful of smaller movie studios told us that they would be supporting Blu-ray exclusively, but decided to hold back such an announcement as they were sitting on a pile of HD DVDs they still wanted to get rid of. Plus, remember there’s quite some marketing money floating around which no one wants to lose. As reported earlier, industry sources told us that Chicago retailer Grant’s Appliances had no intentions of supporting HD DVD anymore and another source told us that Blockbuster is also focusing on Blu-ray (some stores are still stocking HD DVDs at this time).
Today may actually have been the most critical day in the high-def battle yet. Netflix dropped HD DVD and Best Buy now sides with Blu-ray as well. It’s clear that there is still support for HD DVD out there, but the walls are crumbling and the HD DVD camp should reveal their last ace soon, if they have one.
If you look at the past 20 months, the HD DVD camp always has fought this battle highlighting the lower price of HD DVD players. Not really a bad idea considering the fact that Toshiba was out with players months before the first (Samsung) Blu-ray player became available, which was offered for the ridiculous price of $999 initially. However, we have to recognize that even this lower price point was much too high even for the enthusiasts among consumers. So it probably did not really matter whether such a player was priced at $600 or $1000. Turns out that Sony in fact may have won the war with what many of us considered a failure – the Playstation 3.
Part 2 Why video gamers are critical for HD successhttp://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36017/128/
