Quote:
MrPorterhouse wrote:
 Amazon has been tried to be understood for some time on AVS and their prediction threads. Basically, the conclusion is that Amazon does not correlate with actual disc sales trends. When Amazon runs a Blu-ray promo, the Amazon data shifts Blu. When Amazon runs a HD DVD promo, the data shifts HD DVD. Blu-ray has been extremely consistent week after week with about a 2:1 advantage when you combine all retail sales data. Its fun to watch the Amazon numbers in real time, but they just don't mean that much. |
One thing Amazon did that I don't like is they changed the layout when it comes to viewing the formats. It used to be you could select either HD DVD or BD and at the top it would tell you the number of titles available. This number did include 'unreleased' titles though so it would fluctuate from week to week as titles were actually released.
Now Amazon has a 'Bluray' landing page that makes it a bit more difficult to see the number count. This happened about the time of the Paramount deal so to me it was a Sony deal to not only make Bluray look more appealing, but harder to see how many titles were on each format. Prior to that I was watching the list on a weekly basis and HD DVD titles were starting to catch up to Bluray. Right before this change it was as slim as a 50 title difference between the two.
I'll go back to my last post though, volume really means nothing... It's what a person likes. For some, Disney alone will be enough to say they go with Bluray. For others, something like Star Trek would mean they would chose HD DVD. If LOTR ends up format exclusive, that will sway people for sure.
I said that it's a win/win for us consumers in the sense that player prices are dropping fast because of the competition, but where we lose is this 'war' divides people and they have to make a decision as to what they really want. Not every movie needs to be High Def. But in order for one format to truly 'win' they will have to have the best blend of all genres that the masses prefer. Sony and Bluray wins with new releases, HD DVD wins with older classics.
My movie count for HD is 9 Bluray titles, and 16 HD DVD titles. The real format winner is still SDVD, where I have around 1400 SDVDs and still buy Standard Def at a rate of around 5:1 compared to either High Def format.