Blu-Ray wins on Black Friday week.

[kennyt]

Lotus,

I think we all are giving to much credit to the # of HDTV's out there.

Do you know how many people I know who buy an HDTV and then never even get any HD channels? How many times I hear "I need an HD Cable box too?"

The average person doesn't know all the intricacies of the new formats, and likely never will.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by TheMoose

Wal-Mart doesn't report software sales to Nielsen so those weren't included.



Well according to this & many other stories this wasn't such a major change for software sales, Blu-Ray has has a 2-1 software sales lead for a long time.

Blu-ray has yet to lose a week to its rival this year, with Blu-ray holding a 2-to-1 average sales advantage. Achieving a nearly 3-to-1 sales advantage for the important shopping week despite an influx of sub-$100 HD DVD players shows that consumers continue to choose Blu-ray as their preferred high definition format.

I've always maintained that it will be software sales that decides the war, Studios don't sell hardware they sell software & will go to the side that can sell the most movies.
Toshiba & MS can throw all the cash they want at the studios but if the big sales numbers are in Blu-Ray that's where they will end up.
Yea MS has a lot of cash despite the initial failure of Vista to be widely accepted & the fact they have never made a profit on the Xbox consoles shows their willingness to throw money around but how long can Toshiba bleed $$ before it really starts to hurt the company?

It's going to be hard to spin this, despite the fact Toshiba had sold a bunch of players at fire sale prices Blu-ray still creams them on a very important shopping period.

See my thread on the Playstation 3 (Genus,Species and PS3). I ran into people at a local Circut City and they were in the Blu-ray section, I was right next to them in the HD-DVD section - they were picking out random blu-ray movies and asked me a question. They asked me if I would buy the PS3 for 399.00 and the Blu-ray movies. My question was this - what are you using the PS3 for? They replied for gaming of course. And then I explained blu-ray to them and the movie aspect, they didn't care about that but they asked me about games also - many that were only carried on the Wii and/or the Xbox 360.

After it was over - they left with one of the few Wii's left and a ton of games (especially when they compared game prices to that of the PS3's). There are about 2.7 million blu-ray players sold - and 750,000 HD-DVD players sold - what they don't tell you is that 75% or greater of those 2.7 million blu-rays are PS3 and a vast percentage of those never see a Blu-ray movie in their slots. Blu-ray will natrually outsell HD-DVD in software because they have more of it! I own both formats now (blu-ray pc drive for under 200).

I looked at the prices of Blu-ray movies (I've heard on this very forum that blu-rays are cheaper than HD-DVD) and to my amazement - they are about the same price (execpt most of the 30.00 HD-DVD's are dual format and will play in a regular DVD player - Blu-ray what are you doing with your capacity advantage?). Sony/Blu-ray is disguising it's intentions - I don't know if its trying to win the High Def war by using PS3 as a trojan horse for Blu-ray, or if the PS3 is really a gaming machine (it's certainly not winning that war at all - The PS2 still out sells it). I can't wait for downloadable HD content - to me WMV-HD should have been pushed - it looks fabulous and was the only 1080p content available at one time!

[DaViD Boulet]

The PS3 is a gaming console that happens to play BDs. I never considered the PS2 a DVD player. I know it could play DVDs but I never thought of it as one. Just as I never hear anyone talking about the 360 being a DVD player...

Probably because the PS2 offered a mediocre-quality DVD player, with the inconvenience of a gaming machine, for a higher price than comparable stand-alone DVD units. In other words, there was no compelling reason to buy one for DVD playback.

The PS3, by contrast, offers one of the best-performing BD playback among all options, provides wireless connectivity for firmware updates and eventual upgrade to profile 2.0, will be upgradable to profile 1.1 and DTS-HD MA decoding (offering the fullest featureset of almost any player available), and costs the same or less than comparable stand-alone BD players.

The differences are obvious and familiar to most everyone with even a modest knowledge of the PS3 and HD media.

[Mornelithe]

Wrong again, the PS3 accounts for 75% of Blu-Ray movies sold.


http://www.allthingshidef.com/ME2/di...91B3070ACCA98A

Check out the recent HD 2.0 conference just held. HD-DVD apparently, was too far ahead *cough*, to attend.

Again, noone has answered to me clearly WHY you would buy a standalone BR player, over a PS3, when the PS3 is more of a deal, provides more functionality and can also act as a media server, video conferencing tool, and so on. Anyway, some more nails in HD-DVD's coffin as far as I'm concerned.

As for the PS3's status in the console war, it's very simple. And moron can code games for the Wii, just as any moron can code games for the 360, because both companies opted to go a lower-tech route than the Sony. Here are the facts:

The 360 has a 3-core PPC Chip that is about as easy to code for as most PC's. The Wii doesn't even remotely use next-gen hardware, so yeah, it's about as difficult as coding for the Gamecube.

The PS3 on the other hand, has an 8-Core CBE (running @ 3.2ghz each, however, in the PS3 one of the SPE's, is supporting the PPE. That requires a whole different way of thinking with regards to developement. The main issue is developers (and not all mind you, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, and internal Sony developers seem to be having no problems with this) have gotten used to OOO coding (Out of Order), whereas the system architecture of the PS3 requires In Order coding. Also, the primary core of the PS3 isn't as good at major number crunching as the primary core of the other consoles/PC's. It's more of a scheduler, and task assigner. The biggest task right now, is developers need to work on diverting as many processes from the PPE to the SPE's (physics, AI, etc..). As stated before, several developers have gotten this down, however, they've only fully utilized 3-4 of the available 7 SPE's (Synergestically Processing Elements).

