Blu-Ray sales down without HDDVD competition
Looks like it wasn’t the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle that was keeping potential customers away from high-definition video players after all. The NPD Group released some of its retail sales tracking data Wednesday that showed sales of Blu-ray standalone players (not a PlayStation 3, combo player, or PC with Blu-ray drive) had mostly decreased since the beginning of the year. Standalone Blu-ray player unit sales in the U.S. decreased 40 percent from January to February and saw a very slight increase (2 percent) between February and March, according to NPD. HD DVD players fared even worse–player unit sales dropped 13 percent from January to February, and 65 percent from February to March–which was expected. Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD units in February, and the format’s promotional group disbanded in March.
So what does this mean for Blu-ray player vendors? Why haven’t sales experienced any sort of substantial uptick without a competitor? Prices offer one clue. Blu-ray player prices were at their peak for the year in mid-March, around $400. During the holiday shopping season the average price had been closer to $300. But more likely is what NPD’s high-def video analysts have been harping on for a while: that DVD is “good enough” for most consumers. And that the picture offered by a Blu-ray Disc and accompanying player doesn’t appear so overwhelmingly better than a standard DVD and an upconverting player that many consumers can’t justify the dramatically increased cost. To that point, sales of significantly less expensive upconverting DVD players have actually increased 5 percent over the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Standard DVD player sales dropped 39 percent over the same period.
Source: Cnet
Comments(70)
Blu-rays definitely better than hddvd , but prices are going to come down in a bit
price needs to drop a little more. Ill wait when im able to buy a bluray reader for under 99 dollars.
It´s because of Piracy! Lol..:)
Stupid companies. Because it’s too expensive! They don’t have any competition since HDDVD is off the market. They need to drop their prices otherwise people are still choosing dvd’s. Indeed like @2 said; people wait ’till it costs less than a 100 bucks or euros and the discs need to drop. Than it will become more popular. And of course the available titles needs to expanse.
well durr, i could have told you that 6 months ago!. It;s obvious that people prefer dvd over blueray or HD because of the cost. They’re not THAT much better. Most people are happy with a 1 gig movie….not 50gig that a blueray holds.
to james, theres a big difference in hd and blu ray compared to regular dvds especially if you have the right tv and the right set up, like my sister has a lcd which hd looks almost like regular dvd and my parents have one of those dlps and it looks the worst. but on my plasma it looks amazing
you were probbaly just seeing hd on a bad tv
VHS to DVD was a massive jump, Blu-Ray is just as big a change in terms of quality. But the problem is, the majority of people don’t have the equipment to truly appreciate HD at this moment in time, if you have a 32″ lcd tv then an upscaled dvd is fine, plus its cheap. To the average man on the street Blu-Ray seems to be a little unneccesary at the moment, obviously, in time this will change.
I will sound like an idiot, but is any of you actually watching DVDs or BRDisks ? Do you purchase from video stores ? do you burn ?
Pesonnaly, once I’ve watched a movie, I very rarelly watch it again, so why should I have a DVD or BR reader ?
The thing that has prevented me from taking up BD (I have a 1080p TV) is the region coding. With little to no choice of films in the UK I have to look to the US for my discs but have been put off by the sudden increase in region locked films since HD-DVD died.
tbh i see people downloading BD rips in the future like they do with dvd rips now, saves cash
@ Zleet
Many new Blu-ray films are still encoded in all 3 regions therefore making them effectively region free. There are websites which post this information so it might still be worth checking out.
@ everyone
I have the latest 46″ Bravia X range and upscaled DVD’s don’t look that good on it. Blu-ray and other 720p/1080p media on the other hand look fantastic. If you have a TV bigger than 37″ then upscaled stuff is going to look marginally better than an SDTV signal.
What the manufacturers need to do is release BD players which are BD profile 2.0 and drop the price massively. If any of you really pay attention, you’ll notice that the RRP of DVD’s (in the UK) is almost the same as a Blu-ray film.
All new DVD’s still cost around £20.00, but the retailers sell them cheaper which is a good thing for us. leading up to 2004, new DVD’s were selling for between £17.99 and £24.99 in HMV and Virgin without discounts. Have a quick look at Play.com and you’ll all see the RRP’s…
yeah right when a $20.00 dvd player and a $2.00 dvd disc gives u a very good resolution, so why settle for more when u can settle for less and youre very comfy in life in general
Okay if sales are dropping for the blueray since HD Dvd players left the market…Sounds like Sony was buying their own product to support the sales….True it could be the price but that is a massive drop in sales…And I know there is a blue ray being made for the 360, should be out in a month or 2 I think I was reading it right, that lite on is making it…I know Microsoft denied it, but the company making it said it was true…But when it comes out yes I will be buying it for my 360, and hopefully they place the pads on the eye or where ever to stop scratching the disk……
People do download 1080p rips off private trackers. 8-12gb usually. The size of torrent that survives on public trackers is slowly rising. In time I think they will become more popular, as broadband speeds rise. And there is a phenomenal difference in quality. Even 720p TV rips are noticeably better.
