Blu-ray discs sold nearly three times better than HD-DVD
Blu-ray movies are gaining ground quickly on HD-DVD according to figures released by Nielsen VideoScan to Home Media Magazine. Blu-ray Discs have been outselling HD DVDs by a strong margin thus far in 2007 according to what the sale numbers show.
The sales of Blu-ray discs have been more than double than those of HD-DVD discs in the first week of 2007. More than that, Blu-ray pulled even further ahead the next week , leaving HD DVD behind at only 38.36 percent of Blu-ray’s numbers.
In other words, in the first 14 days of the year, for every 100 Blu-ray Discs that were sold, only 38.36 HD DVDs were sold, which means that Blu-ray have been outselling HD-DVD by a nearly 3:1 margin.
Of course these outstanding figures have some well defined reasons behind the facts:
1.The main reason is the launch of the PlayStation 3, which rapidly injected the Blu-ray Disc movie market with at least 687,300 players. On the other hand, HD-DVD announced at CES 2007 that about 175,000 HD DVD players were sold in the U.S. since the format’s introduction. The sales of the PlayStation 3 alone put Blu-ray players way ahead of HD DVD machines, which is likely a part of Sony’s strategy for its format.
Even tough the biggest part of those who bought PlayStation 3 did so for its games playing capabilities, gamers could be feeding their shiny black consoles Blu-ray movies because of the absolutely desolate pickings of games available for the machine at the current moment.
It’s important to note that the figures presented by Nielsen VideoScan are based on point-of-sale data, leaving out movies sold as part of bundle deals, which means that the numbers of Blu-ray and HD DVD movies sold do not count the copies of Talladega Nights and King Kong bundled with PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, respectively.
2. The second reason for Blu-ray’s recent charge might be HD DVD’s recent lack of new releases, with only two new HD DVD titles over the first days of the new year. Batman Begins remains the top selling title for HD DVD, while Blu-ray saw newer titles cycle through its sales ranks, with Crank taking top spot for the second week of January.
HD DVD still holds the majority of total HD movies sold, but Blu-ray movies have recently made up tremendous ground. Blu-ray only had 85.05 percent of HD DVD’s total market share since the formats’ inception in the weekend of January 7. One week later, Blu-ray managed to rise up more than 7 percent to reach 92.4 percent of HD DVD’s share.
The recent grow in the Blu-ray sales can thus be explained by the PlayStation 3 recent release, but the current lead of HD DVD media sales can be explained by its earlier arrival on the market.
Toshiba shipped one of the first HD DVD players in April 2006, with Samsung following up two months later with the first Blu-ray machine in June 2006.
Despite the recent grow in the sale numbers of Blu-ray, according to the Global Optical Storage Industry Report, published December 2006, HD DVD will still be the mainstream in the market during 2007 to 2009, after which Blu-ray is expected to take over the lead. Most optical drive manufacturers ( Hitachi-LG, Toshiba-Samsung, Sony NEC and LiteOn ) acknowledge Blu-ray as the future and view HD DVD as a transitional product.
Blu-ray will have to wait until 2009 before seeing strong market growth because of the high costs and difficulties in manufacturing Blu-ray parts as demonstrated in the challenges in making the PlayStation 3.
HD DVD is generally compatible with much of the processes used to make DVDs while many of the challenges associated with Blu-ray are that the format’s manufacturing process requires new machinery and equipment.
Although Blu-ray has a slight advantage over HD-DVD in storage space, it can not rely on this because Toshiba has achieved a 51GB, triple layer HD DVD. Until Blu-ray Disc manufacturing reaches the ease and cost-levels comparable to its competitor, HD DVD still holds the edge in terms of cost of equipment to both consumer and manufacturer.
The HD optical format war sees no end in sight, with some companies resigning to a stalemate with the release of dual format players and dual format movies.