Game Reviews Index
The news is currently spreading itself around the highways and bi-ways of this great land of ours that, at last, the struggle between Toshiba’s HD DVD format and Sony’s Blu-Ray media format has finally been decided in favor of Sony, according to a story released by the Reuters News Agency yesterday.
The battleground where this long struggle was concluded seems to center around the area of the Best Buy retail location which stands proudly on Fifth Avenue in New York City. According to Reuters, who interviewed several customers inside the store for this story, supplies of HD DVDV format hardware was rapidly diminishing.
One shopper by the name of William, who was found searching the DVD player section of the Best Buy store, stated that “Blu-ray won,” and that he thought Sony’s format was “fantastic and I trust Sony." A Best Buy employee, who is employed in the home theater portion of Best Buy, said “Blu-rays are flying off the shelves, but we have to order if you want HD." One of the sales assistant’s in the store, Michael, supported the Blu-Ray’s popularity, when he said that “We still sell HD DVD’s, but we are telling customers that Blu-ray won."
Signs of the Blu-Ray’s success are all up and down Main Street in New York at all the electronics stores on the street, such as Best Buy and Circuit City, which offered large discounts on Blu-Ray discs as part of its President Day sales. The discounts, in some cases, led to several Blu-ray discs costing as little as 14.99 which was 10 dollars less than the standard market price, while the subject of HD-DVD wasn’t even brought up in the Circuit City President’s Day sales advertisements. Another customer at Best Buy, Bonetti, said that she had “never seen Blu-ray on sale like this before."
Toshiba itself seems to have given up the game, as over the weekend, an unnamed individual at Toshiba informed Reuters that the company itself had decided to abandon production of its HD DVD format, which means that Blu-ray has, indeed, finally triumphed at ending a struggle, which has been going on literally for years between the two media formats. It has been a long time coming, but it seems that happy times are here again according to Stephanie Prange, the editor in chief of Home Media Magazine, who stated to Reuters that the success of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD “Would definitely help. The two formats, though both were good, have confused consumers and prevented them from moving into the high-def future."
Prange also added that this success was doubly important for Sony, as in a parallel situation so many years ago, Sony’s Betamax format lost out to the more easily produced VHS, so Sony was pulling out all the stops for its Blu-Ray format as it had studio support lined up right off the bat, and also included a Blu-ray player in its Playstation 3 console, which meant the customer base was already in place for Sony. Prange added that this careful planning by Sony meant that the media giant had “learned from their mistakes.”
This victory by Sony over Toshiba was assisted by quite a few problems that Toshiba had experienced, such as Wal-Mart’s announcement that it would no longer be carrying HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray formatted films. This decision by Wal-Mart was particularly disastrous for Toshiba due to the fact, as Prange again told Reuters, that Toshiba had created the HD-DVD “To be the low-price version,” and the recent decision by Wal-Mart, whose corporate plan is to offer the lowest prices, left Prange’s question of “if Wal-Mart isn’t going to sell their players, who will?" hanging in the air like the sword of Damocles.
Curiously, though, it seems there’s still life in HD-DVD yet. One Akeem, who is employed at Circuit City as a sales assistant, told Reuters that many players that used each format were still being sold and there was even a player, offered by LG, offered for roughly 600 dollars that can use both HD and Blu-ray format. Also Michael from Best Buy, added that customers were still purchasing Toshiba products apparently to a belief that, as Michael stated, that these customers “figure that HD discs will become cheaper."
Source: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/200802...y-7318940.html
The battleground where this long struggle was concluded seems to center around the area of the Best Buy retail location which stands proudly on Fifth Avenue in New York City. According to Reuters, who interviewed several customers inside the store for this story, supplies of HD DVDV format hardware was rapidly diminishing.
One shopper by the name of William, who was found searching the DVD player section of the Best Buy store, stated that “Blu-ray won,” and that he thought Sony’s format was “fantastic and I trust Sony." A Best Buy employee, who is employed in the home theater portion of Best Buy, said “Blu-rays are flying off the shelves, but we have to order if you want HD." One of the sales assistant’s in the store, Michael, supported the Blu-Ray’s popularity, when he said that “We still sell HD DVD’s, but we are telling customers that Blu-ray won."
Signs of the Blu-Ray’s success are all up and down Main Street in New York at all the electronics stores on the street, such as Best Buy and Circuit City, which offered large discounts on Blu-Ray discs as part of its President Day sales. The discounts, in some cases, led to several Blu-ray discs costing as little as 14.99 which was 10 dollars less than the standard market price, while the subject of HD-DVD wasn’t even brought up in the Circuit City President’s Day sales advertisements. Another customer at Best Buy, Bonetti, said that she had “never seen Blu-ray on sale like this before."
Toshiba itself seems to have given up the game, as over the weekend, an unnamed individual at Toshiba informed Reuters that the company itself had decided to abandon production of its HD DVD format, which means that Blu-ray has, indeed, finally triumphed at ending a struggle, which has been going on literally for years between the two media formats. It has been a long time coming, but it seems that happy times are here again according to Stephanie Prange, the editor in chief of Home Media Magazine, who stated to Reuters that the success of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD “Would definitely help. The two formats, though both were good, have confused consumers and prevented them from moving into the high-def future."
Prange also added that this success was doubly important for Sony, as in a parallel situation so many years ago, Sony’s Betamax format lost out to the more easily produced VHS, so Sony was pulling out all the stops for its Blu-Ray format as it had studio support lined up right off the bat, and also included a Blu-ray player in its Playstation 3 console, which meant the customer base was already in place for Sony. Prange added that this careful planning by Sony meant that the media giant had “learned from their mistakes.”
This victory by Sony over Toshiba was assisted by quite a few problems that Toshiba had experienced, such as Wal-Mart’s announcement that it would no longer be carrying HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray formatted films. This decision by Wal-Mart was particularly disastrous for Toshiba due to the fact, as Prange again told Reuters, that Toshiba had created the HD-DVD “To be the low-price version,” and the recent decision by Wal-Mart, whose corporate plan is to offer the lowest prices, left Prange’s question of “if Wal-Mart isn’t going to sell their players, who will?" hanging in the air like the sword of Damocles.
Curiously, though, it seems there’s still life in HD-DVD yet. One Akeem, who is employed at Circuit City as a sales assistant, told Reuters that many players that used each format were still being sold and there was even a player, offered by LG, offered for roughly 600 dollars that can use both HD and Blu-ray format. Also Michael from Best Buy, added that customers were still purchasing Toshiba products apparently to a belief that, as Michael stated, that these customers “figure that HD discs will become cheaper."
Source: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/200802...y-7318940.html
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