Gizmodo
This morning, we wrote about a stat that Europe's HD-DVD title sales had spiked and surpassed Blu-ray sales. That's wrong. That writer actually used US data, so we updated our post. But what about that US spike? It didn't have anything to do, actually, with the fact that HD-DVD has over 100k non-Xbox players in the field. That would have revealed itself with a more gradual climb in the charts.
Apparently, the spike occurs the same day that HD-DVD fanboys at AVSForum, the AV enthusiast site, had organized an mass buy of HD-DVD titles. For an immature format, even a few individuals can make a difference, if only on a day.
This post lays down their gameplan for the buy on April 15th, the one year anniversary of HD-DVD's launch:
The idea is to show support for HD DVD by buying movies on a specific day. There is no better way to show support for HD DVD than by backing it financially. If there is a strong demand for HD DVD software, then hopefully Blu-ray only studios will at least go neutral.
A month later, over 350 members were signed up on AVSForums, but not alone. Countless other HD DVD fanboys on other sites joined in. And on that day, many people grabbed anywhere from 2 to a dozen discs, sometimes more — Likely not more than 10,000 copies, by my guess. But that's a significant amount on a single day for a format that has less that a million titles sold in total. They'd even managed to get the random, but beautiful BBC documentary Planet Earth box set up into the top 5 sales for movies on Amazon, which members talked about as a first for any HD disc. (Casino Royale on Blu-ray only reached #6).
And as you can see, HD-DVD's sales rank broke out of its second tier title sales rank on Amazon, if only for a day.
Funny enough, on the other side of the fence, on AVSforum's Blu-ray Fanboys, as well as those on PS3 forums are planning a retaliatory synchronized buy soon.
One thing's for sure in the format war. HD-DVD's fanboys are far more original and spirited.
April 15th - Buy HD DVDs from Amazon Day! [AVS Forums, thanks Keith!]
Data [HDGameDb]
Comments
This encouraged me to buy my first blu-ray movie today. :P
This sounds really cool. I think that they needed a month long buy to get studios to consider going format neutral.
I bet it was fun.
I wonder what the returns will be like next week.
looks like bill gates went on a hddvd shopping spree on the 15th.
zaq2g: I was going to say that!
Blu-Ray is clearly superior, why don't we all just admit that?
@zaq2g
lol, he probably did. blu-ray ftw.
i'll stick with dvd for now, since i don't have an hdtv. once i do, i'll get blu-ray.
HDVD fanboys? BluRay fanboys? Why would someone be a fanboy of a format? I can understand if someone buys a system and wants to get more support and games for it... but a video format? If you bought a player before the war was over you had money to burn and took a risk... get over it.
I'm going to stick with DVD for a while. I can't afford a) an HDTV or b) an HD-DVD or blu-ray player. I also don't want to be the idiot stuck with a rack full of obsolete media once this whole thing is settled. Finally--and this is just between us--I hear that, because of HD-DVD's amazing picture clarity, you can distinctly see the scabes of all your favorite porn stars. Who wants that?
Hey, this inspired me to get a HD-DVD disc. And partly because I'm interested in another one for my HD-DVD Xbox 360 add-on.
this is retarded. not unlike getting on the NYTimes best-seller list by buying a million copies of your own book.
"hey guys, let's all buy the star wars disc this month, okay? that'll show 'em!"
- ballmer
Yeah, certainly nobody will notice that this was simply a one-day, completely anomalous spike, and Blu-ray will throw in the towel. Nevermind that, assuming you think Amazon's sales figures mean anything outside of Amazon, that blue line in the aggregate is still quite comfortably above the red line. Hmm.
This is a much longer blog posting in the making, but: isn't a little mental that people become fans of particular formats? I mean we're all inevtiably part of the whole consumerist game a little bit, but isn't this pushing it just a tad far? Isn't one simply a 'fan' of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray simply because of an initial investment that one is now looking to justify to oneself?
This is capitalism at work, and not in the whole "I love the free market bullshit" sort of way. When you have an entire cultural system that identifies people by and through the purchases they make, we become so oblivious to the entire process that we start becoming fans of 'formats' - the difference between which have no ostensible bearing on our lives other than how we choose to distract ourselves, and even then, not bloody much. While I too would be antsy about investing a few hundred dollars into a piece of tech, only to have it be obsolete a year later, to my mind, becoming a fan of one media-delivery format over another means the sort of misery depicted in a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia isn't actually too far away.
