Well, there's no way to get around it - the porn industry is a huge, multi-billion dollar business, and if all the new adult movies are in HD-DVD, you're dang right that's going to change the scales of balance. Just as PS3 changed the balance, so does this.

Still hard for me to beleive that there is a war at all as it's such a waste, but what do I know?

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

The correct figure is closer to 600,000. Sony said 1M, but shipped information only says 400,000 for initial and 200,000 since then.

DSE, I did hesitate before posting as I am aware of the policy. It was actually something one of my cohorts had pointed out about 6 mths ago as a possible make/break on the format wars. Some folks are saying the internet drops the importance of that industries selections, but evidence seems to point to an expansion of the market in brick and mortar.

I do family stuff, so am not involved at all as it is bad for business. I just try to follow what all the news is.

That's still short the sub 50k units of HD DVD sold thus far.
I don't know how many Sony has actually shipped, I guess. The press release from Sony said 1m, Peddie says 1m, but if you've got accurate information of only 600K, then the others would be incorrect.

Doing a little research I found out that the 1 million figure is for the entire North American sales and the US sales is close to 700,000. That is the 2006 sales numbers by the way so up until this day, a lot more than 700,000 have been sold in the US.

As far as HD disc players are concerned, I recently bought a Sony Playstation 3 and think it has a lot going for it. I haven't tested its HD playback capabilities yet, but if they work then the PS3 is an easy choice compared to paying a similar price for just an HD player. By the way, the base model PS3 is only $499, or same as the retail price of standard HD-DVD players (with no game capabilities). The PS3 looks good, saves space and serves a lot of different functions, if you can turn off the games long enough to do anything else.

LG Hybrid HD DVD/Blu-ray Player Getting Canned?
 

Here is a USA today article with console sales numbers.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/...ry-sales_x.htm

Here’s another similar article.
http://hdtv.engadget.com/2007/01/14/...-be-sold-sans/

One thing worth noting here is that in just a few weeks Sony shipping almost 700,000 game systems to North America capable of playing high-definition Blu-ray movie discs. At that rate there should be several million such players in circulation in the U.S. by the end of 2007, making it easily the most widely installed HD playback device.

Yes, the installed HD base definitely has Sony's BD at the front of the pack now. The question now is if it would have been more advantageous to ship the PS3 a year ago for around 300-400 bucks with a DVD, then put out a $500 BD player in Q4 2006.

I don't know, in the end it really looks to me like Sony has forced their gaming fans into spending an extra one or two hundred bucks so they can claim HD player dominance.

You could say the same thing about the PS2 when Sony decided to put a DVD player inside. Sega wanted to release a cheep 199 dollar system early without a DVD player and guess what happened to them. Even the GameCube couldn’t do so will because of a lack of a DVD player.

I don’t think Sony is worried at all that they currently have a lot less units out than the Wii and the XBOX360 but the PS3 haven’t got released in Europe yet and most of their best game are coming out in March. Once Blu-Ray wins the battle you will see an even greater surge of people buying a PS3.

In fairness, the PS3 scenario is a bit different. This time they've forced their proprietary technology into the product at great expense and product delay. They've essentially shoved the BD player into the product for two reasons: get PS3 owners to start purchasing BD movies (important); give their marketing department some meat (major). After forcing every hardcore PS gamer (and I mean hard core, the average schmoe doesn't drop half a K on a video game system) into buying a BD player, the Sony marketing machine can begin touting all kinds of BD numbers. And then they can make "projections" that show phenominal growth based on extrapulating data from other BD players and applying it to PS3s (attach rate, etc..). I think Fox has already done this with some press release that had a ridiculous graphic showing BD skyrocketing in sales while HD DVD just flatlines.

Technologically Blue-ray is fine, but speaking from a consumer standpoint.... You know, Sony tried to trick us with a fictitious movie reviewer, then installed hacked back door root kits on their customer's computers. Now they've forced their game fans into buying a $200 BD player to inflate sales numbers. Honestly, I just don't want them calling the shots on the next (and probably last major) home video format. And don't get me started on Disney and Fox; I remember DIVX and how they treated DVD owners.

Well said. The DVD player is the PS2 was a great move on Sony's part - their main competition at the time was Sega Dreamcast, which in most ways was a superior system, but it didn't have a DVD player.

That turned out to be a killer, because at the time, DVDs were just exploding onto the market, and the player were still expensive ($150 plus). A sony 2 cost about the same as an average player, so many people said, "what the heck? I might as well get a game system too."

But this is different, as you say. I no, I don't trust Sony either.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

I always thought that everything was gonna jump physical media and go straight to broadband download?!