Quote:
Originally Posted by Regorium
If we as consumers are not seeing the benefits of the reduced cost to the fabs in disc savings, then it will do nothing for attach rate. If retro-fitting old equipment does save them money as you claim, HD-DVD's should be selling at a $25 or $30 price point, instead of being equivalent to the blu-ray at $35.
In my opinion, the side that can get their discs down to $25 a movie like DVD's will come out ahead.
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Ignoring capital expenditures, the per disc cost for either format is as low as regular DVD from what I've read. There is a big difference in capital expenditures between the two technologies. Ultimately that may not matter if Blu-ray grabs a hold of the market. That is the entire movie buying market not just the high def market as maunfacturers will put out the expense of changing over the fabs. But if it continues to essentially stall versus normal DVD they will be loathe to lose regular DVD production trains creating a potential bottleneck which can kill a technology. On the other hand, from what I've read HD-DVD and normal DVD can be manufactured on the same production train so a fab would ultimately not lose any DVD output capacity if high def never takes off.
So many permutations and combinations on what can happen at this stage. Certainly a 2:1 edge in movie sales is promising for Blu-ray, but HD-DVD can argue attachment rate data and other things.
It comes down to what it always will come down...when will the public care enough to decide this supposed war? Will they ever care enough? And when they do care enough is the easiest solution simply to have both formats?