RSSUK retailer Woolworths moves Blu-ray exclusively
By Ed Oswald | Published January 29, 2008, 12:19 PM
With Blu-ray rapidly gaining momentum in the next-gen DVD war, UK retailer Woolworths has announced it will stop stocking Toshiba's HD DVD format in stores.
HD DVD players will still be available from its online store after March, which is when the company will sell Blu-ray players exclusively in its 820 locations throughout the UK.
According to sales data from Woolworths, Blu-ray outsold HD DVD by a ten-to-one margin during the holiday season. This is a problem for Toshiba's format, as Woolworths is one of the biggest retailers for next-gen DVDs in the region.
Furthermore, sales appear to be accelerating. While DVD sales seem to have stagnated, Woolworths is seeing increases of 40 percent or more in Blu-ray and HD DVD sales.
Much of this success has a lot to do with the fact that Sony's PlayStation 3 can play Blu-ray discs. Because of that, there are some 750,000 homes in the UK that can now play Blu-ray, whereas there are far fewer HD DVD-enabled homes, Woolworths' DVD buyer Steven McGunigel told the Retail Bulletin.
It's more Blu-ray window dressing.
Woolworths does not sell a lot of anybodys high def discs.
Those they stock are at stupid prices no-one in their right mind would buy
(except maybe some of the PS3 game console kids without a credit card/bank account to buy stuff the smart way on-line - which you'll see Woolworths are keepin HD DVD for).
Blu-ray are just making all the moves they can cos they know what is coming very soon.
HD DVD China launches in a matter of weeks.
Bye bye Blu-ray, the PS3 proprietary game console format.
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|Show everyone you are sick of buying HD formats that are incomplete solutions (BD) or on the verge of extinction (HD-DVD) and rent only or just upscale standard DVD.
When you put a format war in the hands of stupid consumers, the better format always loses.
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|Unfortunately without any check and balance they are free to just eliminate DVD effectively forcing everyone into HD just like they did with VHS -> DVD. All it'll take is Blockbuster.
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|Upscaled DVD is no substitute for proper HD.
The fact you are saying it is, makes all your technically unsound.
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|Sure it is since it's up to $20 a disk cheaper.
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|just months ago you people were shouting from the rooftops that when the consumer spoke, HD-DVD would be the winner....how consumers are stupid...
typical...
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|i've never paid more than $15 for a single BD movie...
300
Black Hawk Down
Kingdom of Heaven
The Patriot
TMNT
Corpse Bride
POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl
POTC: Dead Man's Chest
POTC: At World's End
Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
Harry Potter 3
Harry Potter 4
Harry Potter 5
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
The Terminator
Full Metal Jacket (re-mastered)
Saw III
The Departed
Tears of the Sun
Troy
Cars
Alexander Revisited
These final 3, being boxed sets are obviously going to be more...but i paid less than $15 per disc on all of them...
Planet Earth The Complete Series
The Sopranos Season 6 Part I
The Sopranos Season 6 Part II
so the idea that HD Media costs $20 more per disc is crazy....only stores that love to rip you off like best Buy will sell them for regular price...
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|none of the studios are THAT crazy!...remember...DVD is still outselling BD by A LOT!...the market saturation of HD in general is low...the studios would lose a TON of money if they got rid of SD-DVD...some time down the road they might...but not soon..
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|They did the very same thing with VHS -> DVD, I remember it very well. It almost happened overnight.
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|Hmm, $15 is reasonable. If I can find a 2.0 (read complete profile) player for under $150 I may consider it.
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|Why Profile 2.0, even Profile 1.1 is better than HD DVD specs..
1) HD DVD has a paultry, far less than adequate 128mb cache for downloads.
2) HD DVD has low bitrate max
3) HD DVD has low capacity
4) HD DVD has few lossless audio titles
5) HD DVD has only one title with more than 5.1 lossless channels
6) Web-enabled is mostly limited to downloading SD trailers
7) PIP is limited to a secondary SD video stream.
8) Most HD DVD players only show crippled, downsampled 1080i video instead of the 1080p/24 image actually encoded on the disc.
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|No, profile 1.1 is not better than HD-DVD. Quit spreading lies.
1080i is by no means "crippled".
anything less than profile 2.0 is incomplete, it would be just as silly to buy a new car that is missing 1/2 of it's parts.