On top of that, the PS3 also allows for streaming of uncompressed data to the HDD, and the BR disc allows for a much larger amount of uncompressed data to be contained on the disc. In the short term, what it means is that it will take time for developers to fully utilize the system's architecture. In the long term, it means that the PS3 will be the _only_ console able to run certain games in the future, as the size of games and the LACK of RAM in ALL consoles begins to become more and more of an issue.

As for BR being inside the PS3, people seem to think there's no need for it. Wrong. Heavenly Sword was 25 gigs, (and yes, I did like the game alot, regardless of the amount of time it took to beat it). Ergo, that's not happening on the 360...ever. Sony thought ahead when they created the PS3, Microsoft and Nintendo only thought about the short term. It's that simple.

Brian

[prerich]

Originally Posted by Mornelithe

Wrong again, the PS3 accounts for 75% of Blu-Ray movies sold.


http://www.allthingshidef.com/ME2/di...91B3070ACCA98A

Check out the recent HD 2.0 conference just held. HD-DVD apparently, was too far ahead *cough*, to attend.

Again, noone has answered to me clearly WHY you would buy a standalone BR player, over a PS3, when the PS3 is more of a deal, provides more functionality and can also act as a media server, video conferencing tool, and so on. Anyway, some more nails in HD-DVD's coffin as far as I'm concerned.

As for the PS3's status in the console war, it's very simple. And moron can code games for the Wii, just as any moron can code games for the 360, because both companies opted to go a lower-tech route than the Sony. Here are the facts:

The 360 has a 3-core PPC Chip that is about as easy to code for as most PC's. The Wii doesn't even remotely use next-gen hardware, so yeah, it's about as difficult as coding for the Gamecube.

The PS3 on the other hand, has an 8-Core CBE (running @ 3.2ghz each, however, in the PS3 one of the SPE's, is supporting the PPE. That requires a whole different way of thinking with regards to developement. The main issue is developers (and not all mind you, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, and internal Sony developers seem to be having no problems with this) have gotten used to OOO coding (Out of Order), whereas the system architecture of the PS3 requires In Order coding. Also, the primary core of the PS3 isn't as good at major number crunching as the primary core of the other consoles/PC's. It's more of a scheduler, and task assigner. The biggest task right now, is developers need to work on diverting as many processes from the PPE to the SPE's (physics, AI, etc..). As stated before, several developers have gotten this down, however, they've only fully utilized 3-4 of the available 7 SPE's (Synergestically Processing Elements).

On top of that, the PS3 also allows for streaming of uncompressed data to the HDD, and the BR disc allows for a much larger amount of uncompressed data to be contained on the disc. In the short term, what it means is that it will take time for developers to fully utilize the system's architecture. In the long term, it means that the PS3 will be the _only_ console able to run certain games in the future, as the size of games and the LACK of RAM in ALL consoles begins to become more and more of an issue.

As for BR being inside the PS3, people seem to think there's no need for it. Wrong. Heavenly Sword was 25 gigs, (and yes, I did like the game alot, regardless of the amount of time it took to beat it). Ergo, that's not happening on the 360...ever. Sony thought ahead when they created the PS3, Microsoft and Nintendo only thought about the short term. It's that simple.

Brian

Well, thanks for the info But it also prompts me to say again - what is the PS3? It's losing money as a gaming machine very quickly and may not be able to catch up to the Wii. That's why I'm saying give it an identity - It's like a Jack-of-all-trades but oustanding (meaning consumer value as well as performance) at none. For the price of a PS3 I could by a blu-ray player, or I could buy parts for an outstanding htpc (apples to apples meaning hdd size ect). Or I could by a Wii and still have enough money left to build a computer (I'm not talking about the 399.00 version of the PS3). Verses the $399, I could buy a wii and a few games to boot, and the wii has wireless internet - my son uses it all the time - connected right to my router no problem. The PS3's lack of identity is what makes me stay away from it. We game with our computer,the wii, and now a 360 (only $200.00 recertified) - PC blu-ray player for 185.00 - hd-dvd for 98.00 (360 Addon in exchange for computer services - bought new) and my computer was a steal at 300.00 worth of upgrades. Can the ps3 do all of these things - yes but not as well as any of my stand alones and when you add it up 700.00 for the top of the line PS3 is still not worth it - yet.

[kennyt]

Brian,

I can tell you why to buy a stand alone over a PS3. I have owned four stand alone Blu-ray players and recently bought a PS3. (I have a small shopping problem with a propensity for sources) and the PS3 is no where near as good a Blu-ray player as even the first Gen Samsung BDP-1000. The edge detail of the PS3 is weak, and the colors somewhat flat compared to my stand alone players. FWIW when I did the A-B both players were wired with identical HDMI cables through a Meridian HDMI switcher.

I also found the bass reproduction of the PS3 to be a significant step down from my BDP-S1, and the functionality of the PS3 is not great for a player, add to that the noise of the fan in it and I think I have made several reasons to still buy a free standing player....

The PS3 is great fun for games however, and 5.1 audio with your games? Hell, that's worth the price of a PS3 just for that!