Europeans love HD DVD over Blu-ray… for now

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 08 March 2007 17:53

Your IT - Entertainment

An online report indicates that HD DVD is winning the race in Europe over Blu-ray, but the real question is will HD DVD’s current lead over Blu-ray last?

A report from DigiTimes says that HD DVD has an 85% market share of next-gen movie disc formats in Europe for the single month of January, largely thanks to the US $499 Toshiba HD-E1 HD DVD player.

It must be remembered that this is for one month only, and is in a timeframe where the Sony PS3 was officially unavailable in the European market.

However, Blu-ray players from Sony and Samsung were available for sale in Europe, and quite possibly because of the more expensive price points they sold at in January compared with Toshiba’s HD DVD player, they only managed to capture the remaining 15% of the market.

DigiTimes quotes GfK Marketing Services statistics showing that during 2006, Toshiba had a 58% market share, but they do not explain what made up the other 42%.

What seems to be accepted throughout the industry is that prices for HD DVD or Blu-ray players must fall below the US $500 mark to gain market acceptance, and with the recent promise from Sony of the possibility of a US $299 player by the end of 2007, the US $500 price barrier looks like it will soon be smashed, hopefully igniting massive consumer interest as happened several years ago with DVD players when prices finally plummeted to realistic levels, much to the chagrin of manufacturers who complained that, ultimately, prices fell much too fast for their liking, and their profit margins.

But with the massive interest in HDTV sets, accompanied by strong sales, consumers will either want a DVD player that can upscale existing DVDs to as high-def a video image as possible, or will likely want to spend that money instead on a real high-def player, be it HD DVD or Blu-ray.

With the PS3 due on March 23 in Europe, and with Blu-ray today offering more high-def movie titles than are available on HD DVD, it is impossible to truly declare a winner beyond who sold more in a given month in this very, very early stage of the game.

Our thoughts are that Blu-ray will win, simply because of the PS3, cheaper Blu-ray players, and most importantly, a larger range of movies on Blu-ray. We feel that HD DVD must not only match Blu-ray at every turn, but must outdo them, and right at this very moment, it’s looking very tough for HD DVD to do this.

For a better picture, let’s see what happens a couple of months after the PS3 has been released, and let’s keep a close eye on new high-def movie releases. It’s the content that’s king, and if HD DVD doesn’t have the range that Blu-ray offers, how can it possibly win, unless masses of pirate movies in HD DVD format flood the market?

Only time will tell, and the whole world will find out. In the meantime, wait – prices will only fall, players will get better, and recorders will emerge, all fighting for the consumer dollar. Unless you absolutely MUST have high-def movies now, do your wallet a favor and wait! Or buy a PS3.