Yay for Rob. Of course he was right. If we had any doubt we would not have published this article.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/format-war/198-wal+mart...

I thought you'd comment on their decision being premature since Walmart will obviously flood the market with HD DVD players.

Do you plan on commenting sometime soon?

For what do you try to appeal in the article on Funai of February? The article is older and more inaccurate than financial report.
http://www.funaiworld.com/investors/financial_repo...
Do you have some powers to make decisions in the plan of Funai?Or, is it a liar?

It is necessary to buy Blue-violet laser diode from SONY and NICHIA to make the high definition disk player.
In addition, when Toshiba and companies other than LG (The cross-license was exchanged) make the HD DVD player, it is necessary to pay the royalty. It is a price that a cheap player of Toshiba disregarded the cost like PS3. Do you think that it is possible to make HD DVD player who is cheaper than Toshiba?

HD DVD stand-alone player is 150,000 units according to the announcement of the HD DVD camp. The Blu-ray camp that sold a more high-priced stand-alone player sold it by 100,000 units. In addition, Blu-ray is 70% in the share of the High-Def disk sales.

Even if you declare that you do not count the figure of a free coupon of Toshiba, it is
meaningless. Nonsense. “

Sorry, but you need to brush up on your English comprehension. It is not meaningless. Let me say it again and hopefully it is simple enough this time – a coupon redeemed to the manufacturer, where the manufacturer or its distributor ships you the disc, or a free disc packed in with your machine in the box, are NOT counted in retail sales figures. A coupon for discounts at retail, or a coupon for a free disc redeemable from a retail store, affect RETAIL store inventory and thus affect retail sales figures. So – free HD-DVDs redeemable by sending in coupons to Toshiba, or included in the box, do not count in retail figures such as thus put forth by Nielsen. Discount coupons and free disc offers (regardless of HD-DVD or Blu-ray)that are redeemed at retail, do affect retail inventory, and thus DO influence retail sales figures.

Also: “FUNAI won BILLION DOLLAR SUPPLIER in fiscal year 2006 from Wal-Mart this year. FUNAI plans to sell the Blu-ray player. “

I have news for you. Wal-Mart sells a variety of Funai equipment under the Symphonic label, and no-name, and private label. Most of which are DVD players, LCD TVs, and other electronics. There is no confirmation at all saying Funai is deliver BD players to Wal-Mart this year, though I'm sure its a possibility for the future. No deal is in place with Wal-mart for BD players yet. If you read other details about the deal, the estimated price is around $500 for Funai's BD player that they plan to have finished before the end of the year, that they plan to shop to various retailers as an OEM product. No doubt this will drop some now that Sony is dumping their latest player at $499, but it will still be considerably more expensive than Fuh Yuan's $200 player at Wal-Mart by the end of the year. Blu-ray still loses, regardless of the manufacturer and the angle.

I think you also missed this tidbit: “While its first product is likely to be compatible with Blu-ray Disc, Takanaka said Funai hasn't taken sides in the format battle and is also considering an HD DVD player.”

“Can someone tell us where to go to find accurate sales statistics for HD DVD players and movies V Blue Ray machines and movies- also PS3 sales-then maybe we can judge for ourselves who is winning without the emotional hype “

Nigel – for PS3 sales you want to look up the NPD figures for north america, more difficult to come by for Europe but they're out there, and for Japan look up Media Create's numbers. PS3 sold only about 82 k units in April in the US, somewhere around 38k units in Japan, and in Europe it's still unsure but growth has slowed to a snail's pace compared to launch. PS3 is likely to hit less than 6M units for 2007 but they are planning to ship 11M units for the year. A lot of trouble there considering estimates place around 2M units still sitting around right now in retail inventories unsold and moving poorly.

As I said previously on the thread…watch…

Even if you declare that you do not count the figure of a free coupon of Toshiba, it is
meaningless. Nonsense.

Sorry, your attempt to bail water for BD fails here. The discount coupons (not the free title offers redeemable direct to Sony) for retail do indeed help pump up software sales for BD….because the titles purchased with coupon come direct from retail inventory.

Moreover you have no point in regards to free coupons for HD-DVD – those are redeemed *direct to Toshiba* to collect the free movies and thus are NOT counted in retail sales figures, which is what we are talking about. Bringing it up means nothing.

Let's also examine this:

“Theron is a supporter of HD DVD of a typical liar. It tells a lie unabashedly by “Blu-ray is MPEG-2″, “HD DVD is VC-1″. In addition, it doesn't know H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High-profile of PHL (Panasonic Hollywood laboratory) to be high quality more than VC-1 of MS (Microsoft).”

So let's avoid the babble and get into real world perpsective. Previously, we heard that the capacity of BD and the xfer rate were assets. Meaning what? Well before with MPEG-2 most of that space (and in many cases only SL BD-ROM) was used up to create a picture that in many cases came up ever so slightly short of HD-DVD in picture quality comparisons. Then now we see BD discs finally using more MPEG-4 and VC-1. Which now in image quality comparisons is by most reviews indistiguishable from HD-DVD's using VC-1.

So Theron may have used the old point about MPEG-2 which isnt valid anymore with BD discs increasingly using advanced codecs. But the important point is that even that being said – you are paying more for a format that HAS NO PICTURE QUALITY ADVANTAGES. So talking about space and transfer rates is utterly idiotic if it yields zero real benefit. You can talk about future benefits, sure… however it only means something if it actually translates to real value to the mainstream consumer, something that they will pay more for. Given the average person will buy a disc, press play, use FF/RW, and chapter skip, and basically look at an HD picture, they are not going to see much difference between either format.

On top of that. Blue-laser sales were an almost infinitesimally small drop in the bucket compared to DVD hardware and software – the mainstream doesnt really care about either format for the most part right now and wont for probably a year or two – it will be dictated by affordability.

Will people pay hundreds of dollars more for a format where they can tell no difference in picture quality now, and in the future if actual PQ improves for BD, they will only be able to see PQ improvements on 1080p screens that are at least 50″ or larger? You guys do realize the majority of HD sets are like 42″ and below right? Also that the bulk of the HD sets being sold right now and for a few years are 720p and 768p right? Real world takeaway: the mass market will not see a PQ difference between either format despite any theoretical advancements BD may make, on the TVs they typically buy.

The supporter of HD DVD of a typical liar doesn't try to accept the reality of the sales comparisons of movies of Blu-ray and HD DVD. “