US HD hardware sales 3:1 in Blu-ray's favour by year end

US households will together own 948,000 HD DVD playback devices and almost 3m Blu-ray Disc-capable machines come the end of 2007, market watcher DisplaySearch has estimated. Breaking those numbers down, we get 2.5m PlayStation 3s, 678,000 HD DVD players, 461,000 Blu-ray Disc players and 270,000 Xbox 360 add-on drives, …

[Joff]

But is the hardware being used?

It's all very well saying 2.5m Blu-ray friendly PS3s are out there but are those owners going out and buying films for the new format?

I suppose they must be, it's not as if they've got any games to play on the PS3...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Joff

Hey, I am hearing that Vista is hugely popular and selling like hotcakes /sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Blu-ray has vanquished HD DVD

I imagine that a large proportion of the PS3s out there are being used for watching movies at least some of the time. Have HDTV and PS3, will watch Blu-ray movies. Why wouldn't you?

I like HD DVD personally. The software has been superior to that of Blu-ray from the beginning. Unfortunately, however, the HD DVD proponents are now locked in a death-spiral of price cutting of their machines to try and out-do the expensive PS3's market domination. I've a feeling it'll all end in tears for them but that's life. I have a PS3 and a 360 HD DVD add-on so I don't mind which format wins. I'd just like to be able to watch my movies regardless of format. With downloading in the ascendent, the whole question may become moot anyway in a few years time.

[Jason Tozer]

PS3s galore...

The numbers are very flattering because of the PS3......You can also tell that they know it and are relying on blinding the public, just because they mention "hardware sales 3:1" - I guess the software sales are rather embarrassing ;)

[Tim]

Not all PS3 owners even have an HD TV!

It's just not possible to count all PS3 owners as Blu-Ray owners when many of them don't even own an HD capable TV.

[Morely Dotes]

Re: Looks like Blu-ray has vanquished HD DVD

For a couple of years I had 2 Xbox consoles; neither one of them was *ever* used to play DVD movies, however.

If one wants to get a good idea of the market for HD discs, once must eliminate game consoles from the figures. When we do that, we see 678,000 HD DVD players, 461,000 Blu-ray Disc players, and too small a market to support a single movie studio, much less cause a huge shift from "regular" DVD releases.

And if one wants to spin the fires, then it is far more valid to say that HD DVD players are selling 3 units for every 2 BD players.

Critical thinking: market analysts ought to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all PS3 owners even have a HD TV?

@Tim

I know it's possible to use a PS3 with a regular TV but why would you? Fork out £3-400 on a PS3 and not have a decent TV to use it with? Maybe, but only if you're very poor or very dumb.

No, most PS3 users will have a HD ready TV of some description, don't kid yourself on and most will be tempted to watch a Blu-ray movie of some description on it even if it's only the freebie Casino Royale or whatever.

[Bad Beaver]

Why I wouldn't?

Of course, if you had yourself robbed over the PS3 and HDTV, why not spend minimum €20 (used!) each on a still shoddy selection of movies, most of which are available around €5 on DVD. Makes sense.

[Shane McCarrick]

PS3 owners and bluray films

I have a PS3- and over 20 bluray film disks. A shipload of them are HD content from the BBC- rather than from the main US studios- but I have 26 disks there nonetheless. When I paid £400 for my machine- I also purchased a 40" HD panel and donated my DVD player to my little sister. My brother and my brother-in-law are similar. I have never owned a games console before in my life, and the opportunity to get as powerful a platform as a PS3 was too good to be missed. Previously I had a crabby £30 DVD player that chewed through DivX and other codecs like a hot knife through butter- and suited me fine.

Why would I buy a blu-ray player, as opposed to a PS3- when its cheaper to buy the games console (esp. after the price cuts and the release of the 40Gb model).

Far from there being a large party of PS3 owners out there who don't own any bluray films- I would quite happily guess that there are an even larger contingent out there with very few games at all, but the beginnings of large bluray film libraries. HMV are flogging bluray boxsets for less than it cost to buy a single disk just 2 or 3 months ago- it is very much a viable alternate to buying DVDs (even if the PS3 also upscales DVDs very nicely too :-) ). If I could only find a way to remove the region lock from the PS3- so my R1 disks played without the need for another player- I'd be sorted...... As for PS3 games- well, my wife is sorting that shortage at Christmas- via a little bit of ebaying :-)

Its very disengenuous to discount PS3 owners as owners of Bluray films- if anything we are very much the driving force behind their sales.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't Blu-ray and HD DVD discs be more expensive than DVDs?

