Home Theaters

While many of us wait on the sidelines, for a clear victor in the format wars, Home Media Research is there to bring a clear and unambiguous light shining on the situation.

The HD DVD format camp is trumpeting the success and sales of Transformers, but the format is still trailing Blu-ray sales by a large margin. The Sony format has seen 2.6 million discs sold from January 1 to September 30 of this year, and the HD format has 1.4 million sales to its credit.

The situation will be different after the holidays, as Warner Bros and Paramount have begun selling many of the new movies as dual format discs, with one format per side. This is a very nice feature, because buying a regular DVD now, with the promise of greater quality later is a good one. No word yet on price variations - as that will matter too.

Blu-ray will continue to lead if the Sony stable of movies keep trotting out while the other large factor - the Play Station 3, can push out a couple of killer titles before Christmas.

Many families will go with the way of least dollar output, especially with the economy not looking so good in the last quarter of the year. If having the kids playing happily with a PS3 on the widescreen, with Mom and Dad being able to have Blu-ray movies when the kids are in bed or otherwise occupied is a choice costing less for the family, that will do it.

The HD camp is also waiting for the extended content to take off, and the players that are now being updated so as not to freeze on those features. If the content proves popular, that too could sway many to the HD side.

Another change is the reported low cost HD players

sub-$200 players for HD will sway many at Christmas time.

soon appearing at WalMart. Low cost is powerful motivator. Although other factors should influence the choice of format, cost is one that makes it hard for many to look past. The quality of the players at those sub-$200 prices will make a difference. Should the players be problematic, as some of the current crop of Blu-ray players are, that too would skew people’s choices.

This is another area where making the PS3 choice is an easy one. The PS3, designed to be networked, is easy to get patches to its firmware applied. Stand alone players for Blu-ray and HD format are not, and it is more difficult to update them - ease is another factor that skews choices.

PS3s are easily updated, since the network connection is already there - updates and fixes couldn’t be easier, which makes this a logical choice for many.

Movement by another company to the Blu-ray camp wouldn’t hurt, either, as it is starting to look to many that Sony, and its pictures division is going this fight alone. Lots of people remember Beta, and the loss there. I certainly hope this doesn’t work the same way.

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