Upscaling is what your software/hardware does when you fullscreen a video that is a lower resolution than your computer screen, and you know it’s not as good.
BD-ROM drives are £80 and the films are £10 in the UK at the moment. I’m on the verge of investing. I’ll definitely get one with my next build. I think it’ll be a fair while until iTunes etc are offering 8gb+ 1080p legal films downloads, so I think Blu Ray has a future. Especially as 37in+ 1080p screens come down in price.
HD rocks…. If I could I’d never watch anything in lesser quality. However there are some issues of which some have already been mentioned…
1) Movie collectors already have a massive collection of DVDS – which begs the question “DO I get rid of the old ones and get new format – or?” which makes it a practical bump as well as a mental bump.
2) DVD’s are way cheaper in comparison.
3) For some people it’s not just a matter of getting the BR player, you also have to shell out for a new TV that justifies the purchase of such a player. And… with that quite possibly also a newer surround system. That’s a lot of moola.
4) New and better formats are already on the rise and HD/BR haven’t really gotten a foothold of the market today so one might argue the market isn’t ripe for this kind of paradigm shift. It’s not a big enough leap in people’s minds to justify the huge investment.
well well… Joe Public ain’t as dumb as the corporate sharks assume…
To bad that the general public are pretty stupid. They dont have a clue about Blu-ray or the quality.
Drop the price and maybe some of us could afford it. There aren’t enough movies in HD yet to make it worth while. only half of the new releases get HD format. I still haven’t seen Beowulf in Blu-Ray WTF??? That movie deserves it more than Juno, or Michael Clayton, come on now.
Increasing the sale of Bluray disc and players, requires:
1: Bluray disc must decrease in price. It must be same price as DVD movie.
2: Bluray players must also fall in price.
3: Bluray recorder/burner and recordable disc must also decrease in price.
At this moment, bluray market is too expensive. Bluray have to compete with DVD’ies.
@ Peter Parker
Many US films are released months before on BD in america than the UK. Of the most recent batch of (US) discs many that have been out in the UK a while are region free but new ones from Fox, Disney and EiV are for the most part locked. It seems to be if the release dates mach up then no lock but if it comes out earlier in the US then it’s locked up.
The thing that pisses me off more than anything is that the region for China/japan has been flipped. It used to be that UK and Asia had compatible coding (on DVD) but now that is not the case. They now sit in the same group as the US and are much more strict on region locking, so kung fu in HD is a non starter.
Wow @19 Anders…. after that deeply thought-provoking show of your supreme intelligence, I think we can all go home… LOL
two reasons anyone can figure
price
economy
What’s with all this region-coding angst? So far, unlocking on PC’s has been as easy as installing a simple piece of software,and unlocking players has been a question of finding the right hack/firmware upgrade (usually a combination of keys on the remote). In fact, most resellers will unlock your player for you, if you ask them nicely. Not to mention that loads of cheap players are region-free from the start.
So why would there be any difference in the world of Blu-ray? I’d like to know – before I go out and buy! Thanks…
Exactly bring the price down and we’ll buy them… simple business
Listen here
It’s all going digital. Those bluray players and the bluray disks are too expensive. Also, people don’t understand the kind of setup they need to make the bluray perform at its best.
TV manufacturers are already making TV’s with SD slots. Soon they will start selling “SD like movie chips” that slid into a “DIGITAL CHIP PLAYING HD TV” (meaning its easy for the consumer to understand). Just buy the TV and your set. It’s sooooo stupid that you need a separate device other than your TV to play movies. Quite primitive technology actually. Complete waste of space.
nuff said
-no more comments needed
Dvds are much cheaper now, I can pick up 3 for £20 in HMV after a month or 2, whereas Blu-Ray are about £16 a time. Until they cut the price then i’ll stick with DVD unless theres a film im really blown away with.
Best blu-ray player on market is in the PS3 as its upgradeable and currently Version 2.
It’s not up to manufacterers to beat up costumers on the street demanding for them to buy BluRay players, it’s up to costumers to choose whether they will buy something or not.