Kind of makes sense to me. How expensive were DVDs compared to VHS tapes when they came out?

Talk about scraping the bottom of the argument barrel.

[Tony Luck]

Still waiting till one format wins

I don't care which one wins, but I'm not buying either until one side throws in the towel.

[Tim Butterworth]

Xmas sales a better indicator

The final haul of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players (providing that HD disks become wide-spread) will contain only a small proportion of PS3 or 360s, so the fact that the current statistics contain so many of these biases the figures and makes them rather useless.

I'd look at the comparison between disk sales over the Christmas period to give a better statistic as to which format is winning.

[Anonymous Coward]

the same question, 5 years ago:

SACD or DVD-Audio..?

this boat has sailed. Neither format will "succeed" in any serious scale.

[Highlander]

Scoff if you will....

For all those scoffing at these number and at the PS3, let me remind you of a few things. All the people bleating on about how people don't use game consoles to watch movies....PS2 is largely credited as sparking DVD into life. Of course, no one watched DVDs on that platform, did they?

People who purchase PS3s do, largely - as in the majority - have HDTVs, they are also not idiots and most will dabble with BluRay movies. It's the height of arrogant stupidity to dismiss all of this trying to somehow claim that the PS3 isn't a factor in the adoption of BluRay, but then at the same time trying to void the whole argument on the basis that BluRay is propped up by PS3.

At the end of the day if the HD-DVD lot want to count Xbox360s and their add-on drive, then BluRay folks can count PS3s. You know the funny thing is that even if you assume that fully half of all PS3s sold are not used to play movies, that still leaves in the region of 3 million PS3s playing BluRay titles around the globe, plus however many hundreds of thousands of stand alone players there are. Like it or not, that number dwarfs the number of HD-DVD player and constitutes a mountain for Toshiba et al to climb.

[Andy Ivey]

Watch All, Own None

Since some of us are recycling old posts, I'll reinforce the earlier idea that more than one of us has a mail order move rental queue full of BD movies. Why pay $5 for a DVD when BlockBuster will let me borrow any BD I want for a flat monthly rate?

[Jonathon Green]

The Elephant in the room...

...which all parties seem to be ignoring is the massive number of people who haven't bought any HD playback hardware or content yet.

See that bloke over there sitting on the fence with a nice new, relatively cheap upscaling DVD player and a large pre-existing collection of content for it? That's me that is, and I'm quite happy to stay there until this whole format pantomime comes to a sensible conclusion. What's more I've got a lot of mates with me, none of us really give a stuff who comes out on top, and to be quite honest, we'll all piss ourselves laughing if the whole farce goes on for so long that some third format (downloadable HD maybe?) comes out of nowhere leaving all the fanboys and pundits twisting in the wind with expensive paperweights gathering dust under their TVs...

--

JG

[Ross Fleming]

And in the UK...

The hardware sales are 3 to 1. But these are actual sales and not just a ratio...

@Morely - fair enough, I've never used my PS2 for DVDs either, but only cos I already owned a standalone DVD player.

[Chris Braisby]

Why Bother

In todays market and ever falling costs of technology and convergence does it really matter which studio uses which format.

Multi format players will be affordable (not cheap, not yet) soon, it took DVD players a couple of years to become affordable, and once production is ramped up so should hd players.

In a couple of years we'll be watching downloads anyway, either through sat, broadband or a method that hasn't established itself yet.

[Paul Swindlehurst]

@anon coward

"I know it's possible to use a PS3 with a regular TV but why would you? Fork out £3-400 on a PS3 and not have a decent TV to use it with? Maybe, but only if you're very poor or very dumb.

No, most PS3 users will have a HD ready TV of some description, don't kid yourself on and most will be tempted to watch a Blu-ray movie of some description on it even if it's only the freebie Casino Royale or whatever."

I think that's a little naive. Most games consoles are bought by parents, for kids, thats a fact. And most kids don't have HD capable sets in their bedroom. I know plenty of people who've bought X360's, PS3's and Wii's for kids who are playing them on portable tellys in bedrooms.

The PS3 is seriously skewing the figures when it comes to the whole HD-DVD/Blu-Ray debate and Sony know it. They are just hoping that the studios/customers don't notice, or care.

[Shane Lusby]

Console owners

I think you need to check your age ranges on the average console owners. They are not dominantly owned by 12 year olds any more, and haven't been in years.

