Gartner: Blu-ray to win in 2008, HD DVD price cuts are "useless resistance"
By Thomas Ricker 
posted January 28th 2008 5:46AM
posted January 28th 2008 5:46AM
Gartner, the fat lady of research firms, is singing HD DVD's swan song this morning. Hiroyuki Shimizu, Principal Research Analyst in Japan, says in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report that, "Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format." He goes on to call the recent price cuts "useless resistance" in avoiding the inevitable. What's that, you coyly ask? According to Shimizu, "Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over." With 5 of the 7 major studios now backing Blu-ray exclusively, Gartner's certainty on the subject doesn't appear to be much of a stretch.
even with piracy these companies are raking in the profits.How do you make a ten million dollar movie if you are not making money think about it.What they are talking about is lets a dvd costs $5 and they sell ten, they lok around and see that someone has copied and sold 2 at say $3 the way their accounting works is that they have lost $6 now they are making a profit but are still worrying about the $6 they did not make so they say they are losing money .they are not losing money just additional profit.
Wow, now that NPD group refuted your claims, you'll just go to another research group that'll back your claims. Classy.
It was a 60/40 split up until the beginning of the year when Toshiba did away with their price cuts (which coincides with Warner's surprise announcement.)
Blu-Ray nuts loved bringing up eProductWars...until Christmas, when HD DVD pulled away, then of course that wsn't really representative of what was REALLY going on and more an indicator that consumers were "idiots" than anything.
And then of course, the deep price cuts were a clear indicator that it was almost over and that Toshiba was just desperate. No word from the Blu-Ry camp on how wonderful it is that Blu-Ray players were being GIVEN AWAY WITH TVs. Clearly, that's a win for the Blu-Ray camp because it means that people have players...not a bad sign, of course, since there are no bad signs, only good, and likely the consumers bought the TVs because they came with the winning format, which clearly means the consumer has spoken.
Y'all will point out that, on HD DVD releases, special features tend to be 4:3 420p while dismissing the crippled nature of current Blu-Ray players, stating that "most people just care about the movie."
Y'all just can't handle that each and every HD DVD unit out there has been PURCHASED, which is not true of Blu-Ray.
As I've said many times before, I'll acknowledge that there are several things about Blu-Ray that are vastly superior than HD DVD, and given an eventual demise of HD DVD, I'll buy a Blu-Ray player in the future...but this constant "it's all over for HD DVD" content being rammed down peoples' throats, with constant overlooking of the facts, just sticks in my craw. If people choose to buy the "losing" format, and if the "impossible" happened and enough people bought the "wrong" format, and studios still ignored it as an "anomaly" and merely "idiots" buying the "wrong" format, it'd be business suicide.
And if the rest of the world goes Blu, it means studios are stuck with two formats anyway, since CH-DVD will be the format in China. Have fun with that!
Guys, I don't know why you're so desperate to make sure, two weeks after Warner made their announcement, that we all understand without a shadow of a doubt that it's OVER and it's ALWAYS been over, but the longer I see it and the more I see the actual data ignored when it doesn't look as rosy for Blu as you'd like to think it is, the more people like me smell a rat. And every time someone like me pipes up and points out that there's a problem with the logic presented, there's 20 people (usually the same 20 people) piping in with moronic "lol your an idiot" posts pointing out our obvious idiocy for ever thinking that the format could "win."
Why so much backhanded politics, and so much hate, for a spinning disk player that plays movies? Makes me sick, it does.
Guys...sometime the wrong format wins despite everything. If you keep it up with the obnoxious stories, it just might. For every person piping up with the idiot comments, there's someone like me who, well, saw who was behind Blu, saw things about it we didn't like, and decided the smart choice was to buy the "inferior" format. And when two studios decided the format war for the consumers, a whole flock of churlish fanboys decided to go on the offensive. Shame on you.
Wake me when the sub-$200 BD-Live players are available...
So sad ... in MY opinion, a good deal of the blue ray players sold and being used are actually Playstation 3 systems purchased to play games and then watch movies. The numbers unfairly pushing the adult HD movie watchers who purchased actual HD systems for the sole purpose of watching HD movies out of the picture. So very sad ....
Anyone want to buy my HD-DVD player?
I already said in December 24th 2007, this year 2008 HD-DVD would die. I didn't expect it was so early in February.
Check the links with the notices:
The announced death of HD-DVD
http://jordialonso.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/the-anounced-death-of-hd-dvd/
La muerte anunciada del HD-DVD
http://www.cine.com/jordialonso/?p=972