HD DVD Photos from CEDIA EXPO 2007
by Pravin on September 7th, 2007 in news.
UPDATE: Second Day pics of the HD DVD booth
The first day of the CEDIA EXPO show gave journalists plenty of opportunities to follow-up with the many announcements made the day before. Here’s a collection of links to some HD DVD items of interest so that you can check out pictures and first-hand reports for yourself.
- Photo of the Star Trek Phaser remote you get when purchasing an HD DVD player and the Star Trek box set
- EngadgetHD’s quality time with the Integra DHS-8.8
- Gizmodo’s shots of the LG BH200 Combo player
- Toshiba third-generation HD DVD player lineup at EngadgetHD
Finally, there was some drama between the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps when Toshiba refuted claims made by Sony VP Chris Fawcett that standalone Blu-ray players had started to outsell HD DVD players in August. Toshiba’s response was that July NPD data shows that Toshiba has a 55% year-to-date market share of standalone high-defintion players, followed by all Blu-ray companies at 42%, with the remaining 3% held by dual-format players. Toshiba’s A2 ranked as high as #1 on Amazon in August [with no Blu-ray player breaking into the top 100 -ed].
The closest we can get to real-time data are the various sites hooked up to Amazon.com’s servers, like this one from HighDefDigest.com or at HDDVDStats.com. In any short time-period, especially by picking your data set carefully, it’s possible to demonstrate how either Blu-ray or HD DVD are outdoing each other. That’s why I usually refrain from quoting numbers touted by either side. We end up with much more meaningful numbers when the time period is pretty large, like several months or a year-to-date. This tends to discount any short-term anomalies like rebates or freebies. This is not some fuzzy fanboy math logic, it’s the truth about statistics: Large samples are more useful than small ones.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
The AR HD player was in the top 100 for something like two days, during the buy a player get 8 free movies gigs. Oh how quickly that fades. That last time I looked, a couple of days ago, the top selling movie was once again 300 and once again on BR. When you reported the AR was ranked second, within the next 24 hours, it had dropped to around 30, meaning there was a small influx of buying at that particular moment which ended shortly thereafter.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Yes, but where’s the closest Blu-ray player on the list even today?
September 7th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
You know, I have yet to see a BR player on that list. I don’t look very often, but I’d be willing to bet that they haven’t made it on there yet. However, as you hinted in your article above, Toshiba claims to have 55% of the market in standalone players, and 42% of STANDALONE players are BR. The PS3 can really inflate those numbers to the BR camps advantage.
I’ll give you some stats I found…
As of September 2, HD got the closest they have in several months in coming close to selling as many movies as BR, 56% BR to 44% HD.
Year-to-Date: BR 66%, HD 34%
Since Inception: BR 61%, HD 39%.
So, if you look at those last numbers, the stats you said you like to look at, it looks like BR has the lead, but it’s looked like that for awhile. I was a little disappointed to see the BR numbers for the last week, guess I’m going to have to go out and spend my latest paycheck on BRs…rent can wait…haha
September 7th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
It’s nice to have a good sales rank, but longevity on the charts is important too. In the months ahead we’ll finally have a lot of players for both formats duking it out, and there’s even competition amongst those dual-format players. The end result should be numbers that can be verified in multiple ways and we’ll have a much more realistic idea of how the formats are doing.
I’m sure that all these product announcements will have an impact on sales numbers for everybody. Some people might delay a purchase waiting for the old model to drop in price, or they might wait for the new one to come out. While they wait, nobody sells nuthin’
September 8th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Bret, you really need to stop counting the PS3 as a blu ray player.
yes, it is one, and yes, some people use it, but that’s still a really small portion of people.
there’s about what? 1.5 million people who have a playstation 3. and out of those people who have an HDTV? an even smaller number.
most people that have them don’t even have HDTV’s.
just because it has it doesn’t mean it’s being used.