Beyond that, and as many have pointed out above there are many people purchasing PS3's as a Blu-Ray player that happens to play games rather than as a game console that happens to play movies. I've only had my PS3 a short time but I currently have 3 times as many movies as I do games and I only expect that ratio to grow with time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't count out the PS3s...

Hell, Playing Blu-Ray movies is just about all my PS3 is being used for! It's actually revived my movie watching interest which had waned in recent years... and, who knows, I just might find a game or two of interest down the road. My point? Don't count PS3s out of the Blu-Ray movie playing business just because they're game consoles. I'm certain there are plenty of others who bought the PS3 primarily for the Blu-Ray playability with the fringe benefits of being a gaming console... all while being cheaper than the dedicated Blu-Ray players at that time!!!

[Eric Van Haesendonck]

This means very little

Let's think about this for a while: these figures mean nothing because some PS3 owners will buy blu-ray movies, some won't. It's not possible to know exaclty what percentage of of the PS3 owning public do or don't based on hardware figures.

On the software sales I think it's more like 1 hd-dvd movie sold for 2 Blu-Ray movies sold. Based on that I would estimate that around half of the PS3s are used to play Blu-ray at best, but that's only an estimate.

In practical terms that would mean that HD-DVD got around 1 mil. players effectively in use (700.000 stand alone + 300.000 Xbox) and Blu-ray got around 2 mil. players effectively in use (500.000 stand alone + 1.500.000 PS3 effectively used for movie watching). Of course these are pure estimates.

[James Foster]

Reality of DVD

I own a Toshiba E1 HD-DVD player and a PS3. So I guess this is a subject where I know something. The reality is this. I use the Tosh to upscale DVDs to my TV but I don't care about either format. I couldn't even been bothered to redeem a coupon to claim five HD-DVDs. BR is even worse with much more DRM, crappy half baked java code. DVD succeeded because it was a unified format and a big improvement on VHS. To be honest anyone who really cares is a sucker. DVD is fine for the next five years. Then it will be 1080p BT Vision IPTV, or 1080p Freeview or Sky. And a PVR/DVR is a better solution for recording than messing around with disks. Actually the Philips BT Vision DVR is excellent. The Microsoft Mediaroom software is superb, it wipes the floor with the Bangalore crappy software, made in Guangdong hardware that is Sky+ sourced by Hackney barrowboys based in Brentwood (Amstrad). The Philips box is even made in the EU, in Hungary. Check it out at John Lewis or Comet. Seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

PS3

I don’t think the PS3 is skewing the figures as much as people think. Personally I wouldn’t have entered the HD cinema market until dual players were affordable, or until one format had emerged as a winner. However, I bought a PS3, because I’m a keen gamer. It happens to play HD movies and I bought a cheap HD TV to play my games in HD – actually I bought it when I got my XB 360 (as this is the point of next-gen gaming IMHO). The PS3 was now my main DVD player thanks to it’s upscaling, and I now own a few BDs purely because I didn’t see the point in buying DVDs when the HD version is only £10 more. And HD IS noticeably better than SD.

I’d also wager that the majority – maybe not a vast majority, but perhaps 60-40 or 70-30 - of PS3s are hooked to to HD TVs. It’s actually difficult to buy a non-HD TV these days.

If Blu-Ray ends up losing, and I don’t think it will to be honest, I will have my PS3 for a while and will still be able to play the movies I have, so no great loss.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM

What is all the fuss over DRM? Surely, you pay your money for the movie on a HD disc, and then you watch it... Why try to rip it down to a crap format that will compress it even further? Probably missing it (namely the portable video players), but seriously? I will almost put my wage on the fact that in a couple of years, if either format wins there will DEFINITELY be DRM on ALL formats (not just HD-DVD or BR). DRM is the future for protection of assets - deal with it like a grown up and pay your money for it (No, I'm not happy with it either, but with all the pirates around, you have got to understand that organisations are trying to make a bit of money but protecting what they have - again I'm not happy with DRM, but it's becoming a fact of digital life)

As for downloads - don't even get me started. Not yet, not for a good many years will this come to fruition. Broadband just isn't strong enough. And 1080p freeview? Nothing is in the pipeline due to .. yup, you've guessed it .. bandwidth of signals.

Oh, and one more thing before I step of the soapbox: What are the ***WORLD*** figures for each HD format? Not bothered by just Japan's, or America's, or Europes figures - i want to know the FULL amoutn across the world.

*Steps down off the soap box*

[Richard Lea]

So not only

It also comes down to content Blu Ray is pulling away from HD DVD. As Michael Bay said (Director of Transformers) If Microsoft hadn't paid Paramount/Dreamworks $150 the format war would be over. But Microsoft are only in this unitl they get their HD Download format working !

PS: BT Vision is all really well until more people down your street start using it take your Bandwidth away then it just constantly freezes

[nt300]

Warner will never go Blu.

I think many people are missing the point in all of this HD situation. Their is no way Warner Bros. will go Blu, they've already stated several time, they do not want a console game system driving a format. In the end it will lose.

If it wasn't for the PS3 & it's BD player, Blu-Ray would have died long ago, and Warner sees this.

When somebody guys a Stand Alone HD DVD player or even the XBOX 360 add-on, they are buying it to view movies ONLY. This is why HD DVD's attach rate is superior where as Blu-Ray's attach rate is really bad.

The more HD DVD players get seeded into homes, the more movies will sell. Warner want's long term, not short term. Why do you think the Blu-Ray Association has issued so many BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) sales? Just to keep their bragging rights by telling everybody they've sold more discs then HD DVD. Well, that is all it is, bragging rights, and means nothing right now.

So, HD DVD will continue to floorish & sell many Stand Alone HD DVD players, and the movie sales will only increase Big Time...

[Tim]

Re: Scoff if you will....

"For all those scoffing at these number and at the PS3, let me remind you of a few things. All the people bleating on about how people don't use game consoles to watch movies....PS2 is largely credited as sparking DVD into life. Of course, no one watched DVDs on that platform, did they?"

The PS2 had some influence but DVD was already well established at that point. It wasn't responsible for DVD's success. Price, size and convenience over VHS was what made DVD so successful.

Also the PS2 is barely used these days as a DVD player.

The PS3 however is seen as the *only* Blu-Ray player. Standalones are largelly irrelevant due to price and outdated profiles. Almost everyone buys the PS3 for Blu-Ray and the way people are talking, the PS3 will continue to be the only player of choice.

Now can you see Joe Public being able to pop into ASDA in a couple of years, and picking up a PS3 for less than £50? Don't think so some how. Not even less than £100. Hell, even the PS2 still isn't that cheap new!

[Tim]

Re: DRM

"What is all the fuss over DRM? Surely, you pay your money for the movie on a HD disc, and then you watch it... Why try to rip it down to a crap format that will compress it even further? Probably missing it (namely the portable video players), but seriously?"

The issue with DRM on Blu-Ray I have is BD+ and the ability to disable Mandatory Managed Copy. Not an option on HD DVD as it remains Mandatory no matter what.

This means, no transferring to portable players so you have to buy a 2nd copy in whatever format that player uses (likely Sony would rather have you buy their other recent failed format, UMD).

This means, no media center systems with ability to stream your movies over a home network. This will become ever more important over the next few years as home media networks become ever more popular.

And then there's region coding. Whilst I can accept the desire to prevent customers in one region, watching a film before it hits the cinemas, I have a major problem with region coding on catalogue titles.

Or, I wouldn't have such a problem if releases were identical the world over, and weren't priced at £=$ prices in the UK. I'd have less reason to import then.

[Iain]

@Region coding

Fortunately, for the most part it's mainly just Fox who are still putting region coding on their BluRay catalogue titles. If you do some online legwork, you'll be surprised how many discs you can import on that format. It's just really annoying that Die Hard isn't one of them.

[Highlander]

Tim

Do you lack reading skills? Who said anything about PS2s playing DVDs today? I was talking in 1999/2000 when the DVD format was still struggling to gain traction due to expensive players and content.

PS3 the only BluRay player? That must be why Pioneer, Samsung, Sony et al are all making stand alone players and haven't had to fire-sale price their products? That must be why there are more than half a million stand alone players sold to the approximately 750,000 HD-DVD players (BTW you do know that HD-DVD launched earlier, had the market to itself and has continually been touted as less expensive, right?). Not sure how you're arguing that PS3 is the only BluRay player.

As for Joe Public popping into Asda in a few years to buy a PS3 for 50 quid? nope, but I bet they won't be more than a couple of hundred quid, probably more like 150 (of your 'pounds'). Stand alone Blu-Ray players on the other hand, I can see players from Samsung and LG and Daewoo hitting 50 quid within a couple of years, easily. If you're arguing otherwise, you're fooling yourself again.

