With its back against the wall, Toshiba threw a Hail Mary pass by selling (HD DVD players) at or below cost with drastic price reductions that make HD DVD attractive to mass consumers. This is working well. Who would have guessed that affordable pricing means more people will buy HD? (maybe Swanni did).
Universal has been backing HD DVD with large amounts of popular catalog titles coming out after a drought of releases. Not to mention Warner Bros. and Paramount have also been releasing their quality titles on both formats.
So what has the Blu-Ray team been up to?
Hardware releases from multiple companies with expensive pricing and a recent slowdown of exclusive titles hasn't helped. Sony is coming soon with a very
nice new BR player at $499 list, which hopefully the price will come down when on sale. Let's hope other manufacturers follow suit fast.
Additionally, Blu-Ray exclusive studios have slowed down releases recently. Over the summer there is now very limited list of exclusive b-list releases. The more exciting titles are coming from Warner and Paramount as dual format releases.
Studio' like Sony, MGM, Fox and Disney are just not releasing their quality movies. Also, even more depressing to BR is the fact that Fox/MGM has stopped releases entirely. Warner has held back catalog
titles like Batman Begins and Matrix trilogy from BR because BD-J on BR the interactive format isn't finalized. Also, disc manufacturing for BR is an issue as they can't make enough discs to meet demand.
Fox and MGM haven't publicly said they haven't released titles due to the fact that HD copy protection was hacked. Instead they cancelled releases sometimes on the day they were due out leading to consumer frustration and confusion.
No one knows how this format war will go, but I can say that Team Blu-Ray is fumbling their lead and this could lead to more dual format machines in the future and possibly even losing this format war.
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Mitch Davis is a HD Observer for TVPredictions.com. If you would like to be a HD Observer, send an e-mail to: swann@tvpredictions.com
The opinions of our HD Observers may not reflect the position of TVPredictions.com.
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