|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
209.97.232.42
In Reply to: Blu ray now sell 2.6 discs when HD DVD sell 1 disc in USA. posted by Ole Lund Christensen on February 11, 2007 at 05:38:09:
<< Toshiba and HD DVD did not want to comment. So they also know they have lost. >>Are they paying you to write this silly stuff? You sound like a shill for Sony.
The truth is that so far we have *two* losers -- HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Right now they each have a grand total of 150 titles each. Compare that to DVD, with over 50,000 titles.
The only people that buy either format are the uber-techno-geeks. If you don't believe me, check out the sales statistics at Amazon.com. Both formats are running neck-and-neck, with Blu-Ray taking a small lead in recent weeks. But check out the #5 top selling HD-DVD disc -- it's a *test* disc! Normal people just don't buy test discs...
So there you have it -- another giant flop, just like SACD and DVD-A. The normal person doesn't give a hoot, and a miniscule group of uber-techno-geeks are making a tempest in a teapot over which flop of a format is "winning". Give us a break.
Follow Ups:
this failure along for a while but they to will give up soon enough. The majors simply can't see the forest for the trees, VHS/Beta; SACD/DVD-A; and now BD/HD-DVD lead to fighting for the techie dollar when the man on the street and his billions could not care less. The future successful format must be a single standard or it to will fail IMO.
is off to an auspicious start, but, there is one significant difference between these video formats and the format wars between DVD-A/SACD vs. CD: anyone can readily see the difference in picture quality on a capable set, while the advantages of high definition audio were, by comparison, much more subtle.
< < anyone can readily see the difference in picture quality on a capable set > >Please read the review of the Toshiba HD-1 in issue 110 of Widescreen Review. These guys are far more critical than the average joe, but even they said that the improvement between HD and properly upscaled SD was marginal.
I saw the Sony demonstration video on their Qualia SXRD set at CEDIA (the set I own) and I have never seen a picture from SD sources that comes close to the kind of definition. The closest comparison would be good PAL DVDs (they tend to look better than the NTSC stuff we get here in the US).Still, I will be sitting on the fence for a while because I, too, suspect this is a war with two losers.
I can understand your pessimism. Sony and others in the Blue ray consortium promised machines much earlier, and Sony promised over a hundred titles once their machine was introduced. All Blue ray members announced machines in the $500 to $700 price range (list price). I haven't seen those cheaper machines yet.
That being said, the sales of 50 inch flat screens is rapidly approaching the numbers for 42 inch screens. Once you've seen the difference between the signals of a regular DVD and a true HD model, you become a convert. Still, I am not happy with the selection of movies available nor their $30 list prices.
I did own a second production run of the Sam Sung player and was very happy with the picture, even with regular DVD's. Curiously, as I pointed out earlier, the digital audio comes out phase correct whereas all other DVD players I have had spits out an inverted signal with the same discs.
As TV sets grow larger, and because Sony has finally come to it's senses in allowing the Blue Ray to be backwards compatible, there will be a shift towards that format.
according to one of your staff.People naturally hesitate to buy expensive DVD players, until they know what will happen with the new formats.
So I can well understand, that you do not like the new formats. But attacking me (the messenger) does not help you.
Anyway your new monoblocks are very elegant.
see link to Ayre DVD player
< < People naturally hesitate to buy expensive DVD players, until they know what will happen with the new formats. > >No kidding.
Good thing that we make other products besides expensive DVD players. That way we won't go out of business.
Change the word "DVD" in your sentence to "CD" and turn back the clock 10 years. Then look what happened to Wadia who only made expensive CD players. Unlike Theta, who diversified with a full line of other products, Wadia fell upon very tough times trying to sell CD players in a time of great uncertainty.
As soon as the new formats were announced years ago, we knew that the sales of our DVD players would drop off significantly. But we don't care. We're not going to stop making them, because they still offer the best performance you can buy, assuming you are interested in more than 150 of the latest crappy titles from Hollywood.
Someday, when it makes sense to do so, we might even make a high-def video player. Just like we did with SACD and DVD-A. (Unlike Gamut, who never did get around to it, despite all your claims on this forum that such a player was imminent.)
< < So I can well understand, that you do not like the new formats. But attacking me (the messenger) does not help you. > >
Whether I like a format or not has very, very little to do with whether or not it will succeed in the marketplace. And that is what I am looking at. The last thing Ayre will do is bring out some new "fad" product that will be orphaned, leaving the owner holding the bag.
And I am not "attacking the messenger". I am simply pointing out the facts. And the facts so far are that we have two more failed formats. Saying that Blu-Ray is winning over HD-DVD is just plain silly. Kind of like saying that DVD-A is winning over SACD. Or that Columbia's SQ quadraphonic system is winning over JVC's quadraphonic system. At this point, it's all pretty irrelevant, don't you think?
I think it can make the difference. If Sony sells over the world more than one million of those devices, we'll have the HD winner in a couple of years.
< < If Sony sells over the world more than one million of those devices, we'll have the HD winner in a couple of years. > >"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
A few years ago there were well over a million DVD-A players sold also. But did that mean that DVD-A became a successful format? No, of course not. The reason is that the people that bought the machines didn't give a hoot if they played DVD-A, they only cared if they played movies (DVD-V).
Same thing now. Just because a million kids buy video game machines doesn't make Blu-Ray a successful format. Those kids don't care about Blu-Ray, they just want to play games.
Actually the demographic for the Playstation 3 is solidly in the 21 to 35 year old crowd, and they very much care about video and hi-rez pictures. Those that can drop the cash needed for a $500 t0 $600 machine plus $60 per game are not 'kids', and there are close to 2 million of them so far. Remember the Playstation franchise has been around for more than a generation (I'm not sure when Playstation 1 launched, but it was something like 12 to 15 years ago?).The demographic who uses Playstation on the whole cares about new technology AND hi-rez images. So they are a much better fit than you would think.
but if Blue Ray delivers some picture benefits that they can obvioulsy see when the thing is connected to a good screen, they'll prefer watching movies on Blue Ray than in DVD-V. The DVD-A and SACD sunk because "average Joe" couldn't find any difference in his stereo or multichannel home cinema.
They plan to ship 6 million before April, but I doubt they can do that.
Anyway I will buy a PS3 in April, when sales in Europe starts.
At USD 599 I doubt they make money on the player now.But this is classical Japanese marketing, get the sales numbers up quickly by selling below cost. Then make money, when the market have accepted the product.
However they learned this from Edison, who did use this method, when he introduced the light bulb. Edison lost money the first 5 years, and he made it all back in year 6.
umm yeah.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: