Yes, folks, the ongoing battle between the two competing next-gen DVD formats is far from over and it seems that the scales are slowly tipping in favor of Sony's little Blu-rayed baby, as the latest figures released by the Blu-ray Disc Association show a huge gap between the two formats,although just in a specific domain, that of recorders.
Thus, according to the figures provided by market research firm GfK, it seems the Blu-ray has really KO'd HD DVD, at least as far as DVRs are concerned. Thus, in the week ending on November 11th, just 2.8 per cent of them were HD DVD units. The remaining 97.2 percent were, as expected, Blu-ray devices (while the previous weeks were not exactly a lot better, Blu-ray reaching a percentage of around 98.7 at some point).
Although these figures might seem to be pretty unfavorable to the HD DVD side, the truth of the matter is that there a few reasons why this situation was to be expected. First of all, the number of Blu-ray based DVRs is a lot larger than that of their HD DVD-powered counterparts. Then, the research was carried out in Japan, where Sony's format is a lot more popular than Toshiba's, partly due to the increasingly higher popularity of the PS3 (although this is quite a strange situation, especially since both next-gen DVD formats are of Japanese origin).
Will these figures affect the future of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war? Well, it's not very likely, especially since, the "old" DVD is still going pretty strong (it still accounts for around 80.2 of the sales of recording units, compared to just around 19.8 for the next-gen devices) and it will take quite a lot of time for these two new competitors to dethrone it.
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