Sigh. One of the few good things that could result from a freeze in NPD numbers monthly (which doesn’t appear to be the case any longer) would be a easing in the Console War tensions that have been running rampant as the torch of dominance has fallen from the hands of Sony into a murky grey area where Wii claims highest console numbers while the Xbox 360 claims outrageously high software sales.

Console wars this aggressive and heated are ugly and annoying, so much so that the passion on display can, well, disgust other enthusiasts in related fields. This is becoming increasingly clearer in the heightening format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. While the general populace is largely indifferent still to the two formats and home theater enthusiasts argue more or less in a civil manner, console fanboys have invaded popular audio video forums to trumpet whichever standard most closely associates with their buying choices. Perhaps the best indicator of this would be the very useful AVS Forums closure of the HD disc boards in the wake of “physicall threats that have involved police and possible legal action”: (more…)

The War To End All Format Wars is going to last a little longer folks. Maybe forever. Today, Paramount pictures and Dreamworks Animation hardcore dissed the Blue Ray High-def format in favor of HD-DVD. That means the summer hit-o-rama, Transformers, will only be playing on HD-DVD players this holiday season. Paramount cited cheaper production cost, cheaper players and picture quality as reasons for the switch-o-roo.

What do I think? I’m glad you asked. I think the longer this war goes on, the longer it will take people to switch formats, if they ever do. It is hard enough to convince a guy to buy a completely different movie player when the one he has plays discs just fine. But its not in HD, you tell him. He says he doesn’t have and HD television. Hell, he doesn’t even know what an HD television is. Sad to say, but only the hard core cares about Hi-definition right now. I know. It makes me sad too.

[via Engadget hd]

Jayslacks

Ordinarily I try to steer clear of gadget news around here, but I have my reasons on this one. This morning, Blockbuster Video announced that they’ll be primarily supporting Blu-ray rentals in their 1,450 retail stores, though they will continue to offer HD-DVDs in the 250 pilot stores they introduced both HD formats in earlier this year, as well as offering them online (as I don’t imagine they’d want their HD-DVD renters to flee to Netflix).

“The consumers are sending us a message. I can’t ignore what I’m seeing,” Matthew Smith, senior vice president of merchandising at Blockbuster, told The Associated Press.

The decision was helped in large part by the lopsided availability of titles in Blu-ray, Smith said. All major studios except one are releasing films in Blu-ray, with several, including The Walt Disney Co., releasing exclusively in Blu-ray. Only Universal Studios, which is owned by General Electric Co., exclusively supports HD DVD.

Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., and Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom Inc., release films in both formats.

“When you walk into a store and see all this product available in Blu-ray and there is less available on HD DVD, I think the consumer gets that,” Smith said.

First, a caveat. I worked as a supervisor/manager for Blockbuster for a couple of years (2003-2005), and so have some experience with Blockbuster management decisions. This isn’t a surprising move from Blockbuster, although the tiny voice inside me wonders if they got a deal from certain studios for discounts for larger Blu-ray orders if they made this move. Regardless, this isn’t great news for HD-DVD. However, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the deck seemed stacked against HD-DVD from the start here, at least in the pilot store near me. They routinely missed bigger releases on HD-DVD, and many of their titles were several weeks late. The question is whether or not this was because Blockbuster dropped the ball on getting HD-DVD releases to stores (while being pretty on top of things with Blu-ray), or if the HD-DVD studios dropped the ball on getting them the product (which also happens alot). All I know for sure is that there were consistently significantly more titles available on Blu-ray than there were for HD-DVD, which is actually why I recently, finally signed up for Netflix in the first place. My point is that it kind of seemed like Blockbuster’s decision had been made before they even carried either format.

That being said, this isn’t exactly great news for Blu-ray. Blockbuster is a company that’s become increasingly marginalized and non-competitive in a very quickly changing video market. While some might point to this as a sign of Blu-ray’s, er, “runaway” success, I would say it has more to do with the tepid response by general consumers to both HD formats, and to the built-in audience of Blu-ray renters with the PS3’s install base (which is how I justify reporting on gadget news right now). While the PS3 isn’t doing so well in the video game arena, it’s still selling alright for a consumer electronics device, so it makes some financial sense to cater in a limited fashion to that niche. HD-DVD doesn’t have that, or at least, not to the same degree, as they’ve barely cleared the million players sold mark. So, enjoy those Blu-ray rentals, Blockbuster customers. In the meantime, here’s hoping that movies aren’t such a major part of your experience for much longer.

-Aegies

Sony has finally released some hard shipped numbers for Blu-ray versus what they say are HD-DVD numbers, and while the good news for Sony is that Blu-ray has shown a growing advantage saleswise in brick and mortar locations that aren’t Walmart (as these numbers don’t include online retailers like Amazon and Newegg), the bad news is the overwhelming consumer response to both formats, combined, has been: I like my regular DVDs.

Among the numbers revealed: as of March 18, VideoScan put the cumulative number of Blu-ray titles sold since the format’s inception at 844,000 units, versus HD DVD at 708,600.

But perhaps most interesting are the per-title sales numbers for the top ten selling discs across both formats, which are provided both in the form of a weekly tally (again for the week ending March 18), and as year-to-date totals.

While these charts confirm the previously reported strong showings for such A-list titles as ‘The Departed’ ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘Superman Returns’ (with each clocking per-format sales totals since-inception of at least 28,000 units sold), they also demonstrate a very steep drop-off for titles outside of that top rung, with even discs among the top-ten best sellers that week moving fewer than 1000 units apiece.

I like my HD-DVD drive, and I like HD movies. Given the choice, and comparable prices, I’ll choose HD over SD. Regardless, I also acknowledge that I’m in the minority, a very small minority at that given that those early adopters of Blu-ray and HD-DVD are likely to buy multiple titles, and those above sales numbers are indicative of consumer formats that have yet to hit any sort of meaningful market penetration. The above numbers also tell us that a) not every PS3 owner is buying Blu-ray movies, despite Sony’s attempts to imply otherwise, and b) that the PS3 isn’t really helping the Blu-ray format much at all at this point, and probably won’t for the foreseeable future. One wonders if the introduction of more compelling PS3 games might actually hurt the format, as it’s widely regarded that PS3 owners are watching Blu-ray titles while they wait for something to play. Again, however corporate higher ups want to spin these numbers, they don’t speak well to the future of both formats, and the format war that is hurting public perception the most isn’t likely to end anytime soon.

-Aegies