“The Blu-ray disc association said on Thursday it aimed to replace the DVD storage format within three years,” Lucas van Grinsven reports for Reuters.
“‘Within three years it will just be Blu-ray,’ Frank Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association’s European chairman, said at the CeBIT technology trade show,” van Grinsven reports. “Blu-ray, which offers five times more storage capacity than DVDs for storing high definition films and other content, will first have to beat the rival HD-DVD format which offers somewhat lower storage capacity but claims cheaper production of players, burners and discs.”
“Measured in the number of players, Blu-ray is already well ahead of HD DVD because Sony’s <6758.T> PlayStation 3 (PS3) video games console comes with a built-in Blu-ray player,” van Grinsven reports. “Sony Computer Entertainment said it had sold 1.84 million PS3s by the end of December in Japan and North America and that one million PS3s are ready for launch next week in Europe. The HD DVD camp conceded it is being outsold by Blu-ray because of PS3 by at least five to one, but it claims that sales of movie titles are still level… Five out of eight major Hollywood studios support only Blu-ray. One studio, Universal, supports only HD DVD.”
“Toshiba and Microsoft, as the two main backers of HD DVD,” van Grinsven reports. “Blu-ray is supported by companies like Samsung, Philips, Matsushita, Apple, and Dell.”
Full article here.
Somebody really screwed up at Dell: they actually picked superior over cheaper technology (must have been Rollins).
Related articles:
MCE Technologies brings Blu-ray Disc to Apple Mac – January 25, 2007
Warner’s ‘Total HD’ disc format has both Blu-ray and HD DVD on same disc – January 17, 2007
LG announces first dual-format hi-def DVD player; plays both Blu-ray and HD DVD content – January 05, 2007
TDK pumps Blu-ray capacity up to 200GB per disc – September 02, 2006
Roxio Toast 7 for Apple Mac adds Blu-ray support – July 25, 2006
Apple and Microsoft showdown over Blu-ray vs. HD DVD? – July 14, 2006
Ricoh creates ‘universal’ optical disk lens; reads and writes Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD, and CD – July 10, 2006
Broadcom announces decoder chip that plays both Blu-ray and HD DVD – January 03, 2006
They need to lower the price pronto!
Also don’t include draconian DRM in computers playing BlueRay content.
OK.
Blu-ray won.
next
Call me when Blu-Gay is coming.
Hmmmm,:
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“Toshiba and Microsoft, as the two main backers of HD DVD,”
Well, I guess I know now which one is better.
ne
Dad when will you get a job?
This is really nice campaigning by Blue-Ray (Something HD-DVD group should try) it does nothing to what is coming – movies via IP.
Apple sees the ability to knock out the archaic game of media player/physical media, with AppleTV and movie downloads.
In three years, high-speed users in the home will be far and wide, and AppleTV will outnumber the total of Blue-Ray and HD-DVD players combined.
People can skip the war, the video store, and get what they want in their living-rooms.
With SONY finally agreeing not to block manufacture of Blu-Ray porn (the “killer app”), it’s going to trample HD-DVD.
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD is just like SA-CD vs DVD-A. It is just a of DRM-ridden minor upgrade to the DVD. And it will suffer the same fate as it’s audio brother. It will die by the sword of Apples lesser quality but far simpler solution, the Apple TV.
MDN Magic word: “provide”: as in “Japan can’t provide a solution as elegant as Apple.”
BWAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!!!
I DON’T THINK SO. Just like dallas said, there is very little reason to adopt these new HD media standards so quickly. They are expensive (new tv, new player, new media, new receiver in some cases) for a migration that isn’t a huge difference in comparison to DVD.
I don’t know what fantasy world the Blu-ray association is living in, but no one is going to adopt Blu-ray or HD-DVD at the rate DVD was adopted. DVD had so many more features over VHS, it was a slam dunk. DVD vs HD media, not so much
To add to that… within 5 years, more and more people are going to be doing digital downloads than today. It wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of people moved over to this form of media.
Oh yeah,
And also, before the DVD, there were not very many VHS copies of videos sold. Sure we can name a few videos that brought in big bucks, ‘Lion King’ to name one, but until the DVD came along, no one collected large libraries of movies because the VHS cost the Production co.s too much to produce. WHen the DVD came around people were ready to drop $10 for a bargain bin movie and $15 for a new release. But Blu-Ray really doesn’t deliver enough to want to spend $1000+ on a player when the same movie can be bought on DVD for half the price and will play on your existing DVD player. I just don’t see why anyone would want a Blu-Ray player.
I don’t know, if you spend thousands of dollars on a nice HD TV, why would you want to watch sub-DVD quality movies from Apple? Will their downloads rival Blu-Ray quality in a years time?
Why not? Well, maybe not a year, but quite possibly three years time. How much has the internet advanced in the past 3 years? Just 3 years ago 70% of people accessing the internet were still doing so with a phone modem. Now that number has dropped to somewhere around 30%. With the promise of fiber optic transmission, and newer and better compression ratios, I don’t think near 1080p streaming quality is that unbelievable.
