"I can't understand why anyone in these forums would not think the same. "

Perhaps because we do believe picture quality and the means to access the delivery system does matter. I'll be delivering my first FullHD content on thumb drives, cheaper, faster and way more reliable than any shiny disk can provide.

As for market share, that's the dumbest metric ever quoted. Share of what sized market, I'm not seeing any of the sales or rental businesses doing well. They're closing their doors in droves.

As a side note my Macolite co-worker tells me Apple have said they'll not be supporting BD. It'd be funny if Vista was the only OS that'd play it.

Bob.

fine. I'll take the bait from the fisher (phisher, whatever)! ;)

I can't find any BD players at any walmart in my area or target. Can't find any for under $100 @ radio shack, best buy, circuit city, etc.

people are spending a lot less on electronics because (about time) they're deciding to pay their bills instead.

just because retailers are taking more BD crap doesn't mean people are buying it. Instead of the 10% being split between two competitors it's now all taken up by one company in a monopoly.

That's like economic "forecasters" saying "woo man, things are going to look good for MS's Vista because there's no other direct competitors in the PC OS market" Well DUHHHHHHHHHHHH! Remember, these are the same people who said Wii would put Nintendo out of business & the PS3 will make Microsoft hide in a dark corner.

While I do have Bluray on the list in the meantime I will purchase and install a tankless water heater, new spring flowers, tools to remove a stump the old way, tubes for my lawn cart tires, and repair parts for my old chainsaw, clean my 1993 Jeep Cherokee with 118,000 miles, bleach to remove the green algy from the roof, and 10 bags of grass seed which doubled in price from last year. ($7.00 to $14.00)
JJK

Nielsen VideoScan Hi-Def Market Share for Week ending March 23, 2008.

Follow up article.

John

There have been a group of fence-sitters waiting for the outcome of this for quite some time. It's quite natural (and predictable) for the HDM users to increase after the war. What remains to be seen is whether or not the number CONTINUE to rise, or at some point level off again.

It will continue to rise. And it will rise more and more sharply as we approach the holidays (no need to clarify when that is, is there?).

So far, not one thing that the denialists have predicted has come to pass.

Terje was just trolling. We are all idiots for replying at all.

It's only been a month, does anyone really expect meaningful numbers to exist yet?

If we want to look at numbers, lets look at how the BD players prices have been increasing since they have no competition. I bet that has people flocking to the stores to get their $400 to 600 player.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2008/03/14/blu-ray-player-prices-rise-as-hd-dvd-dwindles

Did anybody do blow-outs on HD-DVD when Toshiba called it quits? Just curious if I missed out on Hi-Def feature films at blow-out prices.

Joe

"So far, not one thing that the denialists have predicted has come to pass."

Funny... I don't see any "denialists" here!? Do you mean my post??? What did I deny??? Why would I deny??? Or are you just trying to raise a little hell?

Last weekend at the Somerset Mall in Detroit, I noticed that the Sony Style store was more busy that the Apple store--- and the Apple was busy! At the Sony Style store most business appeared to be buying HD tvs and cameras, and , very unusual, Sony laptops seem to be a hot item, also. Don't know about player sales, but BD was being demo on the sets.

Good HDTVs are still a bit too expensive for general consumption, IMO. Personally, I wouldn't consider buying any other than the new, 120Hz 1080p models. All the initial 1366x768 TVs should never have been marketed in the first place. I imagine it was mostly to take advantage of those who don't know a great deal about picture quality, were just interested in having a big TV, and without much patience.

For the moment, I'm satisfied with using my computer monitors for HD content, and my CRT HDTV that I got for incredibly cheap.

It will be quite a long time before Blu-Ray sales match those of DVD.

As for market share, that's the dumbest metric ever quoted. Share of what sized market, I'm not seeing any of the sales or rental businesses doing well. They're closing their doors in droves.

Of the overall media market. That is, of the entire market for buying movies. Is there any other market that makes sense to watch? Would you, for example, like to see what part of the Fried Beans market Blu-Ray has? It is zero, is that surprising to you?

I find it particularly funny that you seem to claim that the overall size of the movie market is in decline. In particular you seem to say that people selling movies are going out of business in droves. I wonder how you make that jive with the fact that Hollywood is reporting very good times indeed. Has perhaps Hollywood turned to the Fried Beans market to make up for the gargantuan loss they have in the moving picture market? Curious minds would like to know.

