HD DVD Still Beating Blu-ray?

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While it isn’t surprising that most people aren’t planning an upgrade to Blu-ray this year, the fact that HD DVD players are in more homes than Blu-ray players is a bit shocking. You can read the complete study here. Thanks to Gerardo for the link.

While Blu-ray was declared the big “winner” in the high definition format war last year, consumers may be slow to be part of the winning team. In fact, Americans are not jumping on board with any of the high definition DVD players. Just one in ten Americans (11%) own a HD DVD player while 7% own a Blu-ray player. Looking at the other devices for playing HD DVDs, 9% own a Sony PLAYSTATION®3 (which plays Blu-ray ) and 3% have the external HD DVD drive for the Xbox® 360 (which plays HD DVDs).
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Comments
 
The wording seems to imply that they mean stand alone Blu-Ray players vs. stand alone HD-DVD players. If you combine the PS3 and BR players (and HD plus the 360 add-on)together...that shifts things a bit.

Plus, that survey still doesn't reflect the sales numbers that the retail chains and even the manufactures have been stating for the last year and a half.
 
Ignoring the study which seems flawed, I think digital distribution could very well make this the last physical format war ever.
 
I stopped buying Blu-ray movies due to jumping through too many hoops to get them to play right. It's just not cool when you have guests over and they want to go out and rent a movie and you bring it back and it doesn't play.
 
I wonder how many people answered the question not knowing that blu-ray and HD DVD are different? Even for people that have it, I can still see how many people may still draw a direct line between HDTV and HD DVD.
 
webdev511 said:
I wonder how many people answered the question not knowing that blu-ray and HD DVD are different? Even for people that have it, I can still see how many people may still draw a direct line between HDTV and HD DVD.
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Considering the large majority of people can't even distinguish HDTV from stretched/zoomed SDTV, I'd say it's even fewer.
 
w1retap said:
Considering the large majority of people can't even distinguish HDTV from stretched/zoomed SDTV, I'd say it's even fewer.
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Me being one of those who can't tell. Sure from my computer desk using the TV as a monitor I can tell. From my couch? I'm going to need something a lot bigger than 42 to tell.
 
How about the fact that many of us bought HD-DVD players early on because there was no working Blu-Ray, HD-DVD beat them to market handily. HD had better quality, more features, more advanced codecs, and better standards as far as networking etc... Its still a crapshoot today with what features a Blu-Ray player has. The compression and codecs has improved....but the price of the media hasn't. I can goto Fry's and buy HD disk for 6 bucks or Blu-Ray for $30. Not to mention we had this format war because Sony was too greedy to adopt a single format.

I wasn't around for VHS vs Betamax, but because of this debacle I will never purchase or support Blu-Ray. EVER!! besides down-loadable content is where its at.
 
Jakalwarrior said:
Me being one of those who can't tell. Sure from my computer desk using the TV as a monitor I can tell. From my couch? I'm going to need something a lot bigger than 42 to tell.
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StarTrekFacePalm.gif
 
There will be another war but how big and competitive it will be who knows. Digital distribution won't happen for quite some time as the infrastructure in the US isn't there.

That's pointless to still show anything about HD-DVD since everything should be about Blu-ray and DVD. Anyway what the hell is Toshiba thinking? they should make a damn Blu-ray player now otherwise they might not survive in market of dvd players since its easier to buy Blu and get DVD at the same time.
 
I bought a Sony Blu-ray player................meh.........works.

My biggest gripe about Blu-ray is the fucking price......sometimes twice the standard DVD.
and the fact that some places keep the blu-rays locked up like they were gold.......and you have to run all over the place looking for the guy with the key.
 
ferrisnox said:
Not to mention we had this format war because Sony was too greedy to adopt a single format.
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All the companies involved in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray development spent millions of dollars in R&D. Why would they just toss that investment away?
 
w1retap said:
I stopped buying Blu-ray movies due to jumping through too many hoops to get them to play right. It's just not cool when you have guests over and they want to go out and rent a movie and you bring it back and it doesn't play.
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Ditto. This is exactly the reason why HD-DVD should've won out. Backwards compatibility FTW.

