The next generation optical storage standard is still in the cradle and just the fact that we have both HD DVD and Blu-ray fighting for the same market, means that it might take a while before we have a standard format. There’s no doubt that we’re getting closer though, and new figures from Japan shows that the interest in HD media has grown considerably over the last couple of months. In a survey made in over 2,300 home electronics stores, they’ve seen a big increase in demand for HD media players. Back in October of last year, 6.1% of all DVD recorders were able to handle either of the HD formats. This rose to 20% during November and December.
“Due to the price difference, next-generation DVDs made up a lucrative 35% of the total value of DVD recorder sales in the last two months of 2007, it said.”
The most interesting part is not the large increase itself, but that 90% of the players were Blu-ray players. And this does not include PlayStation 3, but only stationary players. Toshiba can’t be happy with these figures and the question is what HD DVD has to do turn this around. Blu-ray is on a roll and more and more movie studios seem to be favoring Blu-ray.
