HD DVD defies death as Wal-Mart sells-out of Toshiba’s HD-A3

HD DVD can sell as many units as they want, what you fail to mention is that there are hardly any studios left that are backing HD DVD which means that there aren’t going to be as many movies to buy in the format so you basically have a dvd player and thats it. Toshiba could sell 1 or 1 million units and it wouldn’t change the fact that they only have limited studios backing them and I’m sure that the people who are buying these units probably have no idea what the situation with HD DVD and Blu ray is at the moment

Very good point…S Berry

What is most interesting to me is the sales info. If Blu Ray is the all conquering format, why have consumers bought more HD DVDs? We all know Blu Ray has been playing catch up from a technical point of view (PiP functionality etc) but with all those PS3s out there, is no one buying the movies? Seems to make no sense…

And as long as BD is priced above 149.00, and the profile still below 2.0, your average consumer is not going to show much interest in BD. By Xmas, if HD -DVD is still alive and prices are $99.00, which pricepoint do u think is attractive to the masses(ignoring obvious studio support?) Anyways both formats are doomed from day 1. Toshiba is rumoured to have a secret weapon called Super upconversion in the works, and may change the way we think about normal upconversion. The technique has been used in astronomy, and is very interesting:

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=38889#post679677

Read your “source” again by Matt Jansen at BLORGE.com:

“Searching for the HD-A3 on Walmart.com (not an affiliate link) tonight I saw “OUT OF STOCK” in the upper right.” That’s your source – some guy checking online stock?!?

And that last paragraph about gap closing is from a highdefdigest.com article from THURSDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2007 !!!

HD-DVD at the moment actually has more titles actually released on disk.

The equivalent model in the UK is currently sold out as well since the price drop. If the sale of the players continues to sell well then the studios will just switch camp… Again! It’s like playing musical chairs.

to s berry,
although you are correct that there are more studios releasing for blu-ray-you fail to mention that the two that release on hd-dvd are very large studios. universal and paramount account for 43% of the total amount of content available. so the amount of movies available to each format is not that one-sided. plus we all know how fast studios can flip-flop on which format they will release on. some say content is king-some say price is king. we shall see.

True Berry, but HD-DVD can be used to play regular DVDs so with a price cut a lot of people will not see it as a waste if HD-DVD loses, and it’s upconversion is amazing. Now that Universal and paramount are coming up with a lot of Dual format DVDs, HD-DVD may actually start outselling Blu-Ray (even though not all sales may be for use with an HD-DVD player. Eventually if there are more players and people are buying movies, Studios are going to shift. They always follow the money

Studios will go where the money is – if the consumers have and are buying hd dvd players – the studios will want thier products in the consumers hands and they will start to release on the hd dvd format. If people have the players and the studios realize they are not selling the blu-ray to the people that have hd dvd – they will pay attention.

To S Berry

Uhh…if Toshiba could sell 1 million that would KILL Blu-ray on the spot. Because even thought Blu-ray is hugging the movie studios. Eventually they’ll be paying attention to HD DVD more.

You know why Blu-ray is selling? One reason and One reason only!

PS3 Fanboys. Since their ludicrous console isn’t offering a large library of video games what else is there to be done? Yeah, watch Blu-ray movies. They’re the factor in this war. The average consumer at this time doesn’t care about Blu-ray or HDDVD.

“If you build it they will come”

7% ?

What happens when Toshiba sell 100 million HD DVD players? Do think the studios will care then. I bet they will.

And what if Paramont and Universal sell there HD DVDs for the same price as DVDs? What does the consumer have to loose? Nothing. Price might matter after all.

I don’t see all the above happening but just a thought.

The big reason I think the HD DVD system will prevail is that HD DVD disks are produced on the zillions of existing standard dvd making machines–with a $37,000 upgrade. Blu-ray disks must be made on not yet existing new machines that cost $1.2 million apiece.
Another big reason is that basic HD DVD players are currently priced the same as some upcovert standard dvd players. This will improve the picture quality of peoples’ existing standard dvd collections.
A third reason to go HD DVD is that Blu-ray disks have their data nearer the surface so that Blu-ray disks are more easily ruined.

As an afterthought, I think the news of Warner dropping HD DVD is really causing the suicide of Blu-ray. The decision forced Toshiba into a price war, which all of a sudden has brought the price of an HD DVD machine into the price range of the masses of buyers. Even if HD DVD were to fail, the machines still are upconvert standard dvd players. You just can’t lose on a decision to buy and HD DVD machine.

The way I’ve been looking at it ever since the Warner move to BluRay only, is that if there isn’t significant sales jump in BluRay hardware sales/movie sales, and I’m not talking about the one-sided #s going around these past few weeks because it’s all still relative and right now High Def movie discs aren’t that big in the market yet. I would tend to believe that a significant sales jump would mean a significant drop in DVD sales, accompanied by a rise in BluRay sales. Anything less would have to be deemed a failure in the first half of the years, based on the fact that more studios are on the BluRay side and millions of PS3s have been sold. Don’t be fooled by the studio support at this point. Neither HD DVD or standard DVD will go away enough for the studio support to matter right now.

