DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

So who should you believe?

A couple of days ago, the Blu-ray camp came out with some impressive figures for the latest quarter. According to these claims, 70% of high definition movies sold during the first quarter of 2007 has been Blu-ray movies, and sales have reached the one million mark.

Now, the HD DVD camp has hit back and submitted their own figures, which show that HD DVD movies have only sold 2000 units less than Blu-ray, and will soon pass the one million mark as well. However, the significance of this figure has to be put into context, as HD DVD was launched earlier than Blu-ray and if Blu-ray has managed to outsell HD DVD in this short time, then the 70% figure might not be too far off. The offer of a free copy of Casino Royale for the first few hundred thousand registered purchasers of the PS3 might also have affected this figure (assuming they’ve counted these giveaways as “sales”).

As for hardware, if you do not count the PS3, than HD DVD has a clear 4 to 1 lead, with more than 100,000 units sold already. The PS3 is interesting as it is hard to determine if people purchasing the PS3 is using it for games only, for HD movies only or for both.

So back to the question I posed at the top of this blog? Who should you believe? At this point, no one. A million movie sales is nothing compared to DVD sales at the moment, and with giveaways and promotions at launch, it will take time for these figures to stabilise and show a true picture of what is happening. I personally don’t believe either camp will come out as clear winners, and us consumers will just have to live with dual formats, making us the real losers in all of this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 7:22 pm and is filed under High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.