The Battle is Over - Blu Ray is Now the Victor in the High Definition DVD Format War
October 21st, 2009 |
THE SHORT WAR IS OVER- SONY IS KING OF THE DVD WORLD
Even with the very disappointing overall sales of the latest Playstation format, the PS3, Sony still has something to crow about. Blockbuster’s SVP of merchandising, Matthew Smith, has issued a very strong statement that indicates the fact that Blockbuster Video is about to stop renting out Toshiba’s new high-def dvd format, HD-DVD, very soon.
He related to the media that since Blockbuster had started renting out both high def DVD formats in more than 250 stores nationwide, that his customers were renting Blu Ray DVD’s over HD-Dvd’s seventy percent of the time. That kind of overwhelming blow to Toshiba will never be able to be overcome in the future. In fact, Toshiba recently reduced its overall US sales goals by 40 percent, a kind of white flag waving that signifies they know they are being beaten to a bloody pulp by the Sony sales crew.
MOVIE STUDIOS WERE A MAJOR FACTOR
Because Sony was able to get every major movie studio on board with releasing their biggest blockbusters on the Blu Ray format, Sony was able to thwart any exclusive deals that Toshiba had originally signed with Hollywood studios just a few years ago. Also, Sony put a Blu Ray in every PS3 sold, which is currently up to over 1.6 million nationwide sales. That factor, plus the much improving sales of HDTV’s as a whole, helped ease Sony’s dominance in winning the new format wars.
IN EVERY WAR THERE ARE LOSERS AND WINNERS
The two companies that have been hurt the most in this war are definitely Toshiba and Microsoft. Toshiba put untold millions of dollars worth of reseach and development into coming up with this now almost-forgotten format and will certainly lose a lot more money when they will have to start pulling their thousands of HD-DVD players from the shelves of retail outlets like Best Buy and Circuit City in the near future.
Microsoft also feels a heavy loss because they were just starting to sell more HD-DVD drives which allows X-Box 360 owners that bought one to watch high-def movies from the X-Box 360’s hard drive after attaching the HD-DVD upgrade to their X-Box 360 units. The thousands of X-Box 360 owners who spent $200 each on the upgrade units are feeling stung right now to say the very least.
THE FUTURE LOOKS EXTREMELY BLEAK FOR HD-DVD
When you do go into a Circuit City store in the weeks to come, you will probably be seeing a lot of close-out specials on HD-DVD players though out the store. Whatever you do, don’t buy one! There will not be any new HD-DVD movies coming out from any studio starting in August of this year, so all you will have to look forward to seeing will be the same Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone movies from back in the eighties that are still being re-formatted for the HD-DVD units that have already been sold.
The consumer is the ultimate winner right now, as Blu Ray burners should drop in price substantially within the next few months so you will be able to make copies of all of your Blu Ray discs and share them with your friends and relatives who already own a PS3 or a stand-alone Blu Ray unit. But if you happen to own a HD-DVD player, all is not lost. You can still watch the hundreds of HD-DVD movies available in retail chains throughout America and start saving your money for the inevitably much cheaper Blu Ray stand-alone units that should be coming out before Christmas.
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