Who does that?
Thanks.
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|Blu-ray won't even have a range of prices & specs for it's (claimed) final profile 2.0.
It's all about the PS3.
Good for them.
It can stay that way.
Useless anti-consumer BS that it is.
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|it will happen eventually...prices for HDM players have actually come WAY down compared to where DVD player prices were at this point...prices will really start to fall this year...
I dont think $15 is bad at all....and when i say $15 that is the MOST i paid....Kingdom of Heaven and The Terminator I got for $9.98 during a frys.com sale...and most of my films came from BOGO sales on Amazon.com...you just have to keep looking...
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|it took 7 years before DVD outsold VHS in total sales....far from overnight...
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|Everyone was fine with VHS until the industry forced DVD down people's throats by clearing VHS off the shelves in the retail markets. Now, I absolutely admit that DVD was a better format, as is HD-DVD and BluRay, but VHS was good enough, and now so is upconverted DVD. We'll see mass HD disc adoption as soon as the industry once again removes the competitor from the shelves (namely DVD).
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|Another day, another retailer or studio goes Blu.
Yesterday it was Circuit City, tommorow it's likely to be BestBuy.. If one retailer jumps, competitive pressure will force others to follow suit..
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|Yet the HD formats still have less than 2% of the market.
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|Um,
It's less than one half of one percent.
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|5% next year, 12% the folllowing year, 25% the year after...
Also HDTV is much more widespread in Europe, with commercial HDTV broadcasting now very mature compared to the US market.
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|ooooohh guestimations.
They won't be 5% this year. You are comparing apples to oranges when you speak of HD broadcasts vs Blueray.
Sure, HDTV broadcast / cable / sat may be 5, 12, then 25 but Blu-Ray is a completely different beast. People don't get free Bluray players when they upgrade their cable TV.
Sorry.
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|took DVD till 2003 to surpass VHS in market share!
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|Circuit City have had sweetheart deals with Sony/Blu-ray for months.
Woolworths may still stock a fair sized range of CDs & DVDs
(but no-ones high def discs in any numbers)
and they even do a fair line in household goods but they are a dying retailer at the very bottom end of the market.
This is hardly news.
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|I don't recall DVD needing 22 BOGOs to take off.
It didn't start off bundled in a game console and it wasn't a game console add-on either.
The comparison with DVD is for the shallow of thinking & the idiot f*ckwits who know jack sh!t about anything going on.
ie easily manipuilated.
That's why the PS3 crowd lap it all up & believe every word without a second's critical thought.
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|"It's less than one half of one percent."
- D'oh, you Hollywood.
You just spoiled their moronic illusion.
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|big difference though...
DVD was a unified format....there was no competition....
DVD did not require additional hardware (HDTV's) to benefit...HD-DVD and Blu-ray are fairly useless without an HDTV...
these are two HUGE differences in your argument...
if these stories were about HD-DVD you would not be posting this crap...you just picked the wrong horse..
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|HD-DVD isn't even Blu-Ray's competition any more, the real question will be if download services catch on before the demand for HD content becomes fully mainstream.
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|The market forces still believe disk based media being the dominant outlet, as reinforced by DVD sales. While download services will eat away a niche existance, disk based media will still be the market leader for quite a while yet.
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|and i think those market forces are greatly underestimating downloadable media. disc media is not the future..
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|I will bet you any sum of money that for the next five years, at least, it will be ...
After that, if ISP bandwidth issues have not killed it out right, it might have a niche market share.
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|Spot on.
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|unfortunately its a long way off for companies to be able to provide 1080p video that is not super compressed and uncompressed HD audio WITH extra features....
cable companies don't have the bandwidth...and the consumers don't have the download speeds to just stream them...
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|From my experience, woolies sells mostly media and has little hardware choice. The 2 I know of dont even sell any HD players, appart from consoles and therefore the ps3. I see this not as a choice between HD, as beeing touted, but the ps3 owners using the console for films rather than games (who can blame them !!).
In the shadow of DVD, the market for HD is very much the niche market, and the buying public have yet to emrace it properly. I hope they do before the market decides it for them by choosing the rushed format with the least amount of features.
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|finally, i cant wait for hd dvd
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