Your analysis does not take into account customers requirements that HD players be able to play both HD and Blueray high definition dvds.
All the HD consortium needs to do is ensure that important movies are sold in it's format. Customers will tend to "dual format players" to ensure they can play all available high def movies, and not just one format.
So in this respect, Sony will become "just another studio". Buying an X-box or PS3 will not cover all a client's "HD DVD" needs.
Unless SNE really screws up, I'd say the smart money is on BLU-Ray.
Swissfondue, I'd say Sony has a couple of years to establish Blu-Ray over HD DVD before dual-format players become available and reasonably priced. Since HD DVD contains much Microsoft-licensed components and Blu-Ray Sony, a dual-format player is always going to be more expensive than a single-format player. If Sony can put a few tens of millions of Blu-Ray players out on the market, the two movie studios that are currently HD DVD-only will come over to Blu-Ray, and the half dozen that are currently Blu-Ray only will see no point in supporting HD DVD.
It's interesting that there are 10x as many Blu-Ray players as there are HD-DVD players, but they only sell twice as many movies.
Could it be that people really don't use their game consoles as movie players?
"Could it be that people really don't use their game consoles as movie players?"
You have a point there. One should also note, though, that MSFT has been unsuccessfully trying to push downloaded movies on the XBox.
I THINK the thing is that HD in general is still in its infancy; people are still watching non-HD overwhelmingly. Which should be good for AppleTV, since the key weakness of that device right now is the limited amount of HD content.
Excuse me for "mashing-up" storage media and internet delivery platforms here, but it's all part of own big content ecosystem.
"Excuse me for 'mashing-up' storage media and internet delivery platforms here, but it's all part of own big content ecosystem."
You bring up the central point. It is all about the content, and only Apple seems to care about delivering it with maximum convenience.
Sony is sort of fighting the last generation physical format war, Microsoft are fighting Sony, and Apple, whilst also trying desperately to recoup something from the billions they have wasted on DRM, consumer electronics and the internet.
As for content, I don't think Hi-Res is the future, it will be convenience. And that means downloads and items working across all digital devices seamlessly. That means no DRM.
Sony and Microsoft are in fact in the losing camp on three fronts:
1. Physical media format war - less relevant going forward, my physical media is the iPod.
2. DRM - Consumer hostile and increases inconvenience and costs.
3. Proprietary - Platform lock, as opposed to Apple who seem to pick openly licensed formats for their media formats (AAC & H.264).
Apple have stopped Microsoft's plans to be the digital guardian and toll man in its tracks.
"Sony and Microsoft are in fact in the losing camp on three fronts:"
Four fronts, actually. If the pea-heads at Sony just encoded everything in H.264, you'd be able to fit HD on a plain-old CD, I should think. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can get AMAZING compression in H.264.
"Could it be that people really don't use their game consoles as movie players?"
To some extent they must be. If people weren't using them to watch movies, then it's unlikely that BR would have sold twice as many movies. It's anecdotal, I know, but I know too many people with PS3s that use them for games and movies.
If you take PS3s out of the equation, then it means that owners of BR players are buying hi-def movies at a much higher rate (than twice as many) as owners of HD-DVD. I don't think HD-DVD advocates want to go there.
Hi,
Please visit www.sonycon.co.uk and sign the petition to get Sony to reduce the price of the PS3 in Europe.
Your support is greatly appreciated.
!CS!
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