If any HD player can get to the magic $99 pricepoint again, it will sell VERY well.

We’ve seen how attractive this pricepoint is, when it moved 90,000 units* in one weekend:

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6498141.html?nid=3511

I have both formats and I know exactly what I am getting into when i bought by hd-dvd player… I love it. Right now i am getting deals on movies all over the place…

i think that the consumer is starting to have its say!
so far its been the moviebuff against the gamers
but now its shifting to the masses,
dont forget ps3 is the only full spec bluplayer and thats only if its upgraded on the net.yet not everyone has access to the net so out the box hd dvd is your best choice,full spec all compatible with awesome upscaling for the price.

alot of you hd-dvd fan boys are living in a fantasy woorld even if you were to sell ?00,000, it will not look good next to the ?,000,000 ps3 sold this year all toshiba is doing is positioning them self to get a big go away cheque from sony with a (tiny) peice of royalty pie, and once toshiba gets that money in there hand the will drop all suppurt like a bad habit, good luck with that.

http://www.twice.com/article/CA6530692.html

There are a lot of movie people who are not gamers…
Check out Toshiba hd-dvd players on amazon and where they rank in bestsellers.

Personally I am looking forward to them both surviving (I have a ps3 too) but right now I am enjoying the great deals I can find on hd-dvd.

Sorry, I disagree with a few comments here…


“but someone forgot to tell HD DVD this as it defies the slow death of the format and starts selling out of the Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player on Wal-Mart.”

It seems Wal mart is fazing out the last of these HD DVD players. Consider how few units they are selling. Even with the price drop their player market share keeps falling, currently at 18 percent. To say HD DVD is putting up a fight based on a few companies not maintaining stock is a moot point.
“If Blu Ray is the all conquering format, why have consumers bought more HD DVDs?”
They haven’t. Blu ray passed HD DVD disc sales In early 2007, outselling it every single week of the year. In fact Blu Ray averaged more than 200% more sales over it’s rival.

“You know why Blu-ray is selling? PS3 Fanboys. Since their ludicrous console isn’t offering a large library of video games what else is there to be done? Yeah, watch Blu-ray movies.”

The PS3 is also the best and most affordable Blu ray player out there so many are buying one just for Blu Ray. But your right it is accounting for a lot of the disc sales.

HD DVD is better than blu-ray. Blu-ray is selling more because of the PS3. 97% of all blu-ray sales are because of the PS3. So if there was a buit-in hd dvd player in the 360, I think we all know who would win. Plus, HD DVD has no region code.
I just hope HD DVD wins.

HD DVD fanboy Matt Jansen is flooding out “news” – read his recent article on how HD DVD is beating Blu Ray…. in Google searches (using faulty mis-spelt keywords).

Rehashing of his work by sites like this is even worse, particularly when the briefest of investigation would show that he’s quoted a year old article – Blu Ray has been ahead in total movie sales since inception for at least 8 months, and by a lot more than 7%.

HD DVD is dead and should just go away. There’s no bigger evidence for that than it’s remaining followers having to use lies and inventions to mimic signs of life for it’s corpse.

The Blu-ray side forget, the PS3 market is not the wider (and far larger) a/v mass-market.

Movie sales are not the prime consideration & so the current early studio moves matter little in the longer term.
‘Regular’ SD DVD was always going to upscaled and be a massive part of the market for a very long time to come.

Getting the HD DVD hardware out so as to tap into later is the real prize – and thanks to Twin discs and to a lesser degree combo discs only HD DVD can enable the move to high def, leaving no-one behind.

Blu-ray can never do this and nor can they compete with HD DVD on price and certainly not on features
(their only certain claimed profile 2.0 player is the over-priced PS3 game console!).

Blu-ray is now caught on the double-edge of it’s game console strategy and that game console niche is meaningless to the genuine a/v mass-market.

The problem with HD DVD is that there is still only one major manufacturer of HD DVD players and that is Toshiba. No, Venturer does not count since they are repackaged/redesigned Toshiba players If you take a look inside these players, you will see that they are exactly the same.

The rest are just combo players from LG which isn’t really approved by the DVD Forum since it lacks a second hardware which is required for PIP features. There’s also the Samsung, but I haven’t heard much about it and it’s still quite pricey.

Now, Blu-ray Disc, you are given far more choices. You can pick from Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sharp, Samsung, LG and more. There are now more titles available on the Blu-ray Disc format, and with more studio support. Not only to mention that Blu-ray software sales are still outselling HD DVD every week since January 2007… not 2008… 2007.

Let it go, Toshiba is not going anywhere. Not when they are still losing millions and millions of dollars. The shareholders aren’t probably too happy right now.

We all know HD DVD will not survive the format war. Many analysts and experts are even saying the same thing. With many Blu-ray releases coming up this month and the next few months, it’s going to make a big difference compared to the last few months.

It’s not about the fanboys, it’s about the consumers. As far I am concerned, they picked Blu-ray Disc, not HD DVD. The numbers are all there for you to look at and they will tell you which format is winning.

If you invested in HD DVD, that’s your choice. You made the decision to take the risk. That’s the thing about being an early adapter, you go in knowing it may either thrive with wild success or fail miserably.

