Xbox Still King; Blu-ray Stillborn?

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/29/enderle_on_christmas_trends/' target='_blank'>http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/29/enderle_on_christmas_trends/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"As we mentioned last week, the Xbox 360 is the most mature of the new generation of gaming platforms. This gives it a massive advantage in terms of available games and accessories. It also gave it a massive advantage in terms of available units. Early numbers suggest that even though both the Nintendo and the PlayStation 3 could have outsold it, manufacturing limitations kept their true potential from being reached. In addition, parents who can't get either of the constrained systems are now apparently shifting their buying behavior to the system they can buy, the Xbox 360 - rather than giving their kids an IOU or paying excessively high Ebay prices... With the Xbox 360 moving so strongly into the market and the top accessory this year being the $200 HD-DVD drive the battle may be over by year end. There is every chance that there may be as many as ten times more HD DVD players than Blu-ray players in the market by the end of the year - even if you don't factor in that HP, the current leader in PC sales, started shipping desktop computers with a $100 HD DVD option. This, coupled with a much lower overall cost for the stand alone players as well as better support for legacy TVs and dual mode disks, suggests that HD-DVD is now the format to beat."</i><br /><br />This is a great editorial by Rob Enderle, and I think his points are spot-on. It's probably a little too early to declare Blu-ray dead, but certainly HD-DVD is well on its way to the top of the hill. All I can say is at least I <i>saw</i> betamax before it went extinct. :wink:

[Felix Torres]

Didn't know about the HP $100 deal.
Sure does't sound like the HD-DVD vendors are have trouble getting blue laser components.

Anyway, I find it somewhat bizarre that the 360 is pushing HD-DVD, almost without hyping it, while BD is sinking PS3 *because* of all the hype. Runs counter to all we've seen in the consumer electronic business this century... ;-)

[saru7755]

if i'm not mistaken, technically BD is better than HD-DVD &amp; honestly i wanted BD to take the lead but for some reason HD-DVD seems to be doing a good job in that sense.. :evil:

[Doug Johnson]

if i'm not mistaken, technically BD is better than HD-DVD &amp; honestly i wanted BD to take the lead but for some reason HD-DVD seems to be doing a good job in that sense.. :evil:
Blu-ray certainly does seem to support higher storage capacities, and that would be really nice. But that doesn't seem to matter much if you can't get products that support it onto the market.

Personally from a capacity standpoint I would have liked Blu-ray to take a lead, but in contemporary Sony style they are messing it up. Can anyone think of a Sony format (other than CD, which was developed jointly with Philips) that has succeeded in the consumer space?

HD-DVD is probably good enough for high def playback. If discs use VC-1 or MPEG-4, the 15 GB per layer is enough for pretty good HD video.

[Felix Torres]

if i'm not mistaken, technically BD is better than HD-DVD &amp; honestly i wanted BD to take the lead but for some reason HD-DVD seems to be doing a good job in that sense.. :evil:

"Better" is subjective and, at best, dependent on your criteria.

BD is "better" for Fox and Sony and Disney because it has *two* levels of very restrictive DRM while HD-DVD DRM is more PC and consumer friendly.

BD is "better" if storage density is important to you. If you are storing movies with MPEG2 at high data-rates to make up for the limitations of the codec, then you (see the above-listed studios) will prefer BD.

BD is "better" if your gaming console of choice is PS3 because you'll never get HD-DVD via PS3.

BD is "better" if you are a retailer because the dedicated players run $1000 with larger profit margins. If you can get any.

HD-DVD is "better" if you are interested in hybrid disks that run in regular DVD players on the flip side.

HD-DVD is "better" if you believe all HD movies need to be encoded in an HD-optimized codec like VC-1 or H.264. (The consensus among the golden eyeball crowd is VC-1 produces noticeably better image quality on HD-DVD, where it is universal, and on BD, where it is rare.)

HD-DVD is "better" if you don't care how much data can theoretically fit on a disk as long as there is enough space for the movie and appropriate extras. Turns out 30GB HD-DVD is enough, but 25GB BD isn't, so you need dual-layer for both formats anyway.

HD-DVD is "better" if you prefer a $500 player you can buy today.

HD-DVD is "better" if your console of choice is 360 and you *choose* to spend $200 for the package with the add-on drive, a remote, and a petty good movie.

HD-DVD is "better" if you're buying a new PC and can get a drive added for $100 (you can--HP).

HD-DVD is "better" if you like the idea of buying the 360 add-on player to use it with a PC or MAC.

Ultimately, the "better" format is the one that wins in the marketplace; Beta was supposedly "better" than VHS because if you measured the output video quality in a lab, you had "better" numbers. However, in the marketplace, the numbers that mattered were 2,4,6 (hours of record time on VHS) and 1:45, etc (the length of Beta tapes). For movie studios, this didn't matter much but for consumers taping TV shows and movies, it did.

The story on BD vs HD-DVD has not been written yet, but it is easy to see which format offers more to studios and which favors consumers. Now it is time to see which format consumers favor.

[saru7755]

Personally from a capacity standpoint I would have liked Blu-ray to take a lead

Ya, that was my main concern :)


Now it is time to see which format consumers favor


A lot of stuff i did not know, thanks for the explanation :D now i can except the idea of getting HD-DVD instead of BD a lil better..

[Felix Torres]

Now it is time to see which format consumers favor


A lot of stuff i did not know, thanks for the explanation :D now i can except the idea of getting HD-DVD instead of BD a lil better..

You're welcome.
Thing is, Blu-Ray can still win this. There are a lot of powerful interests that don't want mandatory managed copy to succeed. Which means they want BD instead of HD-DVD.

Until a year ago, MS and Intel were format-agnostic and HP favored BD. But then Sony caved in to Fox and Disney, the same outfits that refuse to broadcast HD in 1080 (guess why?), and suddenly MS and Intel both came out for HD-DVD and HP became first neutral, and now an HD-DVD supporter. And its all about the requirement (still unimplemented, BTW) that HD-DVDs provide end users a DRM'ed copy of the content they can stream within their own house and copy to portable players, all for private use.

If this feature of HD-DVD is seen as valuable by consumers, HD-DVD should win. If it isn't, then BD wins and managed copy dies.

Pretty straight-forward, no?