I know that the comments section on the Giz isn't exactly the place for this, but c'mon - enough is fucking enough.
/vague, stupid post-marxist rant over. Blu-Ray ftw.
I'm not in favor of HD-DVD b/c I thought it would win and plunked down $3000 for a player; I could really care less except for one, monumental reason:
Blu-Ray is backed by Sony. Shitty-format-making, rootkitting Sony.
HD-DVD FTW 4ever.
blue-ray fans co-ordinate a counter attack turning their sales charts into a large middle finger..
Mr_Mischif : So you support HD-DVD for no other reason than you don't like sony? - Definition of a fanboy.
I see the HD-DVD supporter are playing right into the hands of amazon/microsoft ;-)
But I think they (the people who brought all the HD-DVDs) are going to be pissed off when all those HD-DVDs become obsolete after blu-ray takes over - as see in the sales graph.
dnzperson: That is not a definition of a fanboy. It is someone who stands up for what he believes in.
Don't like how a company has acted? don't give them your money... it's the only way they will listen.
If you went to a restaurant and you got food poisoning, would you go back? You better or your a fanboy.
Sony did this with their root kits, only it made your pc sick ;)
What a waste of time and money... Hope their investment isn't lost once blue-ray takes off. Maybe dual format or some kind of resolution will be the norm soon.
The desperate hd dvd fanboys are going crazy.
On DVDEMPIRE Blu-ray still leads...
http://www.dvdempire.com/Content/Features/hidef_wars.asp
BluRay's PWN HD-DVD's. Period.
They're technically (and graphically) superior and have more studios behind them. Plus they have a creative name, not just DVD with an HD stuck on the front. Sony works hard to stay ahead of the game and I hope they're rewarded when the general public catches up with them.
How is Blu-ray superior graphically?
Shouldn't the numbers on the y axis be reversed, in ascending order?
I think you're underestimating the significance of the Planet Earth collection. It's not a "random" choice by any means. If anything, it's the perfect starting point for a HD collection - a beautiful, thoughtful piece of TV that can only be truly enjoyed in HD (and, it must be added, with the original Attenborough narration and without the ADHD editing that the Discovery Channel spewed out).
I bought an HD-DVD drive for my Xbox because it was cheap and I can hook it up anywhere. Blu-Ray hasn't even come close to that kind of value.
And if The House That Bill Built is subsidizing it, who cares? It's cheap. They're technically very similar, so no reason to choose one over the other. They have similar groups of heartless corporations behind them, so no reason to choose one over the other.
It literally came down to whoever gave it to me at a low price first, and HD-DVD did it. I once cared about the anti-consumer DRM garbage, which was a HUGE knock against Blu-Ray (HD-DVD, not innocent either), but who cares, now? Both formats look hacked, so all the DRM in the world can't stop it.
Make all the cheap whore jokes you want. HD-DVD served it up cheap, so in my book, they win.
God, I don't even care who wins, as long as someone does, and soon. I'd really like to see prices go down, content go up, and me not end up with a useless player.
@ scrawledinwax The best post! Nice to read something that isn't just flaming.
And personally I'm with bigtimes. I'm holding back for the winner and thus keeping my flame low. Get it over and done with, and not just with stupid PR and lies, get it over with in a way that benefits the majority of the consumera (like that would ever happen, but here's hoping!).
Chances are neither Blue-ray or HD-DVD is going to win. All that's going to happen is companies are going to find a way to make systems that will play both formats very easily, and the drives will cost about as much as a solo format drive. Same thing happened with DVD+/-R and DVD-RAM. I don't see why anyone thinks this is going to be much different.
This is like what's been happening with Sanjaya, right?
@ Dathmar
DVD+R sucks ass. DVD-R ftw.
@myself
FTW. I've seen it said all over the internet. What's sad is I just found out what FTW meant. I thought it meant "F The World," but with the same connotation of "For The Win." I like F The World better.
I,m sticking with normal DVD .
so SONY and Bill Gates both loose sleep I,m sure
Haha. Wow. Thats impressive to see, however, it seems a bit desperate. Like, er, throwing you cellphone onto the grass before you get pushed in the pool. Sure, you lose less, but you still lose. I think Blu Ray will become the standard, eeveeeennnntually, boosted by what I think is a horribly underestimated PS3 and come on, just a cooler name. HDDVD to me just sounds like DVD. Im bored of DVD, Im tired of saying DVD. I want something new, not simply a better model of the last thing...
too.much.free.time.
also, i'm going by how much content is available so the blu-ray obviously wins.
