AfterDawn: News

Woolworths goes Blu-ray exclusive as well

In what seems to be a popular trend, the popular UK retailer Woolworths has decided to move to Blu-ray exclusivity in time for the Christmas rush. The move mirrors that of Blockbuster, Target and BJ's.

According to Playthree.net, a store manager at a local Woolworths confirmed the move when confronted about a new, large Blu-ray display standing prominently in the store.



The store manager mentioned that although sales of both formats were very slow, since the European launch of the PlayStation 3, Blu-ray sales had slowly and gradually kept increasing and that the company now hoped to have Blu-ray displays in all of its best selling retail stores. The expense of moving towards Blu-ray? Woolworths will be dropping its HD DVD line completely before Christmas.

Source:
Play3

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 27 Jul 2007 8:08

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• 30 comments

• emugamer

  Geez, I can't keep up with these articles......These are definitely small battles Sony is "winning"....but win enough small battles, you are in a better position to win the war.

  27.7.2007 08:17 #1

• hughjars

  I'd love them to have had the guts to tell us just how many Blu-ray movies they shifted last year.
  
  Of course they won't .......but it would give some sort of perspective to this supposedly important development.
  
  Right now with high def such a small part of the retail movie disc market these moves mean next to nothing.
  
  .....and UK disc sales are an even smaller proportion of the total market than in the USA.
  
  When HD makes the leap into the mainstream and starts selling big numbers then this kind of thing might be important but right now the idea that Woolworths is a huge 'player' in this or that Woolworths is shifting big numbers of BD movies is just more funny than anything else.

  27.7.2007 08:27 #2

• escalante

  Well, If Blu-ray can keep these exclusivities until HD starts breaking into the main stream, it makes a difference. Don't you think?

  27.7.2007 08:41 #3

• mark0416

  I agree escalante.
  
  The fact of the matter is everyone here can spout all the numbers and quotes they want, and bash companies on either side of the format war but in the end its not going to change a thing. Right now it seems Blu-Ray is gaining a slight upperhand in the retail department and Sony nay-sayers can throw all the facts they want at this and try to negate or justify this turn of events, but like I said, it won't change a thing.

  27.7.2007 09:11 #4

• SProdigy

  When I look on the shelf of the next generation HD formats, this is what I notice:
  
  - OVERPRICED
  - Poor selection (especially if you side with only ONE FORMAT.)
  - Hyped up to be much more than it really is.
  
  I've gotten to a point where I'm not buying either format, or a player that will play either of them or both. Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD is a waste of time and a war that may never be won.

  27.7.2007 09:56 #5

• vinny13

  Well isn't this just a slap in the face for HD-DVD.
  
  Come on Wal-Mart! lol

  27.7.2007 12:10 #6

• lxfactor

  hmm. where did all the hd-dvd supporters go? few weeks ago all i heard is how bad hd-dvd will win. hmmmmmm.

  27.7.2007 12:57 #7

• hughjars

  Naturally the BD fanclub want people to believe this is of vast importance.
  
  It isn't.
  
  Not only is high def an even tinier element of the retail disc market here in the UK than it is in the USA
  but Woolworths aren't exactly the equivalent of Walmart either.
  
  When high def becomes a significant element in the market (as opposed to being around under 1% of the retail movie disc market as it now is) then these things might be significant.
  
  But right now the truth is high def of either flavour is all but invisible to the mass-market.

  27.7.2007 15:32 #8

• error5

  hughjars: Your "the market is too tiny" argument just doesn't fly.
  
  Remember these are two formats trying to become mainstream. You say both are invisible right now to the mass market. I agree to this but you have to realize that the way to gain mainstream status is to increase your visibility. The problem right now is that BluRay is the only one actually making the effort to do so.
  
  You say that announcements like these will only matter if HD media has a more significant share of the mass market. The only problem with that reasoning is that either format cannot gain a bigger share of the market without becoming more visible to the masses and announcements like these are a big part of this effort.
  