It's also the reason why DVD ain't going anywhere for a long time, IMO. BlueRay is a novelty format I think, akin to the Beta... And something bigger and better will be along before it ever gains huge traction.
VHS to DVD took what? Like 5 years??? DVD to BlueRay doesn't have near the draw to consumers, so that'll be what??? 10 years??? In 10 years we'll be on to better things.
 
TechieSooner said:
Ditto. This is exactly the reason why HD-DVD should've won out. Backwards compatibility FTW.
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Huh?

IMO, Blu Ray was always the superior format and I'm glad it won. A lot of enthusiasts bought "cheap" stand-alone HD-DVD players or the drvie for the 360, hence there are still more HD-DVD players in the wild.

Once the cost of Blu Ray goes down it will be popular. The average person didn't run out an buy a DVD player until they were $50-60.
 
vengence said:
Ignoring the study which seems flawed, I think digital distribution could very well make this the last physical format war ever.
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I disagree simply because there are far too many of us who want physical media for one, and secondly DD is never going to take off if Dialup and heavy handed bandwidth/usage caps remain in place.

w1retap said:
I stopped buying Blu-ray movies due to jumping through too many hoops to get them to play right. It's just not cool when you have guests over and they want to go out and rent a movie and you bring it back and it doesn't play.
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What on earth are you talking about? I have never once had issue with a blu-ray movie playing right.

ferrisnox said:
How about the fact that many of us bought HD-DVD players early on because there was no working Blu-Ray, HD-DVD beat them to market handily. HD had better quality, more features, more advanced codecs, and better standards as far as networking etc... Its still a crapshoot today with what features a Blu-Ray player has. The compression and codecs has improved....but the price of the media hasn't. I can goto Fry's and buy HD disk for 6 bucks or Blu-Ray for $30. Not to mention we had this format war because Sony was too greedy to adopt a single format.

I wasn't around for VHS vs Betamax, but because of this debacle I will never purchase or support Blu-Ray. EVER!! besides down-loadable content is where its at.
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Pretty much everything you said is just flat out misinformation.
HD-DVD never had better quality, more features or better standards of networking. I will grant you the codecs but that was more of a studio issue then the format. It isn't a crapshoot as I have not seen a blu-ray movie in ages be released that was anything other then top quality. You can't keep holding a few bad early cuts against the format. Furthermore the quality issue never was a format issue, it was a few studios being too cheap to produce a quality master. The copy can never be higher quality then the master, if the master is crap so will be every single copy. Next there are a ton of blu-ray well under $30, including new releases. I can't remember the last time I paid more then $24 for a new release blu-ray. Sure you can keep buying HD for $6, because nothing NEW is coming out on them, it is all old stuff that you could of bought the same in blu-ray for under $19 and not had to repurchase it when your HDDVD player dies and can't be repaired.

Last, now we get to the meat of your problem. You are a blind sony hater...at least we know you are biased now. Guess what genius Sony does NOT own Blu-ray. They own a large stake and are a major pusher of it, but they do not own it. So if you aren't buying blu-ray just because you think it is sony, that means you are being a zealot without a real cause. As for the Digital distribution comment, Reference my comment above about DD and why it has no chance of taking over at this time or anytime in the forseeable future. Honestly I am getting rather tired of the old DD argument, it just has no merits right now. Might it be a contender sometime in the distant future? Sure it might, but a heck of alot of things are going to have to change before that ever happens. Right now you are easily pinning your hopes on something that is at minimum 5 years from having a chance, realistically 10+.

Simply put, if you own a "quality" HDTV (By quality I don't include crap brands like Syntax and other cheap crap), and don't own blu-ray you are seriously selling yourself short. Why spend that kind of money on a nice TV, then watch trash on it? That just doesn't even make sense. If you don't own a quality HDTV, then you don't even need to be in this argument because you couldn't see the difference in a upscaled VHS and blu-ray if you wanted too.
 
Blu-Ray devices are expensive on their own, furthermore the media is also damn expensive. I don't yet care about Blu-Ray as I would rather enjoy the price of piracy and pay levies on my media (Oh, Canada!) and the more affordable ~$120-$150 1TB HDD's.
 
TechieSooner said:
Ditto. This is exactly the reason why HD-DVD should've won out. Backwards compatibility FTW.