If you are honestly thinking that PS3 is a) the only BD player, and b) would somehow drive the price of consumer grade BD players, then you really are as dumb as your comment makes you seem.

Regarding your pointless DRM comments, who really gives a damn about managed copy capability? What do you need it for? Gonna set up a bit torrent once you strip the copy protection off the movie? Wanna protect the disc? Oh, well let's see the hard-coat on BluRay will do that, pity about those scratch prone HD-DVD discs of yours though.

Nice one though, throw in the random mention of UMD as if it has any relevance to Blu-Ray, gonna go for the trifecta and mention Betamax as well?

Home media server spewing HD content from ripped (ahem - managed copy) HD movies? How many people have multi-terabyte home servers? One HD movie plus extras weighs in at around 50GB. Four or five of these and you have consumed that 250GB monster drive. 20 movies burns up that huge 1TB server of yours. You did have it mirrored in case of disc failure right? Oh, and don't even mention further compression to save space, what a load of bollocks that is. You want to take that nice HD picture and squelch it to a lower bit rate by dropping some resolution and color depth so you can fit a few more movies on your 1TB home server? Go for it my friend, I'll be watching my pristine BluRay movies with uncompressed sound and crystal clear picture. You're welcome to your smudged, blury, dingy looking 'hd' streamed from your Microsoft home server.

Region coding? Lets see BD has only three regions, not the six or seven of DVD. Seems like it's better than it was. HD-DVD has no region coding? News to me and presumably Toshiba as well. I could have sworn that capability is in the standard, but not used - yet. Either way, one thing that you apparently fail to understand is that movie studios like region coding. They like that it's harder to pickup a movie from the US and watch in the UK because that way they can stagger releases and better control their market and marketing. The absence of region coding from HD-DVD is probably not seen as an entirely good thing by the content providers themselves. As someone else points out, Fox appears to enjoy using the region coding on BluRay, so the presence of absence of this capability would appear to be something that matters to them. Wonder which way they'll jump?

[Iain]

@Highlander

We had this one out with the Reg staff the other week; a working party is in place to investigate the possibility of adding region coding to the HD-DVD standard, but they've yet to report any definite findings back. So current discs don't have anything on them, and current players don't know to look for it.

Apart from Fox, who demonstrate their outright contempt for consumers in so many ways (they're by far the worst in the constant re-release and repackage game, and only very recently started putting any extras on BluRay titles whatsoever, after seeing consumers ignore the rubbish they were shovelling out the door, for instance) most studios have a more sensible attitude to region encoding - using it on new-release titles that require staggered worldwide release, but not on catalogue stuff that is already available elsewhere. Paramount (while they were still releasing on Blu) and Warner match regionless HD-DVDs with regionless Blus across the board.

[Tim]

Highlander

"Do you lack reading skills? Who said anything about PS2s playing DVDs today? I was talking in 1999/2000 when the DVD format was still struggling to gain traction due to expensive players and content."

Indeed, and still the PS2 wasn't the major influencing factor. It was 'a' factor, but it was the format itself that drove it. Blu-Ray however is entirely being supported by the PS3 which is a totally different situation to 1999/2000 with the PS2.

The reason for mentioning the PS2 today is because the PS2 is irrelevant to DVD. The PS3 however will still be very important to Blu-Ray several years from now as the only relevant player.

"Not sure how you're arguing that PS3 is the only BluRay player."

Only *relevant* player.

All the standalones are a) too expensive and b) using outdated profiles.

Until Blu-Ray standalones are as cheap as HD DVD standalones, are all profile 2.0, are region free, Blu-Ray has no long term future. The PS3 is to the mind of most people just a games console (no matter how much you and I can argue it isn't just a games console, and I even agree there). For AV enthusiasts you need an AV component for the Hi-Fi stack, not the PS3. For the mass market you need a cheap player for £50 to £100 and the PS3 will not be that even 4 years from now (again I point to the PS2 as example there which has been going 7 years!, and the PS3 is a more expensive product than the PS2!).

"Regarding your pointless DRM comments, who really gives a damn about managed copy capability? What do you need it for? Gonna set up a bit torrent once you strip the copy protection off the movie? Wanna protect the disc? Oh, well let's see the hard-coat on BluRay will do that, pity about those scratch prone HD-DVD discs of yours though."

Talk about me lacking reading skills. Read my comment again. I'm not talking about pirating movies, I'm talking about portability and network streaming. Notice all those media center PCs in the shops these days that sell bucket loads? (and yes they do have multi terabyte capacity). All useless once BD+ is enforced. One of the major reasons why Microsoft backs HD DVD.