I see no point in buying atoll dvds do me just as well as blueray would i can buy 100 good quality blanks for less than £14 & yet that would cost me £14 for a single blank blueray disc no thanks i’ll make do with my current pcture & price.When they won it just gave them the chance to monopilise & make money sony can gettofuk end of story.
well removing the PS3 from the sales is the most stupid thing to do.
IT IS the cheapest BR player around and one of the only upgradable as well.
So guess what, 90% of the people looking for a BR player are buying a PS3 and will benefit from the other features of the system (network media player, games etc…)
I dont even understand how they could remove the PS3 from the equation and not feel dumb
Of course it wasn’t the HDDVD that kept the sales rolling for BluRay…. it was the slight price drop for the BluRay during the battle that would create the sale.. Who in their right mind is going to pay 500 dollars for a machine to watch movies on. C’mon guys, it’s time to get realistic with it, drop the price for the equipment and you will see your sales.
@ saywhy,
Don’t hold your breath for Blu-ray on the 360, it’s not going to happen. To include it as an internal drive will hike up the price to match the PS3. M$ won’t risk selling it as an addon because less than 3% of 360 owners purchased the HD DVD addon and they have concluded that it was a failure. The 360 wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the increased disc space that Blu-ray offers either (yet another reason why no MGS4 for 360).
As M$ and fans of the 360 like to point out, the 360 is a games console, not an entertainment unit yet we see people wanting the 30 to morph into a PS3 (add HDMI, increase the HDD, colour it black and now add Blu-ray support…) and that makes me ROFL.
Blu-ray will be in M$’s next console which I guess they will announce next year. If they announce it this year I will PMSL.
@ 18 wildarms
Beowulf has been out on Blu Ray since 17th March.
The only reason I’m being put off(at this stage) is that I have a 72″ Big screen TV. How the hell is high definition gonna make it any better, i’m just going to get the exact same picture quality?
Not gonna fork out R20 000,00(about $3000) for a new HDTV. Make a cheap HDTV and watch people swarm blue-ray.
So these analyst groups don’t think that the drop in sales rates has anything to do with the massive global economic crash that we are all starting to experience?
people are waiting for the price to drop.
…Uh, as the article says, some of us are happy upcoverting, and don’t feel inclined to re-purchase our movie collection (especially with all-things-digital staring us in the face)?
If you noticed, they said the sale of BD players has decreased since January. But there was an increase in February. So basically what they are saying at the most there’s a decrease in sales Jan, Mar, and April, since we are only 4 months in.
I don’t really think this is a cause for concern nor is it news worth reporting.
A decrease in Jan (makes sense, since it is after the x-mas holidays and most people cut down on spending in Jan. Especially for luxury items.
A decrease in Mar and Apr is not a stretch since the economy has been in the dumps. With gasoline prices up in the $4 range people have to cut back on spending some where.
Also, why did they omit the combo players and PS3? Everyone knows that the PS3 is prob the best BD player out there. I know many people that got a PS3 just for the BD player capability. So by omiting that part of the equation, they made their ’study’ even more worthless. I personally hate it when internet blogs or news site tries to manufacture news when there is none.
Does anyone really care that much about quality?
Maybe I am in the minority here, but really, I don’t give a crap about HD or Blu-Ray, I am happy with my good ol’ dvd quality thanks.
Im holding out for the HD-VMD Rom burner as VMD is soooooooo cheap as compared to BR.
I managed to get a NME HD-VMD ML777s for £30 on ebay ($60 ish), and the DVD upscale is better on my 47 inch hd tv, than on my sony upscaling dvd recorder that cost me over £150…
Says a lot for the quality of Sony these days.
And for everyone going on about the sales figures, try reading the tech posts here from before HD died, sony dropped prices bout 30% and when Toshiba gave up Sony raised prices again which has caused the slow down in sales…
HD-VMD 4ever, or until summit better n cheaper than BR or HD-VMD comes along.
NME HD-VMD site: http://www.nmeinc.com
like someone has already mentioned, if I wanted a BR player I’d spend the extra £50 and buy a PS3, a future proof BR player that can play games and such .. as i’m guessing most other people will.
as for mgs4 not appearing on the 360 because of disc side .. absolute bullsh*t.
@39 Hamo… I felt exactly the same as you not that long ago. Then I thought, “fucI< it, let’s DL a 720p Blu-ray rip (now I got 30MB cable)” to see what all the fuss is about. Well, it’s one thing to see it at BestBuy and something else when it’s “yours” on your own computer. Well, it’s pretty damn good I have to admit. And I’m not even talking 1080p rips–not enough patience and too time consuming to manage… until we get USB3–nor Full-HD TV screens, which has to be better still.
