Blu-ray, not so blue afterall

It seems that one of my previous reviews was confirmed by bloggers everywhere. Cymfony, a company whose job is to measure the market influence currently published a report which reflects the consumer’s opinions on the well-known formats. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

Cymfony analyzed 323 blogs and carefully read almost 18.000 posts in the past two months, then concluded. Those posts were made mostly by two social categories: gamers and video-fans, and the opinions were of course divided as well in favor or against the two technologies.

The discussions in favor of HD-DVD were present with a +46% ratio than the ones in favor of Blu-Ray. On the other hand, one of Blu-Ray’s main advantage, the storage capacity and data interaction, was discussed in a very few posts, meaning it’s not that important for the consumer as they would have thought.

Like I said in my previous review, one of the disadvantages would be the high price of the format. It seems that, along with the lack of a high-definition video format for Blu-ray was not the subject of these complaints either. Instead, 26% of the complaining posts were about the public’s general disliking of the format, influenced by previous experience (Sony failed at this chapter in the past as well. Think of the MiniDisc, Beta and ATRAC), and by Sony’s attitude that clearly reflects arrogance on the market.

The second complaint on the list is the fact that Sony wanted to include a Blu-Ray unit in PS3, meaning that some would be forced to buy something they probably wouldn’t want or need. This was 21%. And to fill up the podium, the third most encountered complaint (16%) was the so-called “format wars” between the two.

However, the battle is not finished yet, and it won’t be probably until sometime next year, even if the consumers incline to use HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray, as more than half of the posts that expressed opinions on this format were neutral.

If you are interested on all details of the study, it’s available for download here in PDF format. I’m looking forward to hear your opinions.

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Posted in Hardware by Bogdan Boghiu