What are they thinkin'? They're thinkin': "I work for Toshiba. I would like to still work for Toshiba next week."

Maybe people are buy HD DVD players to keep in the package and sell on eBay in 15 years as a novelty collectors item.

7.47% of grandmothers buy their kids/grandkids things they think they want. Amazingly 7.47% of said kids/grandkids are too ashamed/stupid to ask for a receipt.

I actually purchased on from Walmart on Black Friday for the $89 or whatever it was, I felt $89 and some free movies in HD (HP Laptop came with a free HD movie) Amazon has HD movies for 30% off seems like a smart buy to me. Eventually I'll either get a Blu-Ray/HD combo unit or a seperate Blu-Rate unit when their prices come down. If HD is going away the movies will just get cheaper and I'll buy all of them up and not have to pay the high price for them in blu-ray format.

I am so glad blu-ray won! Cause that means I win in the end too. Think about it, hd-dvd player/upscaler under $100 eventually, plus movies for under $30 SCHWEET

I don't really get this... The average consumer will have no idea that Warner jumped ship and probably had no idea which ship they were in to start with (half of them won't even know there were two ships), so what caused this massive swing?

Either it's a fluke and isn't indicative of any trend, or the only people buying HD-DVD/BD players are the same people reading these blogs (not exactly the film-watching masses).

but they are gonna stop making new crap for the hd-dvd...is, buying old crap cheap, winning really?

I hate REGION encoded crap.

I bought my Blu-ray player last week to celebrate the end of the format war. Looks great and is much better quality than most of the HD cable stations.

Just more FUD

Crap. I was hoping this would go the other way if only because I fear Sony's influence on any "standard", even it their more open-stance nowadays.

Oh well. Let the dust settle. Once someone comes out with a usuable video card/audio solution that handles Dolby TrueHD with a HDMI 1.3 port, I will throw a Blu-Ray ROM in my HTPC. Looking forward to the Vista Media Center update and some of the hardware vendors to get up to speed.

I was just about to plunk down for a Blu-Ray player, then two things happened.

(1) I read that the PS3 was the only currently available player that would support Gen 2 discs, so I wen to go buy a PS3, then....

(2) Steve Jobs announced that the AppleTV 2.0 upgrade was free.

Between my AppleTV and NetFlix, I really see no reason at all to get either.

P.S.

Riddle me this: who is the only company ever to lose a format war to Sony?

A: Microsoft. lol. (Toshiba, Schmoscheeba--it was MS's data format)

@storm:

Neither AppleTV nor Netflix offer real, high-quality HD yet. There was just an article on here about how even supposed 1080i HD downloads were compressed so bad it was hard to call them HD. If you want to enjoy true HD quality in the near future, you'll have to pick a format.

When there are only like 20 HD players sold, it's not hard to catch 93% of the market.

@gibson424: lol, your jokes are funny. oh wait, you're serious? If thats the case...why wasn't HD-DVD killing bluray in sales before the Warner swtich?

@scuba_steve: Your argument holds some ground now, but once Warner stops making HD-DVD discs, it will be blatantly obvious to the average consumer that 75% of the movies available in HD will be on Blu-Ray. Then a spike in Blu-Ray sales would make a lot of sense. As it stands now, I would call this week a fluke. We'll see a better average upwards (for Blu-Ray) in the months to come.

@storm: Cool, so you have no desire to have:
(a) High-def (Apple is only 720, not 1080)
(b) high bitrate video
(c) high-quality sound

However, you are willing to:
(d) pay as much to rent Apple's video as you would to get a TRUE BD rental

And:
(e) How does Netflix help you to watch high-quality, high-def movies when you don't have a BD player?

>>Just more FUD

From the NPD? They are a non-bias third party just reporting data.

Also, NPD data doesn't include PS3 sales.

@storm:
OMG... Actually Toshiba is losing their butt to Sony. I don't see how you can even claim Microsoft is the loser here. All they need to do is release a Blu-Ray add-on drive for Xbox360 users.

I was thinking that I really wanted to see Pan's Labyrinth in HD and I didn't want to wait for the fire sales.

I hope that's all right with everyone.

It is great for the consumer because BluRay is a more universal format, especially when you consider all consumer HD video (AVCHD) can only be played in a BluRay player (via Disc or flash via PS3).

why are there still blogs about HD-DVD? i mean, it's officially dead. or at least in it's death bed...

