After a tumultuous battle between two HD formats, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, the war was declared over in January this year when Sony’s payout to Time-Warner pictures shifted the balance of studio adoption into Blu-ray’s favor. Toshiba, the major hardware supporter, announced they would stop production of HD-DVD players. The consensus appeared to be in favor of a single format. After stores have offered rebates on the return of HD-DVD players, Blu-ray sales numbers should reflect an increase. This is not the case. The problems is that manufacturers have actually raised the prices to double the cost of a mid-level Toshiba A-30 HD-DVD player over Christmas pricing. In return, they have alienated consumers migrating to HD televisions and severely affected their chance at global adoption. This could have been easy swept up during the media attention in January/February by offering a reasonably priced alternative. Unfortunately, Sony still has not learned their lesson from the Betamax wars of yesteryear that I recall in the early 80’s. Just because you have either a superior format - in the case of the former Betamax, or a victorious format of Blu-ray, doesn’t mean you have won. Victory is true market adoption by overwhelming market share. Judging from the numbers, Blu-ray has a long way to go. They are quickly losing the game with overpriced players. Numbers show that the sale of HD-DVD players have actually increased while Blu-ray players have decreased. The talk of a recession has not appeared to move the price down and consumers only get smarter with their money. The clarity in the Blu-ray is outstanding on an HD television and would be a shame to see it disappear.
What will become the next format? What ever fills the void within cost reach of the average consumer. It’s too late to develop another removable media format. Most likely it will be a media device such as the Apple TV or VUDU priced in the cusp of consumer adoption of under $250 dollars. Rentals will once again become a dominate player when low price, usability and day and date availability is accessible to the average consumer. These media players, if they move aggressively while Blu-ray becomes docile in pricing, will leave Sony with another Betamax format.
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