The European HD DVD Promotional Group has released some attach rate figures, and it's very good news for HD DVD.

 

European HD DVD owners have purchased an average of 3.8 movies, compared to 0.6 movies for European Blu Ray player owners. The highest attach rate came from Spain, where HD DVD owners purchased 5.7 movies per player, in contrast to 0.4 for Spanish Blu Ray owners. Italy boasts a 4.4 movie/player rate for HD DVD, 0.4 for Blu Ray. French owners bought 5 movies each, 0.6 for Blu Ray. German HD DVD owners bought 2.9 movies/player, German Blu Ray owners 0.6, and UK owners took home 3.7 HD DVD movies per player compared to 0.8 for Blu Ray.

 

Sony Corp. C.E.O. Howard Stringer was quoted Thursday as saying that the Format War is a "stalemate".

 

Quite the turnaround to the many and repeated statements of victory that have come from the Blu Ray camp in the last year. Stringer called the duel between Sony's Blu Ray and rival HD DVD "a difficult fight". "We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides," Stringer stated. Stringer shrugged off the importance of the fight between the rival formats, saying it was mostly for bragging rights. "It doesn't mean as much as all that," said Stringer. He did express regret for the two sides not being able to come together behind one format before the launch of both Blu Ray and HD DVD.

 

Sony's C.E.O. expressing such sentiments publicly should alarm all Blu Ray advocates. It demonstrates a waning commitment to their format, or at the very least, a serious decline in the confidence they have in their format's chances in this struggle for HD optical supremacy.

 

Last week's $99 price on Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD players saw 90,000 of the units fly out retailer's doors over the weekend.

 

Video Business reports that the weekend sale saw Toshiba sell as many HD-A2 units as the best selling stand-alone Blu Ray player, the Sony BDP-S300, has sold since it's launch last summer.  Not all retailers are taken into account by the data, so actual numbers of HD-A2s sold is higher. No number yet on how many HD-A3s were sold over the weekend. The HD-A3 is the replacement for the HD-A2, and some retailers were honoring the $99 price on the new model when HD-A2s were sold out.

 

Price matters. A big weekend for stand-alone HD DVD player sales, with the Christmas shopping season just around the corner.

 

 

As one of the main battlefields in the Blu Ray-HD DVD Format War has become more and more reminiscent of the flamethrowing of Usenet past, AVS Forum owners have given their Blu Ray and HD DVD forum area a three day timeout.

 

During the three day closure, no new posts will be able to be posted in the Blu Ray and HD DVD section of AVS Forum. The formal announcement was made yesterday, in which AVS stated their displeasure with some of the behavior that has been occurring in these areas. They also state in the announcement that AVS is format neutral, and would remain so.

 

AVS sees 200,000 visitors a day, and is the internet's premier AV community. Obviously with so many visitors and with such a heated topic as the Format War, they have seen some bad behavior in the Blu Ray and HD DVD area. It shows how thoughtful AVS is of their users, even when their behavior hasn't been so exemplary, that they would take this step before just banning the offending parties, or getting rid of the area altogether. Read the announcement, and mind your manners when the Blu Ray and HD DVD forums reopen.