US HD hardware sales 3:1 in Blu-ray's favour by year end

[FireBlade]

By Tony Smith [More by this author]
11th December 2007 14:03 GMT
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</noscript> US households will together own 948,000 HD DVD playback devices and almost 3m Blu-ray Disc-capable machines come the end of 2007, market watcher DisplaySearch has estimated.
Breaking those numbers down, we get 2.5m PlayStation 3s, 678,000 HD DVD players, 461,000 Blu-ray Disc players and 270,000 Xbox 360 add-on drives, DisplaySearch said via Home Media Magazine.
Add those numbers up and for every living room-oriented HD DVD device out there, there are three Blu-ray machines.
That statistic may well give Warner's home entertainment division pause for thought if it is indeed waiting to see each format's end-of-year hardware sales before deciding whether to back a single format as some industry insiders have alleged it's considering.



For its part, Warner's only comment on the matter has been to state it has "made no decision to change our present policy which is to produce in both HD DVD and Blu-ray".
Newspaper columnist Bob Lindich maintains this statement's lack of a denial or ambiguous language, not to mention the fact the Warner issued it quickly, is a sign that no move's on the cards.

However, Warner's statement doesn't contradict the aforementioned claims, which suggest it's waiting to see the numbers before casting its lot one way or another. Until then, of course Warner is going to maintain its support-both-formats policy.



http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/12...re_sales_2007/

[evilsatan]

Yes but if standalone HD-DVD drives are beating standalone Blu-ray (948,000:461,000) then those stats mean pretty much fook all. Some people are buying PS3's as a Blu-ray player but most are for the console. Nothing says they will buy a lot of films.

I think a more reliable way (although still not reliable) is to look at the standalone player sales as those are what will generate the most revenue through films for the companies backing them. Just because a console has the drive built in it doesn't mean that support for that format is strong.

I included the 360 HD-DVD sales in the above figures because it is a add-on that people buy to play films, it is not neccessary for the 360 to function as a gaming machine.

[ant3b]

I think once they advertise the fact that the ps3 is a blu-ray player people will catch on!! one of the main reasons why i bought mine! from america.. so i can play there blu-rays as they have more choice and releases earlier

[{{909}}]

it is hard to calculate anything really, for the reason that we cant tell how many people are buying a Ps3 to play films, Im sure its a reasonable % though.

Even software sales are pretty unreliable with companies throwing in silly amounts of disks in with players and so on.

One think is pretty sure though, the person that buys a PS3 for games, is unlikely to go out and buy a HD DVD player, the person who does own a HD DVD player could go out and buy a PS3 for games and then also grab a few BD films if they're not available on HD DVD.
Things like that make me think that BD cant lose really.