My feeling now is that some movies are just “worth it” to have in HD, depending on your preferences. I almost envy the people who can’t tell the difference; they suffer less from temptation! Yeah for sure, the prices will eventually fall and Blu-ray will be standard. In ten years time we will probably look back and wonder how we ever put up with classic DVD! Remember your grandparents talking about the advent of television. It seemed a miracle at the time… and it was!
When the price of HDTVs drop, i’d get myself a decent one, along with a PS3 or an XBox 360 if ever MS decides to add a BD player in their console. For now, i’ll stick with 720p on my PC.
DVD vs 720p vs 1080p:
http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/6797644/comparison.part1.rar
http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/7047060/comparison.part2.rar
Different scenes but you get the point.
@ald
You got it exactly right. There seems to be an anti-HD backlash present in each news story out there. They deliberately seem to want to imply that people don’t want HD and I don’t really see how that’s the case. This “news” takes the cake… removing the most hands down, most popular Blu-Ray player to say sales have mostly decreased. It’s almost like taking out the iPod and then claiming that MP3 players aren’t selling very well. Even DVD didn’t take over VHS immediately and I’d say this will take even longer to gain dominance as DVD didn’t require a player and new TV to appreciate it.
Personally I haven’t purchased a DVD in the past three years. I’ve been buying nothing but HD products since. Still, I too am waiting for prices to die down. I refuse to pay over $20 for any movie and so far have amassed a library of 53 Blu-Ray titles at well under that. Over the Christmas period I picked up almost half those titles for just under $10 on average thanks to some great sales at Amazon.com. Of the people I know they all seem to be buying in a similar way. Most people are slowing their DVD purchases and waiting until Blu-Ray discs drop just a little more in price.
dumbarss sony.
they killed hd dvd too fast.
now we know which has won and we will surely wait for the cost of blue ray to go down.
Umm the fact that the data excludes ps3s is idiotic. It’s the best blu-ray player you can get today. Future-proof and a next-gen gaming system to boot.
@ dam
I didn’t say it was the only reason why MGS4 will not appear on the 360, I said it was another. MGS4 is a native 1080p game, not upscaled to 1080p from a lower resolution like 98% of all 360’s games.
***Up until the end of September 2007, the 360 only had 3 native 1080p games and the PS3 had around 24.
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070929/4832/
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/xbox360-1080p-games/
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/ps3-1080p-games/
Sure those 3 games fit onto a DVD9 but I’m sure they didn’t contain a wealth of 1080p cut scenes and they aren’t as in depth as MGS4 will be.***
Konami had to use extensive compression for the game to fit on a 50GB dual layer Blu-ray disc. The game has so much content that the Japanese version cannot contain English language and vice versa.
If MGS4 was to appear on the 360 at the same resolution with all of the cut scenes and same audio quality that will be available on the PS3, it would come on at least 8 dual layer DVD’s. You can already see that some games on the 360 are having to be split across 3 or 4 discs, whilst other games will have content removed so that it can be downloaded later, thus forcing Arcade/Core owners to fork out (how much??) for a 20GB HDD if they want to enjoy what they should have received in the first place.
Now we are starting to see PS3 games suffer due to the limitations of other formats:
http://xbox360.qj.net/Ghostbusters-The-Videogame-no-campaign-co-op-exclusive-DLC-screens-info-galore/pg/49/aid/119089
I didn’t want to turn this into a PS3 vs 360 but facts are facts and these are being voiced by developers of up and coming multi platform games.
If they dropped the price of blu ray movies to around $20 for all the good ones and maybe $15 for some of the older movies then it may do better. I can’t justify buying new releases for $30 sometimes $35. Right now my blu ray collection is stuck at 14 movies since i wait for places to run good deals before i buy them. The format is great but it just isn’t the right price yet
It’s the economy, stupid. Hell, many of us can’t even afford to drive to the store, let alone buy overpriced crap.
this might be because people HAVE ONE ALREADY, why would people who have one buy another
When DVD 1st Came Out….the quality was fantastic….when blueray/hddvd came out it was even better even infinetly better some would say… but fantastic is good enough for me, and most people i guesss….when you have to pay for it
@6 steven
isn’t that the whole point? money? ya i have to go buy a $300 player, but thats nothing compared to the $2000 tv and $500 worth of cables and stuff thats needed? without all that sh!t you are wasting your time buying the player……
All of you who keep droning about the exclusion of the PS3 are missing the point. This is about companies OTHER THAN SONY gaining a foothold in the BD Player market. Too many PS3 users are exclusively gamers or gamers & movie watchers. Money spent on games is likely less money spent on movies. This is why the numbers count. BD standalones were outselling HDDVD this past December, that was a factor in the Warner decision.
