November 14, 2007

We Won't Let Sony CEO Howard Stringer Rest, HD DVD Blowing Out Blu-ray In Europe

Sony CEO Howard Stringer may have declared the ongoing HD DVD/Blu-ray format war a "stalemate" and may not think it "means much", but we here at TVSnob know it means a whole lot. Competition means price decreases for you, the consumer, which is why Mr.Stringer said what he did. Blu-ray can't compete with HD DVD players in terms of price this year at least and it's been a severe blow to their side.

Knowing competition is a good thing for those that actually purchase the players, we've decided to make Stringer play the game a little longer and keep fanning the format war flames.

The European HD DVD Promotional Group has released some interesting stats that should get hot-head forum users yapping again. According to the group, European HD DVD owners have bought an average of 3.8 HD DVD movies, compared to the an average 0.6 Blu-ray movies purchased by Blu-ray owners. And before anyone decides that the numbers must be skewed because they were released by an HD DVD-biased group, the stats were actually compiled by independent research firm GfK.

Do you have anything to say Howard?

Update: Blu-Ray Disc Association's European Chariman Frank Simonis quickly responded to the above announcement claiming that the numbers are a "gross misrepresentation of data", and denounced the HD DVD camp for "manipulating" the numbers and not suppling "access to the original source of their numbers". I thought it was clear that the numbers come from an independent study conducted by GfK, but maybe not.