Does anyone have the raw numbers for this? I wonder how much total high-def hardware sales fell after HD DVD died. There are a lot of people who would've previously purchased an HD DVD player, but Blu-Ray is just out of their price range.

This Blu-Ray victory stuff has been such a self-fulfilling prophesy. As soon as the pundits declared that HD-DVD was dead everyone who had been sitting on the fence ran out and bought a Blu-Ray, realizing a victory that was (and possibly is) far from sure.

Which begs the question: Why didn't someone do this a year ago?

Let's be proactive to predict the vendors who will partake in the next format wars!

Honestly these stats are fluked
Look around outside the geek community to normal everyday people (we the geeks are superior!) JK, everyone has a dvd player and thats a given, everyone who has a PS3 has a blu-ray player, about 25% of xbox 360 owners have a hd-dvd drive. Beyond extreme movie watchers, geeks, and gamers no one I can think of buys either player. Old people have no clue, (my grandparents started hitting their dvr to get it to work). Most college students dont have enough money, newlyweds/families are mostly short on income or have better priorities, which leaves about 15% of America. Of that 15% about half doesnt know about the CES shenanigans. And the final 7.5% makes up the increase. Basically all this means is of the 10 people who own a high def player about 7 of them switched from hddvd to bluray and the remaining 3 are the dumbasses on craigslist (guy near me tried to sell a2 hd-dvd player and his free movies for $550!) or the ones who are looking to get the most out of the war. Yep not a word makes since! Thank you, thank you

Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications, Verizon, Embark, ect.

The next format war will be DL content more than likely. But the holders of the services will surely try and trot out their own "multi media packages" bundled with contracted cable, broadband, phone, life insurrance, and pool cleaning.

Then we'll look back fondly when we didn't need a credit check to watch a new release movie...

@jsmjr816:
Funny how you sorta self fufilled your argument there.

Did you honestly think you were the only one hip to the recent BD/HD-DVD rumblings?

Every mainstream media outlet was covering the switch by Warner Home Video to BD. It was on Reuters, Yahoo News, Google News tickers, CNN, MSNBC, ect.

Joe Consumer wouldn't have to try hard and hear that BD was "winning" the format war and make their buying decision.

Keep in mind, January sees a lot of people cashing in gift cards, making exchanges, spending early tax returns, ect.

Couple that with mainstream news outlets running stories about how 75% of the content will be in BD and it's hard to imagine somone with money burning a hole in their pocket to buy HD-DVD.

@storm: "Riddle me this: who is the only company ever to lose a format war to Sony?"

Sony technically won the battle over Phillips and Panasonic between MD vs. DCC as far as next generation recordable formats to replace cassettes went. of course MD never had anywhere close to the market penetration that cassettes enjoyed. (similar to DVD?) as everyone merely waited for what they *actually* wanted (CD-R ... followed by MP3 shortly after) vs. what Sony said they wanted. CD-R and MP3 also lacked the ridiculous DRM that MD promoted as well. sounds familiar eh? winner of a loser battle... still a loser.

basically the exact same story as MD vs. DCC can be applied to SACD vs. DVD-A... Sony is technically winning that "battle" as well. weeee...

you could also say they beat Panasonic in the Betacam SP vs. MII battle. but that was hardly a battle in the *consumer* electronics arena. i literally have never met a person who used MII gear... i actually don't even know anyone who has *seen* MII gear in person. though it was marketed as a competitor to Betacam SP.

Sony also won the battle between their 3.5" floppy discs vs. all the other random crap (those weird 2.8" QuickDisks come to mind as well as killing off 5.25" disks) that existed at the time.

those are the only examples i can think of. needless to say... "Microsoft" isn't the only possible answer. nor really correct anyway.

@92BuickLeSabre: I like that XD "I work for Toshiba. I would like to still work for Toshiba next week." HAhahahah

@scuba_steve: Its the word of mouth baby, Thats how they are winning.

Sony lost the betamax/vhs war and would not do so again. They saw what VHS did and all the royalties and they would not let it happen a second time. The HD camp just didn't know the sting and loss that was going to happen, and wasn't willing to pony up the funds to ensure they won it.
They really should have seen that Sony would pay any price to win it this time, having lost billions the last time. I'm glad it's over with, the greed of both sides was screwing us over. I want to watch HD movies now and stop all this crap of a coin toss as to which is going to be worthless.