Let’s see to fill my tank of gas is more expensive than to buy a regrular dvd player so yeah Blu Ray, get the point??
#50 wins. When the economy is in the crapper, people aren’t going to be spending on luxury items and entertainment – it’s that simple.
Wait abaut 2 years. This CD will cost abaut 5$. You’ll see
D
While Quality may be some of the reason, I think that once HD players went on sale for $99 at Wal-Mart the price point was set.
The average person saw that and decided that if HD could do it then there was no justifiable reason to pay 3x+ the cost for a BR player.
The PS3 works at it’s price point since it is a GAME CONSOLE, and BR is considered a BONUS (A nice bonus but still a bonus, that breaks down to about $150 “extra”)
Probably will not happen, but with the US economy in such a wonderful state and the tax rebates on their way it might not have been a bad idea to lower the prices so that people could be thinking about MAYBE picking up a player with the check.
@44 @strengthofmind you fu*k
Don’t donwload, it’s a virus!!!
so true, tune down the price you greedy b@stards
humans have brains. Sony boasts ps 3 increase sales over the months, now they know what ps 3 is being used for primarily…
@59
The virus is this release
http://www.rlslog.net/coreavc-professional-edition-v1700-edge/
and it is flagged as
Backdoor.Win32.SdBot.doz Trojan
or Backdoor.Sdbot.AO
but I’ve never had any problems with it.
I’ll make another one with a clean release. Sorry
@59
My up to date AVG didn’t detect anything, but having looked on torrent sites people had complained about that version of that release.
I’ve added another version of that release that has had no complaints, so this one should be fine.
DVD vs 720p vs 1080p:
http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/990200/hdcomparison.part1.rar
http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/6079179/hdcomparison.part2.rar
lol this was always the case – dvd simply IS good enough for most people, that and the fact that many consumers don’t have money to waste on some gadget which does pretty much what their existing $40 player does – it plays movies ($20 cheaper movies) – we don’t all need to see 18,0000,0000,0000 lines of resolution or the color pink in 3 zillion tones to enjoy a movie. as per usual the elite who can’t wait to piss their money up the wall on the latest thing have funded another bum industry. lol.
I’m just not going to pay $30 for a DVD. Most of what comes out is crap, and I’m not going to start replacing the classics at $30 a piece. Ill wait until blue ray becomes affordable, buy a BD burner, and start a collection then.
I think it is caused by the high prices of gas; I can’t afford to buy as many games, movies or books now that it cost so much to fill my tank…
My issue with blu-ray is that I don’t own an HDTV and right now the good ones are still too expensive. I won a regular standard television and I am happy with a DVD player and dvd resolution.
There’s also one other thing I got with high definition movies is well.. yes. They do give you a much clearer picture… a little too clear IMHO. So clear that you can see the actual makeup on the actors and their aging wrinkles and zits.. through the makeup. Normal DVD covered this up due to its lower resolution.
Now the positives to High definition movies is when you’re watching a high quality cgi film (Pixar, Dreamworks) or some high definition nature program. I remember see BBC’s Planet Earth on a 1080p television (at 120hz to boot) and my jaw just dropped. I was staring in awe and I think I even shed a tear.
I guess HDTV in general has it’s ups and downs, depending entirely on the content in question, but I think it’s the downs that is keeping me from going high def.
I have to say I agree with #39 I dont want HD (as long as its not cam quality) and definately don’t use actual physical optical discs, I store every thing on hard drive or ipod I even got a car head unit so I can just plug ipod in, no discs (they always got scratched). I can’t believe they are still being used tbh. I watch everything on my laptop, dont need a big screen. And always use earphones, no surround sound system. I like the idea of making movies available on sd memory cards, Would work for me!
well..the problem here you see is ..we have to eat and drive now and then …
Someone said that the quality jump from a DVD to a Blu-ray is comparable to the jump from VHS to DVD. I beg to differ. In VHS your tapes got worn out very fast, would not last unless stored in suitable conditions and the image was not perfect at all, specially after the first viewings. Blu-ray offers more resolution yes, but whereas some magnetic distortion may kill your mood in a vhs tape, most films gain little from a DVD to a Blu-ray.
Do you really need to see every every zit on the guy’s face to enjoy a good movie? Seeing the excess makeup on the lead actress makes you love a movie you wouldn’t otherwise?
I’m not eve discussing the price range here. Clearly, for now Blu-ray standalones are just expensive “i got one” toys with little use.