The Blu(e) Ray of Death

I was going to write a blog on why, very recently, I’ve begun to suspect that Blu-Ray is going to lose to HD-DVD. What triggered this was a recent financial analysis in Widescreen magazine. They estimated that if Sony lowered the price of their Blu-Ray players to be competitive with HD-DVD players, they would lose an unacceptable amount of money. Billions of dollars.

But if they sell players at a price that loses only hundreds of millions, they still can’t compete against $499 HD-DVD players. Tim Robertson and I talked about this. Sony is being very stubborn and arrogant. (Well, duh…)

I think Sony is scrambling hard to get the price down so that they can sell the PS3 and HD players at a reasonable price. It’s a very, very difficult situation, and time is running out. And now, the HD-DVD players are shipping and media is on the shelves. Could be too late for Sony.

But just as I get ready to write more, I found this, thanks to Tim.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/04/19/why-hd-dvd-will-prevail-my-opinion/

Bingo.

Perhaps Blu-Ray will be in future PCs and Macs as a storage medium, but despite our technical fetish for the very best, it loooks like “good enough” is the enemy of perfect. Basically, it comes down to betting on the rather modest amounts Americans want to pay for players. $500 is the magic number. $999 is a number I’ve seen for a Samsung Blu-Ray player due in about a month or two – and $999 is NOT the winning number.

I also read that the initial HD-DVD players will only output 1080i. The Blu-Rays are planned, I recall, to output 1080p and 1080i. Beware.

It’s possible the retailers will change modes. At first they were concerned about confusing the customer. Now that HD-DVD has hit the retail channels, I’m betting retailers will change gears and tell customers that Blu-Ray is delayed and it’s gonna be expensive. “Another Betamax.” Just to make some short-term bucks and settle the issue by exerting their own control. Could happen.

Hey, I think Blu-Ray is fabulous, and I’m still rooting for Sony. What do you think? And remember! Don’t kill the messengers.