James Delahunty
19 Mar 2007 17:31
Toshiba has rejected claims from the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) that Blu-ray is winning the format war. Olivier Van Wynendaele, Deputy General manager of HD DVD at Toshiba Ltd, accused the group of using propaganda in their press releases and at CeBIT in Germany this year. The BDA and news sources have been reporting that Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by a ratio of 3:1 in the U.S., which Van Wynendaele strongly denies.
He told Tech.co.uk that the reason for the sudden surge in Blu-ray figures was due to new owners of the PlayStation 3 console redeeming Blu-ray movie vouchers given to them by Sony. The vouchers can be exchanged at retail stores and Van Wynendaele said this has distorted the genuine sales figures.
He then went on to say that over 200,000 HD DVD stand-alone players were sold in the United States, compared to 30,000 stand-alone Blu-ray players, and criticized the BDA for attempting to count all PS3s as Blu-ray player sales when they have no proof that customers are using them for anything other than games or are interested in buying any Blu-ray movies at all.
He then made a very valid point; with high def player sales figures being only 1% of regular DVD player sales in the U.S., it is impossible for either format to declare victory at such an early stage. He did say, however, that HD DVD still beats Blu-ray hands down in terms of affordability and threatened that Toshiba would undercut any lower priced Blu-ray players with even lower prices.
Van Wynendaele went on to point out how stand-alone HD DVD players cost less than Blu-ray players, and admitted that even the HD DVD player prices are still too high for consumers.
Source:
Tech.co.uk