DVD as adopted as a standard cause everyone was on-board here... um no, i won't take blu-ray as the new standard nor will i take hd-dvd as a standard. Format people need to get in mind that they need a universal format for it to work.

Wow! HD-DVD is down and out! now i can inally buy that PS3 when they release the white one in north america

@92BuickLeSabre: you'll have a job. it will be making toshiba blu-ray players when the finally throw in the towel.

Yeah i also think that the next gen battle won't be in physical media it will be just downloads, glad that this dumb war is almost over..unless...

@miguelon918: It's not really a war. It's more like DVD putting the two formats in the ring for a cockfight. DVD isn't going anywhere, while the two superdiscs peck at each other.

I miss the album sized Lazor Disc:)

What the sales numbers mean to a guy like me:

The only people buying Next Gen consoles to play movies are: people who read about the demise of HD DVD in these kinds of forums.

99.9 % (not scientific by any stretch of the imagination), are happy as a clam with good ol' DVDs. If it ain't broke...

Oh give it up, HD isn't going anywhere. Gee, the A3 is the #10 selling electronic item on Amazon today. That's 'electronic item' NOT DVD player meaning this thing is SUPER hot. Who cares the reason, hot is hot. BluRay? No player even in the TOP 100 (yes, including the PS3). Make up all the colorful charts you want, a year from now HD will still be here.

Man, that's bad news. Hasn't anyone realized that Sony is ALWAYS trying to force their own technology on the marketplace ... strictly for Sony's benefit and not the consumer. Wasn't it Sony that put rootkits on our PCs? Wasn't it Sony that came up with the MemoryStick instead of going along with other industry standard formats? Didn't Sony bastardize the Palm platform and try to push their own incompatible Palm devices? Wasn't it Sony that published their massive movie library in PSP format ... which doesn't play on anything but Sony's PSP?

Come on people, wake up and smell the coffee before Sony comes up with a coffee maker that only works with Sony beans and Sony filters!!!

I'm not gonna read any of this because it's all the same biased format war bs.

Muahahahahahaaaaaa Blu-Ray Won!!! So that's why the 360 didn't come with the HD-DVD player built in. They new it was gonna fail all along!

@ffmusicdj: Word of mouth can account for the overall trend we see towards BD. PS3 sales obviously influenced it too... But neither of those factors account for a massive swing in sales over a 7 day period.

I'm not claiming that HD-DVD is still in the fight (because honestly I can't see how they can be) but if you want proof that the war is over, this isn't it.

@PSN: KINGPSYZ: Some mainstream media may well have carried the story, but that doesn't mean normal people paid any attention to it. Apart from people I work with (a technical dept. in a media company, so not exactly 'average joe') I could ask ANY of my friends and they wouldn't have a clue about any of the recent news. Also, I didn't see it on any TV news here in the UK.

@ ITSDON
Wow you really need to pull your head out of your ass and take a deep breath. I know oxygen deprivation is harsh on the brain but DAMN!! HD-DVD is all but gone and the reason it's selling like hotcakes is exactly that. People are buying the hell out of it BECAUSE it's all but gone. This "EndWar" is giving so many people the extra push they needed to spend a little extra money on a quality entertainment system (PS3) and Blu-Ray is gonna blow up. A year from now, HD-DuD will be a foot-note on Blu-Ray's epic ass.

Sony: "Who's your Beta now, JERKS!"

You know, Blu-ray is pushing so hard despite being proclaimed the de-facto "winner" that I have to assume that something really bad is happening behind the scenes that is going to cave Sony in if they don't actually steal the market right now. Why else would they buy a pseudo-study that uses such short-term figures?

And, Chen, what that 7.47% was thinking is that they weren't sheeple. Who really cares which format wins beyond exclusive titles? This is like the video game console industry trying to force sales, and even they've found that exclusives aren't enough to lock up 100% of the sales. Assuming HD-DVD is dead is kind of like assuming the console battle is between the 360 and PS3, as though the Wii not doing HD at all makes it insignificant.

If Gizmodo is not in the same pockets as the NPD group, then you need to show it by applying at least the smallest bit of critical thinking when it comes to interpreting statistics. I still yet to see you feature a story that gives raw numbers and puts them in the context of regular DVD sales. I have yet to see you even report the average number of titles owned per HD player (hint: owners of Blu-ray players buy far fewer movies). If you'd actually show that kind of journalistic integrity you'd actually give people a reason to come here; we can find cheerleading by industry shills anywhere.