Just like another war overseas that never seems to end, the high-def format conflict will continue to rage until March 2009 when a winner is crowned, a new study predicts. Blu-ray and HD-DVD simply aren’t turning on consumers today.
Digital Journal — Studying the disc format war between Blu-ray (backed by Sony) and HD-DVD (backed by Toshiba), Forrester said in a recent report that it will take another 18 months until sales of next-generation DVD players soar to success.
Few people are attracted to the high-def devices, despite the two camps “fighting what seems to be a war of attrition for consumers’ hearts and minds,” Reuters reported.
In the Forrester report attained by Digital Journal (see below), analyst J.P. Gownder explained how Blu-ray failed to land a knock-out punch in the competitive conflict, partially because of PlayStation 3’s unimpressive launch. And Blu-ray failed to lure to its camp Paramount and Dreamworks, two mega-studios that instead joined the HD-DVD format.
But the bigger problem is consumer awareness. Gownder wrote:
More than half of all US households haven’t heard of either next-generation format…Less than a fifth of HDTV-owning households report having seen a next-generation player. Consumer awareness, exposure, and ownership remain stunted.
Gownder’s research and consumer surveys revealed more telling news about HDTV lovers. He found that only one-third of HDTV owners are willing to make a format choice today, with 26 per cent of respondents saying they would only buy a next-gen DVD player if it played both Blu-ray and HD-DVD titles. That means dual players could find more traction in this heated race and help revive the slowing $24 billion home DVD market.
Gownder offered recommendations to makers of these dual-format players:
LG Electronics’ Super Blu, exceptionally overpriced at $1,299, needs to drop significantly. Samsung’s autumn release must come in below $500 to capture the market’s attention. By the end of 2007, these players should retail for $400 or less to capture share.
Forrester still predicts Blu-ray will win the format war, but only if it does several things to help its own cause. Gownder wrote that Blu-ray needs to slash hardware prices so players will retail for $250 or less by Christmas 2007. He also warns that more studios joining the HD-DVD side could cripple Blu-ray’s victory chances:
Blu-ray’s advantage in content remains critical, but a defection from another studio would throw the entire competition into a price gain — which Blu-ray isn’t poised to win at the moment.
Before this report hit the headlines, the Blu-ray camp was optimistic their future was as sunny as the California coast. According to BBC News, Sony estimated shipments of Blu-ray players could increase sixfold this year to 600,000. Meanwhile, Toshiba took a more practical view, cutting their sales target for HD-DVD devices this year from 1.8 million to 1 million.
Nevertheless, the high-def format war will remain deadlocked until consumers vote with their dollars. There isn’t enough incentive to replace your standard DVD library with a high-def disc that could cost $25 and end up being the Beta of the format war. As a Macleans writer pointed out:
There’s not much to attract buyers either way: only a select few movies are available in either format, and few TV shows have been released in high-def (Prison Break will be Fox’s first Blu-Ray TV release). In practice, most people are still buying regular DVDs while the studios fight it out over two unloved high-def formats.
Will early adopters be the true suckers in this battle? It looks that way, especially with high prices still making most consumers uneasy, and a catalogue of titles that is paltry at best. Blockbuster’s move to stock Blu-ray titles might help sway the undecided home-theatre nut, but there has to be an overload of support to one camp in order for a champion to be definitively crowned.
And if Forrester Research is right, in 18 months that victor will indeed be winning the lion’s share of the high-def format market. For movie studios and curious consumers, March 2009 couldn’t come quick enough.
