Bad news for the folks that beat their chest about the number of BluRay players in the world exceeding the number of HD-DVD units. Turns out that almost ALL of the BluRay players are Playstation 3’s.
That in and of itself isn’t bad, except that a recent study of has shown that only 13 percent of console owners actually USE the system as a BluRay player.
This spells trouble for companies like Blockbuster, who recently picked sided with Blu-Ray in the HD war.
So YES. There are more Blu-Ray players in the world. But it’s a pretty lame statistic. Because only a tiny fraction of them are being used to play movies. In other words lots of players and no demand for the movies. (Cue the Phantom of the Opera music)
This begs the question, what exactly ARE PS3 owners using their systems for? We know it can’t be to play games… because there aren’t any.
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That said, I think Blockbuster may have prematurely chosen a side in the HD format war between HD-DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray technology. If they are wrong, they could be stuck with the beta-max of our time. A better, losing format. 1300 stores full of them.
Why not offer both? It’s hard enough to get people to actually walk in to a Blockbuster retail location anymore, hence their apparent move towards a more “Netflix” model. So then, what on earth is the advantage of picking one format? In the grand scheme of things isn’t the expense of having 2 formats eclipsed by what it will cost them if they exclude one format or the other in business.
Basically, if you have an HD-DVD player, there is not a chance in hell that you will be patronizing Blockbuster.
I’m not choosing sides until one format is laying in a pile of its own sick, face down in an alley. THEN maybe I’ll step over to the winner’s side and act like I’ve been there all along.
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by Jeromy “Doc” Adams