HD DVD been in some very mixed reports the last few months, especially on the American market, The Blu-ray camp has proposed the format war being over several times and that the Blu-ray format is selling better than HD DVD. Even if it would be true the Blu-ray format may be doing better than HD DVD in the USA, the latter seems to work a lot better for the people in Europe. According to a report in The Financial Times, European movie studios prefer the HD DVD format because of its lower production costs and lower retail prices. An evident factor is of course the delay of PlayStation 3 in Europe. The integrated Blu-ray player in Sony’s video game console makes up a mighty 94 percent of all sold Blu-ray players in the USA, which at the same time proves how important PS3 is to the Blu-ray format.
“French replication company Qol CEO Laurent Villaume told FT that the risk involved in producing Blu-ray disks isn’t comparable to that of HD DVD: “An HD DVD replication line costs about €800,000 and you can make 40,000 discs a day on it. A Blu-Ray replication line costs €1.7m or €1.8m and you can make 10,000 to 15,000 discs a day.”
So far there are three times as many European movies using the HD DVD format than Blu-ray and the upcoming months will be very important for the Blu-ray camp now that the PlayStation 3 console has finally arrived in Europe. The truth to be told, both the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats have a long way to go before it will reach a bigger audience and we should expect the format war to go on for some time.