That’s life.

Blu-ray outsold HD DVD every week in 2007 by at least 2:1. Since Warner’s announcement, the gap has only increased. All this discounting of HD DVD players and discs is little more than a fire sale.

Furthermore, it’s only a matter of time before Paramount and Universal go Blu. No way will they maintain a minority position in the high-def market. There’s simply no money in it.

WTF??? Blu-ray passed up the sales of HD DVD so long ago it isn’t funny. The A3 is “selling out” because retailers like Walmart are blowing them out to unload stock before dropping it.

This must rank with the all time great misleading articles throughout history.

Goreful

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The great thing about the PS3 is that by Sony committing those buyers to Blu-ray, they also enlist them as internet promoters. Gamers are often extremely attached to their console of choice and will dump on competitors as often as possible.

Warner’s defection is only one part of the plan. The rest of it relies on consumer ‘experts’ to scare potential buyers away from HD-DVD. Even though HD-DVD has been getting the shaft from studios, if they manage to get enough players into homes, then the studios will have to take notice. Sony will go to any length to prevent this from happening, and their followers cover for them quite well, all without costing anything to Sony.

To Banjo:

You can say the exact same thing with BD. In fact the ONLY BD 2.0 profile ready player worth getting now is the PS3. All the others are not upgradeable. While HD-DVD has been ready since day1.

“The problem with HD DVD is that there is still only one major manufacturer of HD DVD players and that is Toshiba. No, Venturer does not coun”

You Blu-Ray fanboys are ridiculous. You guys keep saying “HD-DVD is dead, it’s a corpse, give it up…” blah blah blah.

Last time I checked, HD-DVD players are selling really well. HD-DVD movies are selling really well. Yes, Blu-Ray is doing more, but DVD is still outpacing both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD combined, so what does that tell you?

I’ll tell you what it tells you, Blu-Ray lovers… it says that the high-def format won’t hit maturity for another 2-3 years, at best. By that time, ALL computer drives will support read-only access of both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and there will be several HYBRID players on the market.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are going nowhere, they’ll both be around forever. What surprises me is the “win-lose” mentality that Blu-Ray fanboys have. Take a step back, take a deep breath, and you’ll realize that you’re wrong, and that someday you’ll be buying HD-DVDs…perhaps even Warner Bros HD-DVDs… when they switch back to the format that costs the least to produce.

Duncan, PAY ATTENTION: Consumers have bought more Blu-ray players and titles than HD-DVD. Who knows how you got that backwards with all the news lately.

HD-DVD has pushed back up to 1 sale for every 3 Blu-ray sales in the last week through steep discounting. The discounting is having an effect on Toshiba though as reported by Reuters.

Toshiba is maintaining some sales by slashing prices but at a cost.

“Toshiba, whose products range from washing machines to nuclear power plants, is also fighting losses in its HD DVD player business, he (Executive Vice President Fumio Muraoka) said, without detailing the size of the loss.” Reuters Jan 29, 2008

CORRECTIONS TO MISINFORMATION:

Blu-ray is selling more than HD-DVD not the reverse. Duh!

Blu-ray is more damage resistant due to TDK’s scratch resistant coating. HD-DVD is the same as DVD no protective coating. Check CNET news’ test of the coating which resisted a screwdriver. Check Netflix info that standard DVD/HD-DVDs only last 12 rentals before dying due to scratch damage.

Lastly, Toshiba is fighting losses due to HD-DVD.

Toshiba is maintaining some sales by slashing prices but at a cost.

“Toshiba, whose products range from washing machines to nuclear power plants, is also fighting losses in its HD DVD player business, he (Executive Vice President Fumio Muraoka) said, without detailing the size of the loss.” Reuters Jan 29, 2008

The magic number is still $100 or less. Neither HD DVD or Blue Ray will ever have the penetration that DVD players do until the price equation works. Many family house holds have several TVs around the house all with DVD players hooked up to them. Alot of these tvs are being replaced with HDTVs, but that doesn’t mean the DVD players will be replaced soon.

Take this example. If I buy a new 26″ HDTV for the kitchen at about $600 I am not going to by a $300 dollar blueray player to go with it. The cost ratio to that of the tv is too high.

Maybe I will buy that player for the 50″ tv in the family room, but the other rooms will have to wait.

And what do I do will those disks if they want to be played on the other TVs? I can just see this scenario happening with the wife, “sorry honey we can’t watch that holiday movie in the kitchen while we are making cookies with the kids because it only works in the family room.”

For families price really does really matter.

It still pains me to see so much analysis going on… Relax, people.

In 12-24 months, there will be dual-drives and hybrid players out there, and in about 36 months, those players will be at the magic price point for people to afford.

Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD survive, along with DVD. Win, win, win. For everyone… even for Sony.

A. Moore

Thanks for clarifying. I have both formats so I hope they both stick around for a long time. Shame the shoddier format is winning the race though. Sony seemed to rush Blu Ray out the gates to keep up with the superior format (not in terms of disc capacity granted, but it’s not the size, it’s what you do with it!)

HD DVD is my best friend.