Only 300 Thousand of High-Definition Video Players Sold in the U.S. – Analysts

by Anton Shilov
10/01/2007 | 10:14 PM

Nowadays technologies get widely adopted much faster than their predecessors were ten years ago. But that is not the case with high-definition video formats, at least, in the <%BANNER[article]%>USA, as sales of Blu-ray and HD DVD players proceed considerably slower compared to DVD a decade ago.

After finally reaching the market in early 2006, high-definition video players of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats have been sold in about 300 thousand quantities in a little more than one and a half years in the USA, figures from Adams Media Research published by the Wall Street Journal claim. By contrast, Consumer Electronics Association claims that 350 thousand DVD players were acquired by end users in the first year after introduction in March, 1997.

Even though HD DVD leads with 58% of standalone player sales, claims Adams Media, the Blu-ray disc (BD) camp has Sony PlayStation 3, a device that has been sold in roughly 1.6 million quantities in the USA so far. While hardly a lot of people use a game machine to watch BD movies the respectable amount of consoles sold creates some additional potential for the format.

Nevertheless, with both formats being very strong and pushed very hard by powerful companies, typical end-users cannot decide which one to be bet on, as a result sales of players stagnate and so do sales of high-definition movies. In fact, studios charge a premium for high-definition discs over standard-definition DVDs, therefore, some customers may hold themselves back because of that as well.

LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics both have promised to offer universal Blu-ray/HD DVD players, however, only LG has managed to get two of such devices to the market, whereas Samsung had to setback the release due to certain issues. Some analysts believe that eventually the so-called hybrid players will win, but with only two available on the market for the price of about $1000, it is not going to happen this holiday season.