I dont get it... When will people realize that there really won't be a "Winner" in the end. Here's whats going to happen.... soon, a hybrid player will come out. Then, prices will come down to where people will buy them without having to sell a kidney. It wont matter to the consumer what format a movie is released on, only to the movie companies, and early adopters. This is exactly like dvd+/-.
Betamax FTW!!!!!!
Dang, and I thought the mac cultists were extreme.
soo.... i'm guessing most of them have been hOLDING OFF ON BUYING HD-DVDs for the big day then??
No wonder hd-dvd sales have been slow... doh.
After watching blueray and NORMAL dvd on a massive screen from the recommended distance I could hardly tell any difference.. so i'd be surprised if either format is noticably superior to the other.
If one wins, it won't be for any technical reason..
Hanes over Fruit of the Loom FTW. Eat it FOTL fanboys!
Honestly...get a life people.
I want HD-DVD to win because it doesn't have region coding. Seems like a perfectly sound reason to me.
That said, I haven't bought a player because they're too expensive and the marginal improvement in video quality isn't worth it.
There are very few technical differences between the two formats. The big deal makers for me come down to policy differences. The following features are important to me:
- Region free (only HD DVD has this)
- Mandatory Managed Copy (HD DVD's backers are big supporters of this, Blu Ray not so much)
- Less DRM (AACS is optional on HD DVD discs, mandatory on Blu Ray)
- Low price
- Future compatibility (current Blu Ray devices won't be able to play all the features on upcoming discs, such as picture-in-picture and network access to download extra sub-titles/language tracks)
Blu Ray's two big technical advantages are storage space and the super-hard protective coating, but since a 30GB HD DVD already has enough space to hold the extended version of LOTR 3 with lossless audio, how much more space do you need?
One thing's for sure in the format war. HD-DVD's fanboys are far more original and spirited.
... I would call that desperate
It will be interesting to see if Blu-ray supporters are able to achieve a similar spike.
One thing I want to know - why do HD-DVDs look better/sharper than Blu-Rays? I mean, let's take a recent movie available on both - say, "Happy Feet". The HD-DVD version has been accepted as having superior picture quality over the Blu-ray.
What I don't get is... why? They both use the same codec (or should), and mastering should be identical since they can start with the same 1080p masters... and Blu-ray's 50GB is 66% more space than HD-DVD's 30GB, so there's no reason why this is so. They should not only be comparable, but Blu-Ray's picture quality has to be superior.
BTW, one HD-DVD technical advantage - it's many times cheaper to press - you can upgrade an existing DVD factory to make HD-DVDs. Blu-Rays require a new factory (new equipment), so HD-DVDs are cheaper to manufacture. Blu-Ray also has annoying "fingerprint" that tracks which factory produces a disc, the disc type, and content type. So a player can't play encrypted movies off of a burned Blu-ray, for example. And factories can't produce more than ordered and sell the extras without people knowing who did it.
There are really two market forces here - porn (not as strong as they once were), and piracy. I'm sure once the DVD factories in Malaysia and elsewhere upgrade, they'll start pressing "3rd shift" HD-DVDs by the ton...
hd-dvd has a triple layer format, too.
I'm actually an HD-DVD fan.
@hoofdpijn
FOTL FTW!!!
I hope you are all under 20. At least I hope people over the age of 20 don't use acronyms like pwn and ftw......I know grown adults don't bitch and moan over useless media formats.....but then again, we never expected grown adults to be babies when it comes to the phrase "nappy headed hos".
Both aren't worth it because TVs haven't caught up yet. I bet a handful of people who spew their worthless opinions here actually have a TV I would deem acceptable to watch the new formats on. Unless you have a 2006 or later DLP or LCD projection, I wouldn't even bother with it since you probably won't notice a drastic change from DVD. Sure the edges may be smoother but who notices that unless you are 6 inches from the screen? So both formats are worthless unless it looks like it is real life. Why not just all admit you are fanboys which is ok. I'm a fanboy too, a fan of Opie and Anthony. FRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUNKUS.
Hope their investment isn't lost once blue-ray takes off.
Yeah, we're still waiting on that. It was supposed to take off at launch. Then it was supposed to take off with the PS3. Any time now, Blu-Ray. The attach rate on Blu-Ray is pathetic. A PS3 in someone's home doesn't mean a new Blu-Ray fan in someone's home.
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