Instead of the 10% being split between two competitors it's now all taken up by one company in a monopoly

I have seen this stated in a number of forums a number of times. In what part of the world is this true? In the "I live in an LSD coma all day so I don't go outside my door" world? I am just curious.

Is there a monopoly in the DVD market? Is there a monopoly in the VHS market? Given that we have decided that all cars should have a standard set of fuels, is there a monopoly in the car market? Where is this monopoly? In a lot of heads obviously, but I was thinking about the real world.

Terje was just trolling.

How was that trolling? Given the discussions about distribution format, and the topic of these forums, the fact that Blu-Ray shows significant gains in market share against the incumbent DVD is both relevant and interesting.

It's only been a month

Which we are all aware of, but that doesn't mean that numbers are meaningless. In fact, quite the opposite, they prove exactly what Warner and others said back in January, that people are fence sitting waiting for the format war to be over. Clearly that was exactly the case, that that was the cause of the significant increase in sales in this period.

This also means, of course, that we should expect a decrease in market share in the short term since it is reasonable to assume that the fence sitters jumped at about the same time, which would have created an un-common spike in sales, but again, that is exactly what was predicted, and denied strongly by the deniers both in this and other forums.

If we want to look at numbers, lets look at how the BD players prices have been increasing since they have no competition.

Again this nonsense about no competition? I'm sorry, but where do you guys take this from? Are you seriously telling me that because there is one standard for DVDs there is no competition in the DVD market? Are you claiming that since the US government requires all food to adhere to "it has to be edible and it can't kill anybody" standard, there is no competition in the food market?

When you have significantly more players in the Blu-Ray market than there ever was in the HD DVD market, how is that no competition? More and more players are announced from new players in the market all the time, how is that no competition?

I think debate is healthy and fine, but when you just go around and make up "facts" to support your point, it becomes a little ridiculous.

There has been a very small increase in player prices due to the increase in the price of Blu-Ray diodes. This is normal given the fact that there are very few players in the blu laser market, and there has been a spike in the number of companies buying. Component prices fluctuate like that naturally, and given the fact that nobody in the Blu-Ray camp are dumping players at below production cost like Toshiba was, that means that there is going to be fluctuation in the price of Blu-Ray players. The median price increase was insignificant however, and attributing that to a "monopoly" is absurd in the extreme given that there is no monopoly.

Oh, and the continuous fall of the US dollar is also a factor, in fact, it is amazing that the price of electronics hasn't risen a lot more than it has given the incredibly weak dollar. In the current situation, European and Asian consumers is subsidizing the US consumers to the tune of at least 20%.

Which we are all aware of, but that doesn't mean that numbers are meaningless.
============
They are meaningless because you made them up. You stated in the Original Post.... Since the war ended, Blu-Ray has typically hit 10-15% of the total media sales.

Didn't anyone click on my link above to see that the stats are not what you claim? I wouldn't care if they were true, but you have a habit of posting stuff you cannot cite sources for. The Nielsen stats for last week are there in my link and they are not what you claim.

John

craftech, having actual read your posted link, it does not disprove the statement about total sales volume vs. comparing the the top20 SALES in format by your link.

From your link: "Sure, 6 percent isn't that much, but it's more than most people thought it was, but to be fair it is only taking into account the top 20 BDs vs the top 20 DVDs. This is an interesting way to compare the two formats as seven out of the top 20 -- three in the top 10 -- DVDs aren't available on Blu-ray, but DVD has many more releases than Blu-ray, so while the angle is obviously in Blu-ray's favor, it'll become even more true, as more Blu-ray titles are released day-and-date with DVDs."

Market sales has many tools for quick analysis. If comparing the top 20 is important, comparing the the top 20 BD with sales of the DVD counter part may have more meaning(?). ;-)

No one argues that BD does not have as many individual releases as DVD's. But The top 20 is one of many "numbers, but total sales vs. inventory is the most important, especially if the products are not on consignment.

There is a buzz about "future" solidstate movie chips for mobile devices being a "hot" market for smartphones,etc. vs., Dl'ing... but movies for DS has been around for, awhile, so, its going to be interesting.

