MY TWO CENTS - 1/25/08 - by Digital Bits editor Bill HuntFYI, this post is all format war, so if you don't care about such things, you've been warned
The Nielsen VideoScan software sales numbers for the week ending 1/20 are now in. This would be the second full week of data after the Warner announcement. Here's what it looks like...
As you can see, Blu-ray Disc software retained much of its market share from the previous week, while HD-DVD software managed only a 3% rebound. Obviously, these numbers are largely affected by the number and quality of the titles released on each format from week to week, and it's fair to say that not much of significance was released in either format during the week ending 1/20, so these numbers almost entirely reflect continuing sales of the previous week's titles. Again, two weeks of sales under 20% doesn't necessarily represent a trend for HD-DVD. On the other hand, it certainly isn't good news for the format either. Especially if it's true that at least a portion of electronics retailers are planning to phase out their stock of HD-DVD players and discs in the weeks and months ahead.
The reality is, despite cautionary statements here and there, the home video and electronics industries are ready for this format war to be over. That's the overwhelming sense we're getting from our many industry contacts, and the outward signs of this sentiment are starting to appear everywhere. Just go to your favorite local electronics or video store and ask their employees which format they recommend, which is selling better and which they think will win. Visit Amazon.com, which has now started warning its customers about Warner's plans to drop HD-DVD with
a notice on the order page for the studio's HD-DVD titles. Read the statements of various retail and studio representatives in mainstream media reports... not to mention the editorial opinions of those same mainstream media outlets.
Meanwhile, in the online enthusiast community, things have actually gotten so absurd in the last couple of weeks that there are now dueling petitions to alternately save or kill HD-DVD (complete with thousands of signatures real and fake, genuine and mocking), and one discussion forum recently hosted a thread in which its members were casting the actors who might star in a hypothetical Format War: The Movie (predictably, what started in good humor quickly became contentious and the thread was locked, like so many others before it).
Bottom line: Ending this format war now is the right thing to do for this industry and for consumers overall. It's time to stop all the bitterness and the hostility, both real world and virtual, and it's time to put this unnecessary and damaging dispute behind us.
It's just time.
And with that, we wish you all a lovely weekend, whichever side of this thing you may be on. Stay tuned...
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