It's also the reason why DVD ain't going anywhere for a long time, IMO. BlueRay is a novelty format I think, akin to the Beta... And something bigger and better will be along before it ever gains huge traction.
VHS to DVD took what? Like 5 years??? DVD to BlueRay doesn't have near the draw to consumers, so that'll be what??? 10 years??? In 10 years we'll be on to better things.
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I think the whole problem with Blu-ray catching on is that not only it just needed new players, but new televisions altogether. People with tube televisions won't benefit from the format upgrade. It's easy to upgrade from VHS to DVD because you didn't need a new TV and the quality difference is night and day. But to upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray and not your television would be pointless.
 
Here's the way the consumer sees it. Either HD-DVD or BlueRay, they can care less about to start with. You've got to have a big enough TV to take advantage of it, as well as one that supports 1080p anyway... So you're only looking at a very small percentage of anyone (probably like 1%) that would be interested to start with.

So you create a new format based on technical details (Again- public don't give two shits about the technical details) of what will work for that 1% of the population.

All the other 99% of the population sees is that BlueRay is more expensive, and they have to also buy a new player just to use it. They see HD-DVD, it's cheaper, and even if they don't want to upgrade, it works in the old player they already have.

If it was consumer-choice, HD-DVD would have won out. That's why BlueRay will never kick off in a big way like DVD did. It was studio-choice, not consumer-choice.
 
...

so the study is counting stand alone players only ? I thought these so called "format war studies" ended when the format war ended.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Huh?

IMO, Blu Ray was always the superior format and I'm glad it won. A lot of enthusiasts bought "cheap" stand-alone HD-DVD players or the drvie for the 360, hence there are still more HD-DVD players in the wild.

Once the cost of Blu Ray goes down it will be popular. The average person didn't run out an buy a DVD player until they were $50-60.
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negative ghost rider

HD-DVD was superior right out of the box

PIP
Internet content
ability to use a mouse in the user interface
DVD+HD-DVD on same disk

Blu-Ray still cannot use a mouse on the PC interface and some titles don't even play right out of the box and you have to wait for a player update.......
 
ferrisnox said:
How about the fact that many of us bought HD-DVD players early on because there was no working Blu-Ray, HD-DVD beat them to market handily. HD had better quality, more features, more advanced codecs, and better standards as far as networking etc... Its still a crapshoot today with what features a Blu-Ray player has. The compression and codecs has improved....but the price of the media hasn't. I can goto Fry's and buy HD disk for 6 bucks or Blu-Ray for $30. Not to mention we had this format war because Sony was too greedy to adopt a single format.

I wasn't around for VHS vs Betamax, but because of this debacle I will never purchase or support Blu-Ray. EVER!! besides down-loadable content is where its at.
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You're comparing old HD-DVD titles against newer Blu-Ray releases. Which obviously are $30 in most cases. Older titles on Blu-Ray can be had for $9 to 15$ at any given occasion at Fry's, Target or Walmart.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
PIP
Internet content
ability to use a mouse in the user interface
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Gimmics 99% of people will never use.

DVD+HD-DVD on same disk
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Kinda cool, but also mostly pointless. Why would you play the disk in a regular DVD drive if you have a HD DVD player?

I can think of a few situations where it might be nice, but I rip all my movies to a fileserver anyway.
 
IMHO the people who defend blu-ray are the PS3 owners or the guys that want to defend their $300+ player. How many people are running these are their $600 720p Walmart discount set? You are not reaping the real benefits!!! It is to expensive for the layman to invest the $1000's of dollars required to experience blue-ray to it's fullest. Not to mention neither format is worth $30 a movie(especially considering the $20 you already paid to see it in the theater). HD-DVD was cheaper, the players were cheaper, and even after HD went down people were rushing out to buy their even cheaper player and cheaper movies. My brother bought Planet Earth on HD-DVD for $20 and the add-on 360 player for $40... and it was still cheaper that buying Planet Earth alone on blu-ray. I will buy into blu-ray as soon as the new releases are $20 and cheaper. Then I can justify the hardware costs. The replacement to DVD shouldn't cost more than DVD's did when they were new. We are several years into this now and I get pissed when I still see new releases going for $25-$35 (especially considering the crap coming out of Hollywood right now). I am a little bitter that HD-DVD lost and I will admit I was a fan. As for now I am content with my streaming Netflix for $8.99 a month.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Gimmics 99% of people will never use.


