That's a good point... I hadn't thought of it but you're right. The "sales" have almost completely dried up and the BOGO's are gone. I did note that Blu Rays have gone up a few pennies in my end of the world.

The low-hanging fruit, AKA early adopters, have already bought their BD players - price be damned. The average consumer with dozens or even hundreds of DVDs has no reason to upgrade to BD.

blink:

Well, that isn't entirely what the article is saying, just to be pedantic. The war ended the last week of February, and the 40% drop came from January to February. In other words, the drop essentially came in it's entirety before Tosh packed it in. I don't think it is unreasonable to assume the following two factors had an impact on this fact:

1/ Sagging US economy with households recovering from Christmas
2/ The people who got Blu players for Christmas bought a crapload of stuff in January, but held back in February.

If you find any combination of these factors may be a contributor, please raise your hand. Since the demise of HD DVD the number of players sold have increased ever so slightly, but not enough (2% month over month)to say anything within the statistical margin of error.

The second article you are quoting also basically says the opposite of what the former does. It states that
However, the numbers —while (sic)

So, there has been an "impressive" number of Blu-Ray disks sold, but not enough to make up for the slump in regular DVD sales. Now, DVD sales have been dropping for several years now, irrespective of Blu-Ray or HD DVD. I am willing to bet the main reason it is the same as has made the box-office numbers slump, namely that it doesn't seem Hollywood would be able to make a good movie even if they shat muses out there (which feels weird to say, I moved from LA to NY just a short while ago). Now, bad Hollywood crap being the most likely culprit for sagging sales doesn't really make it possible for Blu-Ray to counter the slump in DVD sales. Crap is crap whether in SD or HD.

The numbers coming out last week (or was it a couple of weeks ago) were interesting showing that in head to head competition, both in the US but even more so in Japan and Europe, when a title was released on DVD and Blu in parallel, the Blu could almost keep up with the DVD. Not there yet, but gaining significantly.

We'll see by Christmas. This transition is more difficult than the one from VHS to DVD since people have to buy new TVs to enjoy HD, no matter what format it is delivered in.

Although I hate like hell in doing this :)

I'll agree with you Terje. I think there are quite a few factors involved here and they're all working together at the same time. Laurence does make a good point on the price war though. What ever evil thoughts one had towards HD DVD, the prices were down across the board during the war. Hot deals were flowing from every corner you looked at, but they seemed to have dried up now. I guess it was to be expected, and for those brave enough to take advantage of the war... well.... a bit of a savings came their way.

To be honest, I have gone back to dvd's myself. Blu Rays are selling for their regular (high) price at present, while the dvd sales can be found all over the place. I picked up 4 pretty good new releases for $20 (plus tax) the other day. And the upconversion.... well for the price.... I can certainly live with it.

We'll check into the Blu Ray prices next year.... maybe they'll be a bit more reasonable.

The high end BD players are sold out and in very short (re-)supply.

The $300-$500 players are also in short supply, due to having only one manufacturer for the BD chips.

Industry analcysts say the cheapest BD players are too expensive for common folk at $300, and the more monied, savvier people don't want to buy them because most players in stores today won't support the interactive cool features the studios are bring out over the next year.

Pay $300-$500 for a player that will be a boat anchor within 12 months? No thanks for most.

Exception is PS3 which is seen as credibly upgradeable.

It's not surprising... it would be silly to buy into that market now. Only recently did they finally release flat-panel TVs in excess of 38" that were worth watching at all, in the form of the 120Hz 1080p models; and they're still far too expensive.

The only Blu-Ray equipment I'm likely to buy in the next year is a computer-based drive.

Blink,
Last time we had this discussion a few of us were ridiculed for suggesting that price and not fence sitting was the reason for slow adoption of high def movie sales. Time seems to have borne out our suggestion.

In one recent thread I mentioned Nielsen Video Scan sales comparisons. It is still one of the few places that accurately tracks these sales.

Here it is for the week ending 4/20.

If you scroll down you can see that despite whether Blu-Ray pundits want to blame it on the economy or slow DVD sales or whatever excuses they make up there is no real dent being put into SD DVD sales by Blu-Ray. It ranges between 4 and 6 percent of overall sales and whether overall sales of discs are up or down is irreleveant to the proportional sales of each as common sense would dictate.

As a few of us have stated again and again:

Lower the prices of the players and the discs and people will buy.

Continue counting on rhetoric to excuse the poor sales and the Nielsen sales charts will continue looking poor for widespread Hi-Def adoption.

John

The better profile players will not be in big supply till the summer. That is those with more interactive features and internet access. I hate to say it as I'm not a fan of game consoles but the PS3 (that may not even be in these figures) is the best BR player available.

