Analysts say battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD will confuse consumers.
The battle between two hyped formats for high-definition DVD will confuse shoppers and turn many of them off the whole technology, a London-based research firm predicted on Friday.
Market research analyst Screen Digest also forecast that only $11 billion of the total $39 billion expected to be spent on video discs by 2010 in the United States, Europe and Japan will be generated by the competing high-definition formats, Sony Corp.-backed Blu-ray and Toshiba-supported HD-DVD.
“The net result of the format war and the publicity it has generated will be to dampen consumer appetite for the whole high definition disc category,” Screen Digest analyst Ben Keen said.
The DVD format exploded into a multi-billion-dollar global industry for movie and TV studios in large part because the largely universal format delivered a more convenient way to own movies than its predecessor, the VHS videotape.
They will probably become common in a few years….but not right now. They have some changes they need to undergo first..but eventually they will be like DVD’s are now. Cheap and plentiful the only reason they are not that way now is because the technology is so new. I predict in a few years though you will be able to buy them and get the disks for them at a reasonable cost and the technology will have all the bugs worked out by then.
Yeh…the ONLY reason I want the technology is for storing my DL’ed stuff.
I think people are pretty satisfied with their DVD’s right now so I do not see a rush for this new technology…mabye if they strip out the DRM and make it to where there is ONE format then people would buy it.
But I don’t see that happening anytime soon so the people that are pushing this new technology are going to have to basically take a loss in sales before they realize that they need to change.
There are also bugs right now in the technology that nobody in their right mind would want one right now….they don’t even play HD movies! So what is the point in owning a HD player or recorder that won’t play or record what you bought it for?
Yep someone gets it right.