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HD DVD takes Early Lead in European Market

Blu-ray may have leading hand in the high-class market of North America, but HD DVD seems to be the first choice of Europeans. The movie studios of Europe prefer to use HD DVD over Blu-ray. This is because of the reason of cost-saving by duplication of HD DVD for these self-governing studios of Europe.

The main reason behind the success of Blu-ray in US is the addition of Blu-ray players in the latest console, PS3 from Sony. According to a current research by Adams Media, the consoles of Blu-ray players are accounted roughly as 94 percent of all Blu-ray player that are being purchased in US. If we check it according to the data, then we’ll find that delay in the launching of Sony’s PS3 in Europe could be a main pull-back for the adoption of Blu-ray system in Europe’s movie studios.  Maximum independent movie studios of Europe use HD-DVD, as they are installed under their limited budget.

Certainly, one cannot compare the features and costs of HD-DVD and Blu-ray systems. The replication cost of an HD-DVD comes around €800,000 and one can create around 40, 000 discs out of it in a single day. Whereas the replication cost of Blu-ray is around €1.7m to €1.8 and one can create only 10,000 to 15,000 discs in one day.

According to CEO of DS DVD, Alex Ponti, some additional capacity will be required to produce extra content, but that will be quite prohibitive and will take few more years to come. The advanced HD DVD requires an Ethernet jack and this could be an advantage for the European studios. This extra content offers HD DVD players over the internet rather than staying just on the discs.

Till now, there are over thrice as many European movies are developed on HD DVD as compared to Blu-ray. The number of Blu-ray is really miniscule, it moves 35 to 10. But the launching of Sony PS3 could certainly change that. It truly depends upon the interest of people, how they take that in front of their HD DVD.

Although Blu-ray is reducing HD DVD sales United states, but in Europe, HD DVD is still having upper hand in the market. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD are in strong competition in the US and European market. It is really hard to name a single one right now; they both have to go long way before declaring the victory. As far as production cost is concern, HD DVD is much worthier than Blu-ray.