Kinda cool, but also mostly pointless. Why would you play the disk in a regular DVD drive if you have a HD DVD player?

I can think of a few situations where it might be nice, but I rip all my movies to a fileserver anyway.
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oh rly? try watching a Blu-Ray on your PC and having to use the keyboard to navigate cause the UI does not know what a mouse is.

you can take the movie to your friend's house and use it in a regular DVD drive.....lol
 
ferrisnox said:
How about the fact that many of us bought HD-DVD players early on because there was no working Blu-Ray, HD-DVD beat them to market handily. HD had better quality, more features, more advanced codecs, and better standards as far as networking etc...
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HD-DVD did beat blu ray to market, but none of the rest of that is true at all.

ferrisnox said:
I can goto Fry's and buy HD disk for 6 bucks or Blu-Ray for $30.
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Gee, that wouldn't be because HD-DVD discs are being cleared out because the format failed, would it? I agree that blu ray prices are too high, but comparing them to the deals you can get on HD-DVD now is disingenuous.

ferrisnox said:
Not to mention we had this format war because Sony was too greedy to adopt a single format.
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Of for christ's sake- at least sony actually wants blu ray to be a success, unlike Micosoft and HD-DVD! They half-assed all their support for that format because they wanted physical discs to die sooner rather than later so that they could jumpstart digital video distribution through Live. HD-DVD was only supported as long is it took to divide the marketplace.

ferrisnox said:
I wasn't around for VHS vs Betamax, but because of this debacle I will never purchase or support Blu-Ray. EVER!! besides down-loadable content is where its at.
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Yeah, enjoy your crappy bitrates and macroblocking! yeesh.
 
TechieSooner said:
Here's the way the consumer sees it. Either HD-DVD or BlueRay, they can care less about to start with. You've got to have a big enough TV to take advantage of it, as well as one that supports 1080p anyway... So you're only looking at a very small percentage of anyone (probably like 1%) that would be interested to start with.

So you create a new format based on technical details (Again- public don't give two shits about the technical details) of what will work for that 1% of the population.

All the other 99% of the population sees is that BlueRay is more expensive, and they have to also buy a new player just to use it. They see HD-DVD, it's cheaper, and even if they don't want to upgrade, it works in the old player they already have.

If it was consumer-choice, HD-DVD would have won out. That's why BlueRay will never kick off in a big way like DVD did. It was studio-choice, not consumer-choice.
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I agree with most of your post, but Bluray will eventually take off. It is just a matter of time, since there is no other choice for media at the moment (which sucks most greatly).. Aside from digital downloads, there is no other high def content available at all with the death of HD-DVD.

I have no interest in Bluray myself as a PC storage media. [MROS] IMHO, within the next few years flash will be at prices that, while not as low a Bluray rewritable media will be, will be low enough that the speed, convenience, size, durability, and ease of use that it provides over Bluray disks (not needing a slow as hell, still expensive burner, jewel cases), will be more than adequate compensation for many if not the majority of users. [/MROS]
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Gimmics 99% of people will never use.
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Same could be said of many of BlueRay's features it had on top of HD-DVD.
Only argument that held water was that it had more space, which there at the end HD-DVD was even matching it for space on new prototypes.

DeathFromBelow said:
Kinda cool, but also mostly pointless. Why would you play the disk in a regular DVD drive if you have a HD DVD player?
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You miss the point. The point is you don't have to have an HD-DVD player to play your movie in. IE, for the 99% of the population that won't benefit from the high def it is capable of, they aren't forced into buying a new player, unlike BlueRay. Again, HD-DVD was more consumer-oriented. It just lacked the studio backing (or should we say bribing??)
 
GORANKAR said:
I agree with most of your post, but Bluray will eventually take off. It is just a matter of time, since there is no other choice for media at the moment (which sucks most greatly).. Aside from digital downloads, there is no other high def content available at all with the death of HD-DVD.
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I don't disagree. But that's for 1% of the population that has all the hardware that could benefit from it.

The other 99% can care less... It lacks the consumer interest.
The only way you can get more of the 99% interested is by lying to them with such loosely coined terms like "high def" as most don't know 720p and 1080p are different.
 
I do foresee blu-ray prices dropping in the next 2 years though, when flash media starts becoming cheap enough to hold HD content and compete.
 