In fact HD disc formats could ultimately fail where MS succeed with movie streaming.

As for scratches (which I never even mentioned), you do know that Blu-Ray required the coating because it places the data layer closer to the surface? HD DVD doesn't require this because it's closer to how DVDs are manufactured. Even scratched it is possible to resurface an HD DVD like DVD. Blu-Ray couldn't, at least not until it required the "work around" of extra coating (which adds even more to production costs and complexity).

P.S. Coatings can fail, leading to rot between the coating and disc.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the *software*, stupid

If a studio releases a movie on BD and HD-DVD, and the BD version outsells the HD-DVD by 2:1 or more, why would they give a flying crap whether the end-user has a standalone player, a PS3, or something they made themselves out of mirrors, bits of old string and a couple of ZX81s?

All that matters is which format they're shifting more units of, and what the trends in each format's sales figures are. A unit sale is a unit sale whatever the movie is played on, or even if it's stuck on a shelf and never played.

(Posted anon because the fanbois on both sides are getting *really* scary ;-) )

[Anonymous Coward]

Managed Mandatory Copy - great feature in principle, probably going to be killed by execution...

Mandatory Managed Copy is a really great feature, however my guess is that it will use some kind of DRM, why else the need for AACS on the disc itself?

And since it will use some kind of DRM - who is going to deliver that kind of DRM, and how strict will the license requirements be, and will the quality of the Managed Mandatory Copy be reduced, compared to the original disc version? If it is going to be using DRM, I think it will be a lot easier for people to just use AnyDVD HD and just reencode the movie themselves or just simply plain rip it.

I think the best way to see how it will end, is to look at how Microsoft Media Center handles DVDs - it is required, per the DVD-license, to enable playback only at 480p if HDCP is not available (as I have understood it - I do not have a Microsoft Media Center nor a HDTV so please tell me if I am wrong). And ripping DVDs is not available (as per the license), even though Microsoft have the DRM technology installed that would lock that copy of the DVD to that machine specifically.

And the few companies in the US that actually tries to make networkable DVD jukeboxes are having a lot of legal trouble with the MPAA and DVD-forum, with the latter strongly trying to withdraw the DVD-license, because the movie companies fears that it would then be used for piracy, even if the product actually replicates the DVD DRM, or uses an even stronger DRM, in the copy stored in jukebox.

I would like Managed Mandatory Copy to be as great a feature as possible, I just think the downfall of that feature lies in the principle - it is "managed" - meaning DRM. And since it is managed per copy, how many copies are a single player allowed to make, and in what quality? For me, Managed Mandatory Copy is a really great feature in principle, that is probably going to be killed by the way it is executed.

Think of it - if you could make a 1:1 copy using Managed Mandatory Copy, you would just rent the movie and transfer it to your Media Center and then return the movie. That was a lost sale for the movie company, unless of course that Managed Mandatory Copy had an expiration date, and if expiration dates are going to be used, what is the timeframe, to make sure we still own the disc? - what good is a media center with a huge library then, if you still have to insert the disc into the drive, to prove that you own the disk every 3 days, for example, for the copy in the library to remain active? Or are we going to register our purchases of media on some website, and using that system we will be issued licenses for each device? What if we sell the disc, and "forgets" to delete the registration - since the disc does not contain a unique serial, how are they going to keep track of who has a real copy, and who just forgot to delete his registration?

I am sorry for the overly long post, and yes, I have posted this anonymously because I know some will think this is a critique of HD-DVD. It is not a critique of HD-DVD, but a critique of the principle behind Managed Mandatory Copy, and I think people have too high hopes for Managed Mandatory Copy. Judging by past behavior of the MPAA and DVD-Forum, and considering the rhetoric that the MPAA and DVD-Forum seems to be using these days, with MPAA initiating lawsuits almost daily, I will not get my hopes up for a great Managed Mandatory Copy, sorry.

[tonyoung]

Phew, it's getting HOT in here!

My goodness, some people ARE getting hot under the collar.

If I can just add my own two-penn'th - I'm not a gamer (but I do play F1) and I bought my PS3 precisely because it plays Blu-ray and I didn't want an additional box in my living room as well as Sky HD, to go with my Pioneer 508. (I have an LX60D DVD/HDD home cinema setup which upscales DVD to 1080p)

So, count me as one of the 3m who watches BD on PS3, because it can.

4m after Christmas?

T