"Curious minds would like to know."

Of the overall media market??

The overall media market covers way, way more than movies. By normal definition it includes print, cinema, radio and TV .
One would usually consider that as part of the entertainment market, that's much broader but that's what you need to consider. Looking at the stats from narrow market segments makes for good copy for the dumb shareholders but that's about all it is.

Here's another example of how dumb your figures are. Last year vinyl increased its market share, how did that happen, is that good news for the music industry. Well no, like many niche markets there'll always be some demand from the die hards. So when overall music sales take a dive but vinyl sales remain the same they do indeed increase market share.

And yes, in my region at a rough guess the number of retail outlets selling and renting DVDs either HD or SD, has declined 80%. And no the cinema business is not doing well at all. They've thankfully had a bit of a respite thanks to a few recent very good successes. I'd like to hope the business is going to keep going up but it's been going down for so long it's got a long way to crawl back. The problem is the entertainment dollar is being split in new directions, video games have taken a very large slice of the action, that market is now bigger than Hollywood. I think Sony sort of got the right idea with the PS3 but they're for ever trying to have a bet each and every way and seem to me as confused as the market is.

Bob.

They are meaningless because

It is funny how everybody who disagrees with the HD DVD fanboys have to be liars or bought by Sony, isn't it? Can you imagine, for example, that we are talking about slightly different numbers? Is it even remotely possible that, for example, you were talking about the overall sales of the top twenty titles, but I was talking about comparing sales of individual titles to each other?

Say, for example, that Hitman is released on both formats, and it hits 12.6% of total media sales on Blu-Ray, could that possibly be an interesting number to look at? Do you, for example, think that this is a more relevant number than comparing the total sales of DVDs vs the total sales of Blu-Rays given the fact that far more titles are released on DVD than on Blu?

Before you start calling people liars, why don't you try to educate your self a little bit about what goes on in the world? Why don't you try to find out if someone in fact is stating something that has been widely reported already and that you can read up on any time you wish? Don't you think automatically calling everybody who tears down the silly little dream world you live in for liars a little immature, if not to say retarded?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/home_entertainment/video/e3if32b8f1fa30457d78668ac733fc7bde1?pn=1

Do please continue the discussion, but jumping in just do should loudly, and in bold face about your own dumb mental problems is just a little silly. Oh, and no, I am not calling you names, I am just commenting on your behavior.

The overall media market covers way, way more than movies.

Well, in this case we were talking about something very specific as related to "media", not print, blog or other media, but media as in "movies sold on a particular medium" media. Movies for sale can be released on a number of different types of media, and of that market, Blu has had a steadily increasing share since the end of the war, now generally above 10% according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Here's another example of how dumb your figures are. Last year vinyl...

Man, you guys really are clutching at straws, twigs and any little thing you can find, are you not?

Movies are sold to consumers. Many or few, doesn't really matter all that much. Of the total number of movies sold of a particular title one medium gets a certain market share. Is that uninteresting? No, it says something about the relative strength of that particular medium in the market at that point in time. So, if hitman is released on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray, and the Blu-Ray version captures just above 12% of the market share, then that is a very informative figure. If, for similar situations in months before, for example, Transformers, the figure was 4%, well, then it is likely that there is a trend. Now, I know that Transformers was not released on Blu, but it was the single movie with the highest market share in HD of any movie in 2007. Yes, HD movies are now regularly at 10% or more of the same movie on DVD, while the top seller last year was 4%.

And no the cinema business is not doing well at all.

They are not? How so? In 2005 the industry took a dive, partly due to a lack of consumable product, this changed in 2006 with a significant growth year-over-year. Both domestically and internationally there was growth, with the in-theater numbers internationally being the most positive with a 21% year-over-year growth, with Russia as the jewel with a 50% year-over-year growth in consumption of US movies in the theater.

Now, one could argue that 2006 was somehow abnormal, but given the fact that 2004 was a record year for the movie industry, it seems more likely that it was 2005 that was the anomaly, not 2006.

The odd-man-out trend in this is the home media market. This market showed a consistent decline, not by a lot, but still consistent. Given the increase in all other markets, it seems that there is something particular about the DVD market that made it go down. Perhaps people were holding off buying into the format due to the fact that they were waiting for HD releases?

