Some of the biggest companies backing the Blu-ray format for high-definition movies are hedging their bets by introducing players that can also show Internet video, which is making surprising inroads in the home-entertainment market.
Even as the electronics industry pushes televisions for watching three-dimensional videos as a future growth area, Panasonic Corp. acknowledged that it will be challenging to get consumers to upgrade to 3-D sets so soon after many purchased new flat-screen TVs.
Blu-Ray drives have yet to make a dent in the PC business. In 2009, according to research firm iSuppli, just 3.6 percent of all PC systems will include Blu-Ray drives. In 2013, iSuppli predicts, the total will still be a rather modest 16.3 percent.
High-definition flat panel televisions get cheaper every day, but for most people they still aren’t considered a cheap purchase. Tack on the cost of Blu-ray players, movies and HD cable, and you can find yourself saddled with bills as you transition from standard definition to high definition.
Netflix is suddenly one of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies–it just reported blowout Q4 earnings, gave a strong Q1 outlook, and its stock has doubled since November. And the company’s service is becoming ubiquitous in the home entertainment space. So why did Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt downgrade the stock this morning from Hold to Sell, estimating its fair value to be well below its current level of $35.95?
Farewell, VHS… and don’t let the door hit you on your way out. Though most of us have given up our VHS players by now in favor of something a little less dated, there have been the usual stragglers in the “old ‘n’ busted video format” department that have kept VHS alive long past its expiration date.
Blu-ray is in a death spiral. Twelve months from now, Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product. With only a four percent share of U.S. movie disc sales and HD download capability arriving, the Blu-ray disc Association is still smoking dope. Even $150 Blu-ray players won’t save it.
In a Q&A session after the launch of Apple’s new notebooks today, Steve Jobs called Sony’s Blu-ray a “bag of hurt” and stated that licensing the standard for Blu-ray hardware and software is currently too complex. Jobs then remarked that Apple is waiting for Blu-ray to “take off in the marketplace.”
The NPD Group released a report today showing that post-holiday sales of Blu-ray didn’t exactly skyrocket after Toshiba folded the HD DVD tent in February. After dropping 40% from January to February, sales of set-top Blu-ray players (i.e., those not built into a PlayStation 3) crept up 2% in March, NPD said. HD DVD sales, meanwhile, fell off a cliff that month.
Even if you don’t care one bit–and this probably describes the vast majority of Americans–you have probably heard by now that a Great Format War has been fought, and apparently won. The HD-DVD format for DVDs, backed by Toshiba, has lost out to Sony’s Blu-ray format. To be sure, there are some caveats. Computerworld’s Lucas Mearian writes that Blu-ray’s victory may not be remotely as meaningful as it seems. Having recently spent a cold, rainy, but thrilling afternoon walking the Freedom Trail in Boston, I would put it this way: The Blu-ray victory may end up being as expensive, and as predictive of ultimate victory, as was the British victory of Bunker Hill. So what are we to make of this format skirmish? We gathered up a group of smart people who think about such things and asked them the following: Is the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray really over? What can we learn from it?
Forget about customer satisfaction or superiority of image quality. The real issue in the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was about royalties.
With the competition gone, the Blu-ray consortium now has the opportunity to persuade PC makers and consumer-electronics makers to adopt Blu-ray drives as their optical drives of choice. It will also get studios and disc makers to deliver Blu-ray discs to consumers. And every time one of those drives or discs leaves a factory, the Blu-ray Disc Association will get a royalty.
You can get away with a three-letter initialism as a product name, but if you try to stretch it to five, you’re sunk. HD DVD? It never really had a chance, particularly when it was up against a snappy futuristic-sounding name like Blu-ray. If the Jetsons had decided to get a second dog to keep Astro company, they would have named it Blu-ray.
Can’t you picture Elroy throwing the happy pup some kind of electronic chew-toy gizmo?
Fetch, Blu-ray!
A few weeks ago, when we noted that it really looked like HD DVD might finally be done for, we were surprised to see the number of folks in the comments insisting that we were crazy, and HD DVD had a long future ahead of it. Well, it appears that future has been cut short. In the past week, Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart all said they would sell exclusively Blu-ray players and discs going forward, squeezing out whatever last minute hope there was of rescuing HD DVD. Now reports are finally coming out that Toshiba has come to terms with the inevitable and will officially kill off HD DVD in the next week or so. The thing is, this is really three years too late.
“What if nobody wins the high-definition DVD format wars?” the New York Times asks in a non-news summary of the battle between Sony and Toshiba over Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. But that’s the wrong question. The relevant one is “Who’s losing the format wars?” and the answer, still, is: Hollywood.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