Total aside right after the war ended Sony sold Toshiba the only factory making BR chips! Nice reward for throwing in the towel.

Konrad

Counting all the DVD players in the house including game consoles, standalones, PCs and laptops reveals that I have 9 DVD players. I wonder what the average amount of DVD players per household is. I have 1 HD-DVD drive (Xbox 360 add on) and 0 blu-ray players.

As long as Netflix continues to rent HD-DVD titles, I see no reason to move over to blu-ray. The longer I wait, the cheaper it gets anyway. I certainly don't intend on purchasing any blu-ray titles until they drop below $20 per disc and I am not about to the replace movies I already own with HD versions. Unfortunately, as Blu-ray is around the corner, I no longer purchase DVDs either. Netflix rentals will suite my needs for the foreseeable future.

Factor holding me back from blu-ray: 100% cost.

crafttech

I would not go out and say that HD video disk have made a significant inroads into the total video market yet, but I would like to point out that the Nielsen totals are not a particularly good place to go for information about this. The reason is simple - the total catalog of DVD titles is insanely much larger than for any HD disk format, which means that the comparison is entirely apples and oranges.

Now, according to an article published a short while ago, if you actually compare apples to apples, the HD inroads into the movie market is significantly higher. What is an apples to apples comparison? Comparing the sales of movies released at the same time (or approximately) for all formats we are comparing. According to industry officials, in such an apples to apples comparison, the penetration is significantly higher for Blu. Now, some might argue that this is unfair to DVD since there is so much more choice for DVD, and therefore less sales of the big titles relatively speaking. And round and round we go.

Lower the prices of the players and the discs and people will buy.

When it comes to players, I will give agree with you, but not when it comes to movies. I just did a quick lookup of the latest one I got from Amazon, "I am Legend", and the Blu-Ray was $18.95 and the DVD was $15.99, in other words, the price difference is less than $3. Given the improved sound, improved picture and availability of more "extras" on a Blu-Ray, I can't see that this is a big deal.

People frequently tell me that the $30 price of Blu-Rays is ridiculous compared to the less than $10 typical price for DVDs, but this is comparing old catalog titles on DVD to new releases on Blu. The comparison isn't realistic. For the immediate future it is very likely that old catalog titles released on Blu will be more expensive than on DVD, but there is also a reason for this, namely the need to completely digitally restore some of these movies. That is an expensive process, and the studios will have to get that investment back when releasing the product. That's going to be harder (impossible) if they release it at DVD prices.

Incredible

John

Incredible?

Don't trust PMSNBC as a news source. Yes set top box sales are down. Because most set top boxes are profile 1.0. If you want a semi future proof player you need a PS-3 which has the memory and Ethernet connections to be firmwared up to profile 2.0 . Take a look at BR disk sales which are through the roof.
John Lasseter does his demos on a PS3.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/home_entertainment/video/e3i91323da4b3be14d2f74080ce44d7b5c4?pn=1
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ques...m744238HGT/#/8
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080423/tc_nm/bluray_dc_2

Konrad

I don't think the data on sales is indicative of much of anything because the rental market for BD is still quite limited. Therefore, early adopters have to buy a larger percentage of their movies compared to DVD owners who rent most of theirs. This would tend to skew the sales data to make BD penetration look larger than it probably is at this early point (if two years after first shipment can be called early).

Also interesting to see -- looking at the figures in those monthly surveys -- that market share figures of BD vs. DVD have been going DOWN as well as up. As someone who has seen a LOT of market data over the years, this is often the result of having a very small sample size. Thus, I don't think you can tell much of anything from these figures other than the obvious fact that BD is not going to beat videotape, DVD, and satellite TV as one of the faster consumer electronic product introductions of all time.

My bold prediction: It will definitely do better than DivX players, DAT tape, and laserdiscs.

My previous thoughts on the subject, and a link to even earlier thoughts, none of which have changed in the last two years:

BluRay Market Predictions

"Don't trust PMSNBC as a news source. "

MSN is simply passing the stories on.... they were not written by MSN.

One article comes from AP (Associated Press) and the other from Reuters.... both fairly reputable media outlets

blink

This is correct, but don't forget that the vast majority of news stories, also those on Reuters and AP are created by PR people for companies, and these stories do have a purpose.

I am glad to see that Blu-Ray sales are up more than 350% though, that isn't at all bad.

The story is pure spin when it excludes PS3. PS3 prices have dropped and sales are thru the roof. I bought my Sony BDP-S300 for $299 at Best Buy including 10 free movies Christmas eve last year. You can find the PS3 for under the $400 figure quoted which is why Mark Twain said their are lies, damn lies and statistics. These are statistics that are ignoring reality. That is people are buying PS3 instead of set top boxes.

Konrad