  I'm not worried about how the BD fanclub spins this story and other similar stories this week. What I'm worried about is that the HD DVD camp is doing nothing about it.
  
  A $20 price cut on the 360 AO doesn't count either.

  27.7.2007 16:45 #9

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by SProdigy: When I look on the shelf of the next generation HD formats, this is what I notice:
  
  - OVERPRICED
  - Poor selection (especially if you side with only ONE FORMAT.)
  - Hyped up to be much more than it really is.
  
  I've gotten to a point where I'm not buying either format, or a player that will play either of them or both. Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD is a waste of time and a war that may never be won.pretty much my main argument with Hdef its over hyped and over priced, in 2-4 years when discs are 20 a pop and players are 200 or less then the war might fail into shearing the market since dual players wont be that much more to produce.
  
  
  I have a feeling Sony is laying in the defneces at the wrong time because once they need them in the coming years the deals made today might fall apart.

  27.7.2007 16:59 #10

• webe123

  Originally posted by error5: hughjars: Your "the market is too tiny" argument just doesn't fly.
  
  Remember these are two formats trying to become mainstream. You say both are invisible right now to the mass market. I agree to this but you have to realize that the to way gain mainstream status is to increase your visibility. The problem right now is that BluRay is the only one actually making the effort to do so.
  
  You say that announcements like these will only matter if HD media has a more significant share of the mass market. The only problem with that reasoning is that either format cannot gain a bigger share of the market without becoming more visible to the masses and announcements like these are a big part of this effort.
  
  I'm not worried about how the BD fanclub spins this story and other similar stories this week. What I'm worried about is that the HD DVD camp is doing nothing about it.
  
  A $20 price cut on the 360 AO doesn't count either.
  People are not buying these in mass! They are STILL buying regular DVD disks.
  
  If that does not convince you that the BD and HDDVD market istiny, I don't know what will.
  
  It will not matter until they drop the prices on these things and the media as well...then you might see a winner emerge. Until then it will be regular DVD leading the pack. With good reason too....it's cheaper for both the hardware and software.
  
  
  Face it, the only people who are buying HD DVD and Blue ray players right now are a small minority of people who will buy ANY new technology that comes out. But that group is not what determines what the masses will buy.

  27.7.2007 17:00 #11

• dblbogey7

  webe123: You didn't get what error5's post is all about. He agrees with hughjars that the HD market is tiny - there's no argument with that. What error5 is pointing out is that BluRay is the only one that's trying to increase its visibility to the masses. Read his post again and you'll see:
  
  Quote: You say both are invisible right now to the mass market. I agree to this but you have to realize that the way to gain mainstream status is to increase your visibility.hughjars: I think the BD fanclub spin is the least of their problems. HD DVD has to come up with their own story that their own supporters can spin. It's getting too one-sided.

  27.7.2007 17:22 #12

• error5

  Originally posted by webe123: People are not buying these in mass! They are STILL buying regular DVD disks.
  
  If that does not convince you that the BD and HDDVD market istiny, I don't know what will. As dblbogey7 kindly pointed out, I agree with all of you that the HD media market is tiny. There's no question and no argument with that.
  
  As he also pointed out - you missed the point of my post entirely.
  
  Quote: But that group is not what determines what the masses will buy.Here's my point: Both formats should realize that to go mainstream you have to gain increased visibility to the masses. Right now BluRay seems to be the only one making the effort to do so.

  27.7.2007 17:41 #13

• hughjars

  I think people should be preparing to revise their attitudes on this during the course of next year.
  
  HD DVD will grow and will be seen to grow as their DVD+ strategy starts to get going (IIRC it's about offering people good quality upscaling SD DVD playback which also does excellent HD DVD at a price similar to what people are now happily paying for the mid to upper end of the mass-market DVD players, so around $99 - $175).
  
  For now all these moves mean little as high def of either version is simply not on many people's agendas.
  Cable or satellite HD TV is by far the bigger competitor to either right now.
  
  This is all perfectly natural and nothing justifying a headless chicken impersonation.
  