TechieSooner said:
Same could be said of many of BlueRay's features it had on top of HD-DVD.
Only argument that held water was that it had more space, which there at the end HD-DVD was even matching it for space on new prototypes.
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I read that the prototype 3 layer disks wouldn't have been able to work with 1st gen HD-DVD drives, making it rather pointless.

Besides, if they can add an extra layer to HD-DVD they could probably add an extra layer to Blu Ray disks.

You miss the point. The point is you don't have to have an HD-DVD player to play your movie in.
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No, I get the point, I just don't think it would be particularly useful. If you have a HD-DVD player you're almost certainly going to use it, even if it means bringing the HD-DVD player to your friend's house or whatever.

I could see it with kids movies since they love to be able to take movies with them from the house to the car and whatnot, but otherwise it doesn't seem particularly useful.
 
We can chalk this up for most useless survey of the month right?

What happens because of this survey:

1. Many people are confused
2. Many people argue "Digital Downloads" over a majority of slow ass DSL and Cable lines is going to make Blu-ray obsolete in...umm like hella soon
3. Old HD DVD lovers argue AGAIN why it was so much better AGAIN
4. People complain about costs of Blu-ray players and how they have only dropped like umm 200% since introduced like OMG 3 years ago

This concludes our study
 
I missed one.

5. Half the forum with CONTINUE to spell BLU-RAY wrong by writing one of these variations BLUERAY, BLUE-RAY or HD DVD

good-bye
 
DeathFromBelow said:
No, I get the point, I just don't think it would be particularly useful. If you have a HD-DVD player you're almost certainly going to use it, even if it means bringing the HD-DVD player to your friend's house or whatever.

I could see it with kids movies since they love to be able to take movies with them from the house to the car and whatnot, but otherwise it doesn't seem particularly useful.
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That feature was meant to aide transition and reduce confusion. It allowed people to buy the HD-DVD disks and play them in a regular DVD player. It also prevented "I just rented a movie why won't it play" syndrome. The wife recently rented a Bluray movie by mistake, and we don't have a bluray player aside from a PS3 . I had to dig thru the closet to find it and hook the damn thing up.
 
HD movie formats are a waste for most users currently. On a typical 42" panel, at normal viewing distances, the resolution benefits of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray over up-sampled DVD are mostly lost. They do look better played back-to-back, but otherwise the difference is much harder to see. They do become more compelling at 65" and up, but that is a minority of HD displays in an already relatively small HD-display market.

My issues with Blu-Ray are down to value/price, applicability to certain movies, and the preview-first-overload the discs are infested with.

Unless it is an action packed monster of a film, is heavy with special effects, or something that is staggeringly well photographed and in a beautiful location, then the image quality benefits of Blu-Ray are really just not that compelling.

Sure, Blue Planet is phenomenal on Blu-Ray, and Iron Man and Dark Knight both benefit as well, but something like Gran Torino loses precisely nothing being on DVD unless you are playing it on a monster display (80" or so, though you start to see the differences at about 65" or so).

At ~$25-30 a shot, not only do I want to be sure I am going to watch the movie many times, I also want the film to benefit from the extra resolution and color fidelity. For many it is just not a big enough difference to be worth it.

Though at $20 a shot I would probably switch all my moving buying to Blu-Ray just for consistency. As it is, for the foreseeable future, it will be a mix of DVD purchases for movies that do not really benefit from the visual punch and the odd Blu-Ray for the blockbusters.

My biggest gripe with Blu-Ray at the moment is the constant attempts they make to force me to watch the fucking previews before the movie. Put the damn things on a menu option and let me select them if I want to watch them. It is seriously pissing me off.

Especially the Blu-Ray trailer! I am watching the goddamn movie ON Blu-Ray ... I do not need to be sold on the format ... just stop being cocks about it with the preview shit and get your prices in order!

Why disable the bloody menu button? Think I am not smart enough to hit next-track? You disable that option though and I will stop buying for good. If you are not making enough on your bloody discs at $30/pop that you need to force-feed me advertising then I would suggest you re-think your entire business model.

And as for Disney, they can fuck off too, no more Disney Blu-Rays for me ... I do not need to see the Disney logo 8 times before the bloody film starts.
 
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