November 15th, 2007
HD-DVD Beating Out Blu-Ray in $149 Black Friday Vote
by Torrence DavisAmazon.com has just announced their new black friday votes. Among them are a Wii for $79, PS3 for $139, an Xbox 360 Arcade for $99, a Samsung Blu-Ray player for $149 and a Toshiba A3 HD-DVD player for $149. The winning votes so far for each category are the Wii with 55% and the Toshiba HD-A35 with 45%. This could all change by the time the voting ends, but it looks like the Toshiba won’t lose it’s steam. Is this telling us something about the HD market? Are consumers more keen on HD-DVD than Blu-Ray? We’ll see next month! Click this link to vote: Amazon’s Black Friday
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One Response to “HD-DVD Beating Out Blu-Ray in $149 Black Friday Vote”
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I think the accessibility of both types of player deserves at least some consideration here. One can go purchase a PS3 and, in so doing, obtain a better-than-average quality BD player. No such option exists with HD-DVD. It’s possible that the BD format is enjoying a sort of early market saturation (I hesitate to use the term given that the adoption base is so small compared to standard DVD, but can’t think of a better one). Most of the people who really want BD probably already have it in the form of their multipurpose game console. People after the cheaper HD-DVD option want to get it as inexpensively as possible.
What this implies for the overall adoption rate for each over time I really have no idea. When you figure in the cost of a TV worthy of actually playing a HD movie rig, the entry cost of either format is still forbiddingly high. I venture to doubt the adoption rates are really going to skyrocket until HDTV is simply a more attainable purchase for the average blue-collar worker. That’s unlikely to be very soon.