To all those stating that the blu-ray player is too expensive – I have a news flash for you: Technology gets cheaper. That’s the way the world works.
That $1000 blu-ray player is already $800; in a year, it will be $500; in two years it will be $300; in three years it will be $150 to $100….
Hm… When did the blu-ray association say that blu-ray would replace DVD? Wasn’t it three years? No problem. My personal price point is $250. By then I will have replaced my $1400 standard def CRT television and purchased a new reciever anyway.
Oh, and cost of manufacturing the disks? That goes down too.
Some MDN readers are short sighted…
Roguish Smurf: porn won’t decide who wins because we have the Internet. That’s how most people get their porn (apparently), not through DVD or VHS or Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Things have changed since the last format war.
I think PS3 sales numbers will help persuade waverers who want to be on the winning team to buy Blu-Ray, but it’s all still marketing talk at the moment. Much like the sales numbers we see touted for cameraphones. I have a cameraphone and I never use it, yet my phone is included in those figures to show how popular they are. PS3s are being used to show how popular Blu-Ray is becoming, but how many of those people are using their console to watch movies? There can’t be a very high film purchase rate if PS3/Blu-Ray players are outselling HD-DVD players by a five to one margin, yet the films are selling at the same rate for each platform.
Sony has announced a lower priced player. It will be interetesting to see if they’ve hit the right price point for faster non-PS3 adoption.
However this plays out between the two camps, DVD will still be around in three years.
“‘Within three years it will just be Blu-ray,’ Frank Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association’s European chairman, said at the CeBIT technology trade show…”
Every time I go to BestBuy I’m amazed at two things: 1) How many more HD-DVD titles there are when compared to BluRay titles (about 3x as many!), despite the supposed advantage of having so many more studio ‘backers’ for BR, and 2) How goddamn expensive standalone BluRay players are. I know a PS3 is cheaper, but that’s still the most expensive new console going, so any advantage there is kind of blunted. Besides, ma & pa generally ain’t interested in Gears of War (or whatever …).
When it comes right down to it, with upscaling and such a huge installed base and reasonable prices, I just don’t see DVD going anywhere. And when it is time to displace DVD, it won’t be by another optical disc format – it’ll be by internet downloads, DVRs, and (if portable formats are still needed) cheap flash memory. To the extent these nextgen optical discs get any traction, HD-DVD will be the winner. It’s already walking all over BluRay now.
MDN magic word “thought”
As in, “This corporate suit is hoping no one puts any thought behind what he’s saying.”
I just bought my PS3 about three days ago.
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My part has been done.
Next!
I’m getting a PS3 specifically for Blu-Ray. HDDVD is- sucky!
Especially since Netflix rents BR.
S
The only reasons for me to prefer BR over HD-DVD are those 10 extra gigabytes per layer. 15GB vs. 25GB.
10GB ≥ expensive DVD+R DL
It’s like: hey, you’ve got a beamer. Yeah, mine’s a 325i,… …umm yeah mine’s a 316i,… …they’re still the same series…
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I don’t think there’s gonna be a quarter mile race…
I’m sorry, this ignores the fact that for years both VHS and and dvds existed side by side. This was also the case with cassettes and cds; cassettes and vinyl; and with vinyl, cassettes and cds. And you think the format wars are already over?
What about people with dvd recorders and players? So they’re all going to dump all their old hardware so can fork out heaps of money just because “oh it’s a new format.” Crap!
I’ll tell what people forcus on; food, employment, education, health and eventually travel and entertainment. The authors obviously haven’t read Maslow’s heirarchy of needs. People allocate funds for discretionary spending AFTER all their other needs have been fullfilled.
Personally, the last thing I’m thinking of at the moment is buying a blu-ray player or recorder! I’m not even interested in some hugely expensive television I’ve got other priorities and most families are in exactly the same boat. I’ve seen this arguement before. It’s like saying that everyone in rich countries need GPS units in their motor vehicles. NOT
You guys watch way too much tv.
“People allocate funds for discretionary spending AFTER all their other needs have been fullfilled.”
Tell that to my ex!
:-0
Within 3 years BRay will be dead and there will be another format. Hell I give it 2 years. They’ve already managed to cram 100gigs on a disc in a lab. I heard about that way before HD or BRay even came out.
8gig USB sticks. Walk into Blockbuster or whatever, drop a couple of bucks into the machine, download a movie onto your stick and walk out. The movie will expire within a week or whatever. Or even just download the movie. Mind you 7 to 9 gigs is a lot of bandwith just to download some movie which may be crap anyway. How the hell are we gonna download a 25gig Blue Ray movie.
It’s not BR vs HD-DVD that kills it for me – it’s BR vs DVD. I don’t have a perfect home theater but I have 2 nice TVs w/DVD players, plus the player in the car. If I buy a BR disc I’ll be limited to watching it on 1 TV which doesn’t work for me. I’d rather have one sub-premium medium that can go anywhere.
And for those who say physical media are as good as dead I wonder how many have back-seat DVD players.