So This is What Winning Feels Like?
by Pravin on May 3rd, 2008 in news.
There’s a saying that the leader in any race has a big target on his back. Any new leader to emerge inherits that target and, in some kinds of races, even the observers can take their shots.
This is certainly the case with Blu-ray right now where the last couple of weeks have seen two separate reports about temporary and/or prolonged gloom.
The first shot at the new leader was from research firm, ABI, who said that demand for Blu-ray players will be low until those players hit the $200 mark. This is common knowledge if you’ve been following the format war, and as an HD DVD owner, you may already fall into this customer profile. The prospect of starting over or transitioning to the other format is made less palatable when you consider how much more expensive it’s going to be to get the player in the first place. If Blu-ray players were far less expensive, then more of us in the HD DVD crowd would gone purple and sooner.
Getting back to the ABI report, they think it’s not going to be until sometime in 2009 that Blu-ray really picks up steam and wider adoption.
The more recent shot at Blu-ray comes from NPD research numbers and a story that’s picked up a lot of momentum all over the web, suggesting that Sony’s victory lap for winning the format war is a short one. Recent sales tracking data from the NPD group showed a significant drop in standalone Blu-ray player sales in the last few months, with a big 40% dip in February.
If the format war was still going strong, we’d expect Team Blu to come back and point to strong PS3 sales and say that overall adoption of machines with Blu-ray drives in them is still very healthy — and they’d be right. This would be followed by the HD DVD camp sticking to their guns about standalone player sales being a better indicator of high-def movie adoption, and they’d also be right. Team Blu would also come back (and they have) to point out that sales of all kinds of things are usually low following all the big shopping that happens at Christmas time.
Another explanation given for the weakness in Blu-ray player sales is that there’s a supply problem, and that the small numbers are actually a reflection of stores not having enough in stock, and not so much that people aren’t interested. This could be true. It’s the same explanation given for why Xbox 360 sales were a little soft in those last few months too.
And if I recall, there were also a lot of headlines in March about a general increase in the pricing on Blu-ray players. While the MSRP did not change, discounts and deals were rare. Either way, it wasn’t the sort of news that drives customers to stores.
Many HD DVD owners find a good reason to smirk at these recent developments because it’s a relief to finally hear some bad news that’s not about their own format. Instead of taking pot-shots at HD DVD, reporters and analysts now focus all of their scrutiny and nastiness on the new target bearer.
- Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed at the New York Times
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
That’s what I thought. I don’t agree with $200 Blu-Ray players later this year though. Oh sure there will be a few older Blu-Ray players that they will want to clear out by the end of the year, but Sony already announced its new players for this year with last years pricing which is $399, $599, and $1,299 on Sony’s site today. It would take some serious discounts to bring $200 Blu-Ray players to the masses.
The only way I would go Blu-Ray is when the technology matures with a full feature set which is equal to first generation HD DVD. The $200 price point must be met. Finally, Blu-Ray has to replace DVD as the consumer standard. The expensive HD discs must come down in price too. I am tired of paying a premium for HD technology.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:12 am
I hope that everybody gets behind VMD now.
Just the fact that VMD discs cost a third of Blue-ray discs - AND they’re region-free - is proof that there will be a market for the format.
You then have to take into consideration that existing DVD-RW drives on PCs may be able to write to blank VMD discs via a free firmware upgrade… It seems like Blu-ray could easily become a white elephant of “MiniDisc” proportions for Sony.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:50 am
The fact that VMD is not region coded is a major reason why it probably will not be supported and therefore have no market. Although consumer friendly, HD-DVD’s lack of region coding was one reason why many studios did not want to support the format and it will be the same for VMD. Plus 99% of consumers aren’t as educated on these “format wars” as enthusiasts and no studio/manufacturer of hardware is going to want to take the risk of confusing consumers even more than they already are/were with the blu-ray/HD-DVD debacle. Blu-ray costs will go down eventually. Sony is not stupid, they know that to gain mass market penetration, they’re going to need to do something about the costs.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I certainly hope that everyone will NOT get behind VMD.
We have just gone through one format war which, as far as I’m concerned, hurt us consumers more than it hurt the companies. I would certainly not like to see another war just after this one. I think that would effectively just kill off ANY optical HD format. The consumers would be thoroughly feed up and so would probably the studios be.
Also, as Eric J says, the studios want region coding so they are not going to jump on another format that doesn’t have it. Also, for 99.99% of the consumers, region coding is not an issue.
Myself, I have less than 10 DVD’s out of many hundreds that have the “wrong” region code.
As for the article itself. The data comes from the 1st quarter when sales are traditionally weak. The world economy, and most importantly the US one, is going down. Fuel prices, food prices etc are going up. That sales of the latest technology gadget is not stellar is hardly surprising.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:50 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMD
read the wikipedia article VMD is a complete failure it is not even capable of competition with blu and HD-DVD . !
2008 Xmas will be big for HD TV and blu-ray will make a significant impact along with it over Xmas - one of those 52 inch motion-flow LCD’s would be nice.
My collection 30 DVD;s ,17 blu-ray’s and more soon.
I now consider buying natural history stuff like galapagos and planet-earth and classics like 2001 are rebourn.
With 1080p HD you can finally get something very close if not equal to the real quality of the cinema experience; rather than an image that is just considered “acceptable”.
FYI DVD widescreen presentations result in a horizontal resolution of around 300 lines - 1080p is allready widescreen so you get around 900 lines on 2.3:1 aspect ratio material thus giving almost 10 times the resolution of DVD. !
If more people realise the advantages of HD hopefully it will be mainstream and cost no more than DVD pretty soon.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I have a PS3 Blu ray player but only buy Blu ray movies when they are at a bargin. I will never buy any new Blu - Ray movies until they are at least $14.99. I will continue to stock pile all the great deals on HD DVD. You can lose with those purchases of movies that are combo format costing between $7.00 & $12.00.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I have a large Blu-Ray collection (PS3-based - not a gamer - I just bought it to play Blu-Rays), but I haven’t bought much recently. The sales they keep (re-)running at Amazon.com and a few other places are for the same titles they’ve had on sale for the past year or longer.
I think the key is still content. Blu-Ray does have some good content, but not enough, and hardly any recently. That’s what will push sales - the release of high-profile movies (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Bourne, The Matrix, etc.). Christmas should see some break in the price of the players (the PS3 is still still the best Blu-Ray player by far for value-for-your-money), but for really wide-spread adoption, they have to make the fan-favorite movies available. So sometime in 2009 sounds realistic.
Content is king.