i might as well count all xbox 360’s as HD DVD players because they can. not out of the box, but they can if people wanted them to.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Bret uses his PS3 for movies, so he’s in that minority. But it appears to be a pretty vocal and active minority. I’m not sure it’s big enough to turn the tide in the overall format war, but it’s certainly good enough to generate important sales blips now and then.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Okay, I’m sorry but Presto, you’re not making any sense to me. I am a PS3 BR user, it looks better than standard DVDs even on my very old 51″ WS 480p (1080i) TV. You cannot include Xbox 360s as a player because they DO NOT HAVE A HD DRIVE. They have an add-on, which you can easily track the sales for that if you want to. I’ve heard Toshiba and the HD camp claim the HD add-on for the Xbox as counting towards totals for HD players, saying that because games for the Xbox are not on HD, then apparently the only reason they’d buy the add-on is to watch movies. Sure, they can purchase the add on for nearly $200 if they want to, but PS3 users do not have to make any extra purchases.
If HD has such a big lead in standalone players, tell me why they have been consistently outsold by BR movie titles for about 8 months now? I mean, it’s not even close, I posted the numbers above. Since Inception, BR has a 61 to 39 percent lead. This year BR has a 66-34 percent lead. How does HD dispute this? By claiming that HD is generating more attention on google? You want to know who is leading the little war? Look at who is consistently selling MORE MOVIES. We obviously cannot tell who has more players, because Sony and BR counts the PS3 and Toshiba will continually ignore it to give the people who have spent money on an HD player some hope, and at the same time hope that people do little research, go on the HD name (like HD quality, HDTV, etc) and adopt their product, despite many opinions that HD is inferior to BR, that BR has better specs and is ultimately able to deliver a better movie viewing experience.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I think that studio exclusivity has probably worked in Blu-ray’s favor in those sales numbers because there have been more Blu-ray movies to select from. In recent trips to Fry’s Electronics and Target, I saw that the Blu-ray selection is about 1/3 larger.
Paramount’s new exclusivity, like it or not, is likely to bring in some big sales numbers from Transformers, and Shrek in the months ahead. Universal’s Bourne Ultimatum is still doing well at the box office and will also bring those numbers up.
Will it be enough to catch up? How will Blu-ray movie sales be affected by the fact that a few of this year’s biggest movies are exclusive to HD DVD?
We can only speculate.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I agree, Paramount will def help out HD, which is why Toshiba was willing to give them $150 million to be exclusive. However, Spiderman 3 did very well also, and that will be solely BR. I know that’s no Transformers, but it’s still a very popular movie, one that I plan on picking up. The Bourne movies, although I saw the latest in the theatre, have great story lines, but horrible camera work. There would be no way I would buy it, I had to close my eyes several times during the movie to stop myself from throwing up (dizzy). Myself, as well as many many others that I’ve seen on bluray.com are completely boycotting Paramount regardless. Their move was seen as anti-consumer because of the timing. I have not seen Transformers, and will not spend another penny on Paramount releases already out, or in the theater. I just bought Four Brothers because it’s one of my favorite movies, under Paramount, used to avoid giving them any more money.
We’ll see what happens when Transformers is out. I saw it was in the top 10 for movies as a preorder, which is pretty impressive. It was actually a movie I planned on buying on BR, so I wonder if it’ll hit Paramount how much they are actually losing in sales by making the move they made. However, I know lots of people that are going out to buy several BR movies here soon to counteract Transformers slightly.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
How do you boycott Paramount when Paramount has actually boycotted you?
edit:
And would it matter? Even combined, HD DVD and Blu-ray customers together make no important dent to any of the studios. 5.1 million units of 300 sold in the same time period that only a couple hundred thousand sold on HD formats. Transformers is an even bigger movie.
September 10th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Really, Paramount doesn’t want people to go to see their movies in the theaters? I thought they’d want their movies to do well in the box office. Just kind of sad that despite their movies selling more on BR than HD, that they would go to HD.