Blu-Ray takes Europe

[Neal]

Blu-Ray.com is reporting that the Blu-Ray disc is accountable for 63% of every HD format movie sold in Europe. Since day 1 this has lead to a ratio of 3-1 against Sony's Blu Ray and the HD DVD.

"Top executives went as far as saying that there is no format war outside the US: Blu-ray takes the cake hands down. It's not difficult to imagine that European sales will come close to Japanese numbers, where 96% of HD movies sold are Blu-ray."

Sweet. I didn't get why people would choose HD DVD, it has less space, thats literally the only difference.... right? I didn't know that 96% of Japanese HD movie sales were Blu Ray O___O Whoa!

[ozonez]

It might be because people think that their DVD (non-HD/Blu-ray) can play Blu-ray and think its just a special dvd cos the case is blue and looks "different."

But yeh Blu-Ray is far better then DVD which = PS3 owns Xbox 360 for games.

[S-r-ex]

not to mention that Bluray is far superior in any technical aspect and name and the case has a way better color, that particular red is like totally lame...and I think the PS3/360 situation in Japan can take the blame for Bluray's 96% sucsess, PS3 is going OK on sales and almost nobody in Japan has a 360, even fewer a HDDVD player, and 360 doesn't have any HDMI to boost the HD experience, and jappy's like's to have the coolest technical stuff, where 360 comes short because of HDMI lack (whoa, I'm getting PS3boy-ish here!). and since Sony was in the development lead of Bluray, jappy's prefer it since they know and like the company.
and I haven't even seen any HDDVD commercials here in Norway, but Casino Royale has posters on the back of the busses. 'Casino Royale på DVD/Blu-ray 23 mars'. should be unnecessary to translate...

[Flint]

Blu-Ray does seem to be gaining more popularity in the UK, in my nearest HMV they used to have a 50/50 split between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD shelf space, but these days it's more like 80/20 in favour of Blu-Ray. I've heard various industry commentators claiming that HD-DVD will be obsolete by the end of the year. Whether Blu-Ray will eventually overtake DVD in terms of sales and popularity is unclear at the moment, but I certainly don't think that Blu-Ray will go the way of Betamax like a lot of people said when the technology was first released.

[Neal]

Not for the UK for a while at least. I know a couple of people who have HD TV's but I dont think its really that popular here.

Its getting much more popular but not yet at the stage where you would hear someone saying "Omg im getting the Blu-Ray when it comes out" xD

And yeah, hopefully it wont go the way of the Betamax. I really really doubt it will.

[Flint]

I guess the questions that should be asked here are: of the people here that own a PS3, do you buy Blu-Ray movies very often? Have any of you stopped buying DVD's in favour of Blu-Ray? I'm just interested to see if many people are actually using their PS3's for watching hi-def films.

[Neal]

I would if I had an HD xD I would buy them over a normal DVD because they really do look and sound better. So when my birthday comes and I have an HD TV it will be Blu-Rays over DVD for sure.