Rich Fiscus
5 Jan 2008 15:53
With the increase in available Blu-ray and HD DVD titles both formats are seeing increased visibility in stores. Blu-ray with more releases and higher Title sales than HD DVD, is also gaining more shelf space, but both have seen significant increases over the last year.
“It’s really a function of more titles being available,” said Best Buy spokesman Brian Lucas. “We are still supporting both equally and haven’t staked a position on [the format war]. We are definitely giving more space and presence to next-generation titles. Part of that is once you start selling the hardware, you have a responsibility to help people get the most out of it.”
It's also worth mentioning that as DVD sales have declined over the same period, industry analysts have said they expect shelf space for them to drop as well. With the increasing emphasis, both among studios and retailers, on replacing DVDs with so called "next-gen" formats this seems to be an accurate prediction.
A bigger question right now, which the studios and consumer electronics manufacturers don't appear willing to tackle head on, is whether any format can have the success enjoyed for many years by DVD. An anonymous source from one studio told Video Business “At the beginning of the year we started at less than 1%, and now that has gone closer to 5%. Unit sales have increased more than six and a half times between December 2006 and December 2007.”
But in a way this highlights the problem right now. A 650% increase in DVD sales would be massive, but the same percentage increase in the new formats doesn't really amount to that many sales, and certainly not enough to make either format profitable, either for studios or player manufacturers.
Clearly the best sign for the future of both formats is the steady adoption of HDTVs by the public, but unlike HD DVD and Blu-ray players, they're still not available for the kind of bargain basement prices necessary to sell them to many people who haven't made the switch yet. Even a $50 player isn't useful to someone who can't afford a $500 HDTV.
In light of Warner Brothers' recent decision to drop HD DVD support and throw their weight behind Blu-ray, it appears that the "war" between the two formats may be over. Assuming that's the case, what have they really won?
So far they've apparently won less than a 10% share of the home video market, and there's no guarantee that anything resembling the success of DVD is even possible. The differences between DVD and Blu-ray (or HD DVD) are as striking as the similarities.
Source: Video Business