HD DVD defies death as Wal-Mart sells-out of Toshiba’s HD-A3
Filed under: Electronics, High Definition | By: Daniel
Posted on: February 8, 2008 | 37 Comments
It has become widely known that Sony Blu-ray is winning the high definition war, 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.
The HD-A3 has now been handed to consumer in the masses, this can only help HD DVD, but by how much as Blu-ray keeps outselling its competitor.
VideoScan reports that during the seven days between Jan 7 and Jan 14, Sony Blu-ray has closed the gap by 7% of total discs sold since inception with HD DVD. It looks like the two formats could be at disc sales parity within weeks if this trend continues.
Source: blorge
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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.