Now That The HD Disk War Is Over….

It certainly appears that HD-DVD lost. But it also appears that Blu-Ray did not win. Yes, this was a classic lose-lose situation. For all it’s back room dealing Sony may blow this in the end.

Blu-Ray sales peaked for a few weeks in January but have since slumped. Consumers just may not see value in the price of the players or the media. Ars Technica has the details.

Wait, the price of Blu-Ray players has actually been on the rise since Toshiba conceded the battle! Even I, who still has a first generation Toshiba HD-XA1 HD-DVD player, won’t be buying a Blu-Ray player any time soon. They’re just too expensive.

Also, they lack a lot of the features that HD-DVD was already delivering…like online interactivity, multiple camera angles, etc. Until the Blu-Ray camp gets their profile 2.0 together why would anyone bother? That could leave them in a very Osborne 2 situation. The market freezes waiting for the next generation and your sales dry up in the short term.

Unlike the Osborne 2 none of the current crop of players are in this for this short term. They’re big enough companies to stick it out, although their “pace of innovation” may slow now that they don’t think they have competition. Except that they do have competition.

I’m just as likely to buy an AppleTV as a Blu-Ray player. In fact, in the past 60 days our Netflix use has completely stopped, but my wife is downloading movies from Amazon’s Unboxed almost every week. She likes the integration into our TivoHD. It’s really convenient, even though it costs more.

Netflix…you need to take note. You’ll be losing accounts soon. Your downloadable movie service is laughable….and SD only.

Neither of us are fans of Apple. In fact, my wife is fairly anti-Apple. But AppleTV’s HD downloads through iTunes might just be compelling enough to overcome our distain for the ubber-cool AAPL. At $299 we might just do it, eventually.

God, I hate to be locked into a closed ecosystem like iTunes. Amazon…are you getting this. I’m buying if you’re selling…HD downloads that is. Get on it! And soon!!!

And Mr Tivo…help them!! Make it happen for fade forever into irrelevance. I have three Tivo systems (2 SD, 1 HD) but that could change in the next 6 months. Now is the time.