An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
With Christmas fast approaching, movie studios, other HD contentproviders, and consumer electronics manufacturers are all focused onthe performance of HD DVD and Blu-ray. As we've previously discussed,total sales of both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies since both standardslaunched in 2006 are only a tiny fraction of DVD sales. Samsung ishoping to tilt the scales in favor of Blu-ray; as of right now,Samsung's BD-P1400 Blu-ray player is selling for $279 on Amazon, down from a $499 MSRP.
That's not so much a discount as it is a steal, and it drops theBD-P1400 squarely within the price range for an HD DVD box. UnlessSamsung is sitting on a mammoth heap of these things that it wants tomove, I'd be surprised if the units stay in stock anywhere very long.If you've been waiting for a Blu-ray player, this definitely looks likeone deal to jump on.
Earlier this year, Forrester Research predictedthat the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray would continue until atleast 2009. Even then, we observed that Forrester's time frame seemed abit optimistic, and current trends today have only reinforced thatopinion. Up until now, Warner Brothers has backed both formats andreleased titles on each format, but that may be about to change. The New York Timesreportsthat Warner will choose which format to back based on which sells moremovies through the Christmas season. If that's true, the studio isalmost certainly headed for Blu-ray land—Toshiba may have sold morestandalone HD players, but Blu-ray continues to dominate total discsales. Losing WB would be a significant loss for HD DVD.
Blu-ray's victory is by no means a foregone conclusion. Microsoft hasrepeatedly demonstrated itself to be a powerful competitor—the entireXbox franchise, after all, was built from the ground up despitewidespread predictions of failure and a weak start against thePlayStation 2. Microsoft has the financial wherewithal to push adoptionof HD DVD more aggressively then it has done thus far—creating ahigher-end Xbox 360 with an included HD DVD player would be one obviousplace to start—but what, exactly, Redmond will do to bolster thefortunes of HD DVD versus Blu-ray is still unclear.
Consumers still reluctant to choose sides One thing that everyone engaged in these format wars understands,however, is that consumers heartily dislike such market struggles.Faced with confusion and uncertainty, the vast majority of customerswill choose to sit on the sidelines. DVDs, after all, still look prettygood, and a DVD player or television with a built-in upscaler ofreasonable quality makes them look that much better. In the eyes of anHD enthusiast, such substitutions are a poor, poor substitute, but theaverage buyer is more interested in saving money and staying on the"right" side of a format war than they are in investing in a technologythat might prove useless a few years down the road.
Combo players, of course, could solve these problems, but the market isstill waiting for an HD DVD+Blu-ray player that's cheaper than the costof buying each unit separately. LG has just releasedits second-generation dual player (the BH 2000), but at $999, it's nota very compelling value. Consumers can buy a decent HD DVD player and adecent Blu-ray player for less then a grand, while anyone interested ingaming and HD content could buy an Xbox 360, its HD DVD drive, and a40GB PlayStation 3 for close to the same price. The value propositionof a combo player may rise in the near future; Samsung is preparing tolaunch the BDP-UP5000 dual-format player for $799. Right now, however,the economics of a dual device don't make much sense.
As of right now HD-DVD is the better choice but IMO, it is relatively old technology compared to Blu-Ray even though they came out at about the same time. Much like DVD, Blu-Ray is highly overpriced for its manufactured value when it first came out but even now I'm noticing that Blu-Ray burners have dropped nearly $300. They're still too expensive for me to attempt to get one but in a few years, they'll be almost as cheap as DVD yet their storage is so much greater than HD-DVD. I personally dislike the names of both products but at least Blu-Ray is more original. So in the long run, I would find it almost stupid to go for HD-DVD since it will not be able to compete. Blue lasers are significantly more effective than the red, which CD, DVD, and HD-DVD use.