Digital Home is advising readers to purchase neither a HD-DVD player nor a blue-ray player based on the existing sales of both players. Early adopters have only purchased 25,000 HD-DVD players in the last 150 days resulting in a market too small for content providers to bother with. Even if Disney managed to get one in five HD-DVD owners to purchase the $15 HD-DVD edition of the Lion King, it would still result in gross sales of only $75,000. Sales results for Blue-Ray devices were not available but the assumption was that they lag behind even HD-DVD sales making the argument to wait even more compelling.
Digital Home suggests that, even if HD-DVD sales increase by a ten-fold magnitude, it still make take a year before one million units ship. As such a high definition DVD player may not be a wise gift until Christmas 2007 or even possibly Christmas 2008. In the meanwhile, they recommend watching high definition movies on cable since a monthly subscription to a high definition movie network is generally less than the cost of purchasing one HD-DVD or Blue-Ray movie per month.
News source: Digital Home Canada
