Big Tech
Blu-ray sales trouncing HD DVD at Amazon
Maybe Sony (SNE) will have the last laugh after all. These days on Amazon.com (AMZN), sales of discs in Sony's Blu-ray format are trouncing rival HD DVD. A look at the rankings today shows that the bestselling HD DVD title – Happy Feet – is #129 in the DVD sales rankings. Five Blu-ray titles are outselling it: Casino Royale, Black Hawk Down, X-Men 3, The Departed, and Kingdom of Heaven.
Read this article for a realistic interpretation of the numbers:
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6422898.html
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Actually, a better comparison is a title sold in both formats. HD-DVD is the clear winner: Blue Planet is #34 for HD-DVD and 708 in Blue Ray. At one point I saw the sales numbers for each, and the difference is gigantic.
The problem is that a lot of the movie houses are releasing movies on BRay only, so if people really want such and such movie, they have to go BRay. If HD-DVD can get more releases, they will surely win, but as it is who knows.
But I can say between the two, HD-DVD seems to be winning when you compare them, either via DVDs that are sold on both, or in AVMags that look at technical qualities, such as picture quality. Also, backwards compatibility is a huge issue, I now have a top-quality upconverting DVD player, and BRay people have to keep using their 10 year old dvd player for normal content. My non-HD content looks 90% as good after strong upconversion.
So I'm in the HD-DVD camp, but they have to get more releases or its over.
Oh – and so people know, the main reason BRay is doing well at all is the PS2 co-sale. Without that the race might already be over.