Could Warner Bros. Abandon HD DVD in 2008?

[PRO-630HD]

And Sony films will be on Bluray till it's last dying breath.

[DaViD Boulet]

And Sony films will be on Bluray till it's last dying breath.And all those Sony BDs will offer lossless audio...

BTW, sales numers are in and apparently Harry Potter BD outsold HD DVD (though not by a 2:1 margin.

Nielsen sales numbers are in for last week. Blu-Ray came out on top 61%-39% (with 14 of the top 20 being BD). Bourne Ultimatum was the #1 hi-def disc overall selling 50% more than Pirates 3.

Harry Potter OOTP Blu-Ray sold 20% more than the HD-DVD and on the box set the Blu-Ray sold 30% more than the HD-DVD. It will be interesting to see if these percentages hold up with Blade Runner next week.

Lost S3 and High School Musical 2 both failed to crack the Top 10.

(taken from thread at home theater forum, though I'm assuming the numbers can be verified at multiple channels)

BTW, I went to THREE best-buys to get Blade Runner on BD and it was sold out at all three... and amazon was back ordered, though I saw HD DVD copies of BR at all three locations. Harry Potter box-set on BD was also sold out in all three locations though they had HD DVD box-sets of Harry Potter at all three. If equal numbers of BD and HD DVD sets for both titles shipped, this means that at least in my area, customers bought every Blu-ray copy (of the box-set of Harry Potter, and every BD of Blade-Runner period) in three best buys within 50 miles. I wonder if the sales figures would have been tipped even more in BDs favor if more copies had been available? I would have bought one of each had I been able to!

[1more4HDDVD]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

BTW, I went to THREE best-buys to get Blade Runner on BD and it was sold out at all three... and amazon was back ordered

Nice try... here is the text from Amazon's website:

"Production Delay: Due to production and shipment delays from the studio impacting all retailers, this title will not be available to ship by the street date indicated above. We are working with the studio to get this product in stock as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience. "

Notice the text "impacting all retailers"... Just because a product isn’t in stores, doesn’t mean it’s sold out.. In fact, this is not the first time WB has had trouble with Blu-ray production.. they are probably frustrated...

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

BTW, sales numers are in and apparently Harry Potter BD outsold HD DVD (though not by a 2:1 margin.

Actually HD DVD won out on the box set, the stand alones, and all important flagged titles by Warners. The Videoscan numbers don't take in Wal-Mart or many online retailers. Warner has real numbers from just about everybody reporting in and HD DVD won.

Some interesting Warners notes:

HD DVD appears to do better through the internet and at Wal-Mart. They also appear to buy a lot through those channels.

The OotP outsold BD by 12% and the Box Set by 2%.

BD did not bring in the numbers to get Warner exclusive in software or hardware. Last week was just another week that proved that to Warners.

Warners is sticking with HD DVD, but I don't know if they're ditching BD. It may just be New Line that goes HD DVD exclusive at CES. Then again they may be waiting for more data as well. All I know is Warner isn't going BD exclusive at least not as of today.

[PRO-630HD]

In other words David it hasn't hit stores yet!!! Or I guess in your terms it was sold out a month ago as well. Kind of like how the Oceans boxset came out a week late on HDDVD. Oh wait I guess they must have been sold out till the following week!! LOL!!!!!

[PRO-630HD]

I wonder what king of impact the trio of bluray screwups is having with Warner?

1. T3 is in 1080i unless you watch the IME. I am assuming the burnt in IME is in 1080p and the 2nd encode without the IME is in 1080i. Since the bluray specs were unfinished warner tried to give bluray owners the same advantages as hddvd.
2. Blade Runner's 5th disc in bluray which is supposed to be the workprint is the same as disc 1.
3. The 4th disc in the Harry Potter bluray giftset was a hddvd.

Strangely all these mishaps happened within weeks of each other.