01-26-08: Rugyboogie
Local retailers are advertising their HD DVD players for $99 plus get 3 movies for free. At this price point you know who is going to buy this price. The local A&B Sound says that they have sold over 300 in just 2 days. Maybe it is not too late for HD DVD.
The missing piece of this puzzle is that owners of HD DVD players need to pressure the video vendors to carry the HD DVD titles. There are almost as many titles available in HD DVD as there are in Blu-ray, but you'd never know it from a visit to your local Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, or Target (who, to be fair, carries a decent selection). If there is a formidable demand for HD DVD software, the vendors will realize that their attempt to manipulate consumer preference is costing them money and will stock them.
From there, if big vendors such as Blockbuster and Wal-Mart pressured Warners and others to continue making HD DVD transfers, I'd think they'd have to listen.
Such a consumer revolt would be sensible: After all, you can get into HD DVD for $99-128. For that price, you get HD DVD with ethernet port for upgrades and web-based interactive features, HDMI 1.3, ability to decode the lossless audio codecs, and many discs that feature TrueHD and interactive features. For $100 more you add 1080p/24 vido output, and 5.1 analog output of decoded hi-res soundtracks. Even a $1500 Blu-ray player doesn't offer all that, and the Blu-ray adopters will have to wait a year or so to get them (assuming the development pace doesn't slow down with less competition from HD DVD). And unless their machine is a PS3, they'll have to buy another machine to get those features.
Right now, my local Sam's Club carries the Toshiba HD-D3, but only carries three HD DVD titles vs. at least 50 Blu-ray. That's just wrong. And no, it's not beause they can't keep HD DVD in stock, it's because they're only stocking the HD DVD titles that are too big to ignore--Shrek the Third, Bourne Ultimatum, and Transformers.