Let's assume you're right, no let's go beyond that.
Tomorrow morning we're all going to wake up to find that we have to deliver everything in HD, on BD. I'm pretty well ready, got a pretty good HD camera, I can even get a full 2K camera and a decent set of primes and I can edit it. Great.
Now comes the worrying bit, making 50 copies on BD with a bit of interactive content. I can probably bring in some Java experts I know or I could spring for BluPrint and OnQ. Boy that's getting expensive and a lot of work. Why did we ever go down this path. Oh yeah, it might have been a tad easier on HD DVD but still no walk in the park either so don't for one minute assume I would be much less t'ed off if they'd won either.
Now to my ancient brain it could have been a piece of cake.
With pre-existing tech i.e. mpeg-2, we wanted 4 times the res. That meant 4 times the data and bandwidth. Sony developed the solution with BD a long time ago. Or there's other solutions. All we needed was a way to fit 40GBs onto a shiny disk. That's it.
We already have the tools to author the disk, take your pick, DVDA, Encore, DVDSPro etc. All of those would need only a minor code change to author a HiDef version of the current SD DVD. Minimal costs, minimal grief.

But oh no, somehow, someone, somewhere decided we needed something more to make the public buy the product. Well I should say it was more than just someone. We got into this daft feature war with each camp upping the ante with more features. All I can say is GOOD GRIEF. We're selling movies here, not video games, not web content. Why do people watch movies, what is the differentiator between watching a movie and playing a video game. Once you get that please try to see how daft it is trying to make one like the other.

In case you don't get it I'll give you another example. SACD and DVD Audio. SACD makes good sense to me even though it's also expensive to deliver and out of reach of most of us. But it sticks to the simple principle of delivering the same thing, just better. DVD Audio on the other hand seems to have as it's main selling point that it can have pictures along with good sound. But isn't the whole point of playing a CD not having to watch pictures, you can close your eyes and let the sound take you to another place. Or you can have the music in the background while you do something else, no pictures to distract you. If you want pictures you go buy it on a DVD!

I could give other examples but hopefully by now you get my point.

Bob.

They are meaningless because you made them up.
==========================
There you go. You have a way of baiting then flaming people on these forums. Your initial post sets the tone.

You start out with a false statement that you cannot back up:

Since the war ended, Blu-Ray has typically hit 10-15% of the total media sales, in other words something like a 5 to 10 fold increase. In Japan in Blu-Ray has maintained an above 18% share of the total media market, up from well below 10% just a few months back

Followed by a dig at forum members:

I, my self, am glad that Warner did the only sensible thing and ended this war, it is clearly a benefit to everybody who thinks that picture quality matters. I can't understand why anyone in these forums would not think the same.

Meaning either we accept your false statistics or we don't care about picture quality. You did after all title the post "Blue gaining on DVD" followed by false statistics about how much gain.

Then you get challenged by people who looked for something to back up the statistics you cited and couldn't provide any.

Then when you are cornered all of a sudden you falsely resort to calling them HD DVD "fanboys".

Your source in your flame post DOES NOT back up your statistics. So you either have a reading comprehension problem or you made them up just like I said.

Read your own source and show me where it backs up your statistics:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/home_entertainment/video/e3if32b8f1fa30457d78668ac733fc7bde1?pn=1[/link

And after you read your own source show us all something to back up the following statement you made:
------------------------
"Why don't you try to find out if someone in fact is stating something that has been widely reported already and that you can read up on any time you wish?"
------------------------
SHOW US!!![/B] .

John

craftech, having actual read your posted link, it does not disprove the statement about total sales volume vs. comparing the the top20 SALES in format by your link.
=======
Apit,
It was the only recent comparison of SD DVD sales to Blu-Ray sales I could find after I read the initial post. I am ready and willing to read anything that backs up Terje's claim.

And by the way, it is not up to ME to disprove Terje's statements.
It is up to Terje to prove them if he is going to claim them.

I don't argue that Blu-Ray sales have increased. I don't have a problem that it is making some gains on SD DVD sales. That is NOT the point.

But before I accept that Blu-Ray is making an exaggerated dent in SD DVD sales I need something to read that shows that. Terje cannot provide that. He likes to make false statements combined with a with a dig to others who might actually try to look it up.

John