  But it is all about the Blu-ray side's desperation.
  Blu-ray = PS3 is not a winning strategy.
  They need HD DVD out of this 'game' but as we will see at X-mas time and into the new year HD DVD's best time is yet to come (and the Blu-ray strategists know it hence all thse little PR moves to try - once again - to create 'momentum' in their favour).
  
  Just because HD DVD is determinedly working to it's own gameplan is no reason to imagine Blu-ray are the winning side.
  
  Like I said with the high def formats (combined) selling under 1% of the retail disc market the notion that anything major has happened to require a panic is just silly.

  28.7.2007 03:38 #14

• error5

  Well the HD DVD supporters over at avsforums are already in a panic. They've started an e-mail and phone campaign to try to convince Target and BJ's to carry both formats:
  
  http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthrea...38&page=1&pp=30
  
  Maybe you can go over there and convince them that they're acting silly and there's nothing to worry about.
  
  You can spin this all you want but there are HD DVD supporters out there that are in desperate need of good news from their camp.

  28.7.2007 03:49 #15

• NexGen76

  Originally posted by error5: Well the HD DVD supporters over at avsforums are already in a panic. They've started an e-mail and phone campaign to try to convince Target and BJ's to carry both formats:
  
  http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthrea...38&page=1&pp=30
  
  Maybe you can go over there and convince them that they're acting silly and there's nothing to worry about.
  
  You can spin this all you want but there are HD DVD supporters out there that are in desperate need of good news from their camp.
  Thank you error5 i've trying to explain this to him but he just ignore it.Glad i didn't post anything on this tread til now.

  28.7.2007 04:40 #16

• hughjars

  Error5 I am regularly looking in over on avs and whilst there are a few posting over-excited nonsense there are also many who know the score and do not think this is all decided when sales numbers are so tiny.
  
  It hasn't even really got going yet.
  
  .....and since when did a couple of posters (assuming they are all credible and genuine.....these days that's not something that can be taken at face value, sadly) giving an opinion on a message board 'prove' anything?

  28.7.2007 05:37 #17

• error5

  Like I said - go out there and straighten them out. Let them see the error of their ways.

  28.7.2007 06:09 #18

• hughjars

  LMAO.....come on error5, a little sanity & proportion, eh?
  
  I'll happily discuss this stuff and put a view, I'll even happily defend a POV if I think it's right and I'm happy to inform and be informed.....
  
  .....but I'm also perfectly happy to leave the 'preachy' BS to the kind of fanboys who delude themselves that they're seriously 'working' on message boards to change anybody's mind or put anyone straight.
  
  I'll leave any of that straightening out stuff to those that can be ar*ed with such nonsense (and as I'm sure you know on avs there are more than a few).
  
  ......and like I said a handful of people fretting about the future hardly describes the tone of the whole board.

  28.7.2007 07:53 #19

• ChromeMud

  This news is small potatoes.NO,IT'S NOT A TSUNAMI!
  It's just just a mere ripple in the ocean.
  It's part of the HD propaganda thats been choking the air for ages.
  I am not convinced,I will not be sold on this PR spin.
  Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were launched too early in my opinion.
  They keep changing the firmware,adding extra layers to the disk,updating the HDMI port,changing the copy protection and all this is making current equipment obsolete before the bleedin' warranty runs out.
  Roll on Holographic disk with 4320P I say.Now that would be tempting.

  28.7.2007 08:27 #20

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by ChromeMud: This news is small potatoes.NO,IT'S NOT A TSUNAMI!
  It's just just a mere ripple in the ocean.
  It's part of the HD propaganda thats been choking the air for ages.
  I am not convinced,I will not be sold on this PR spin.
  Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were launched too early in my opinion.
  They keep changing the firmware,adding extra layers to the disk,updating the HDMI port,changing the copy protection and all this is making current equipment obsolete before the bleedin' warranty runs out.
  Roll on Holographic disk with 4320P I say.Now that would be tempting.with as greedy and bloody as this war is going I do not see a happy ending for either side ,I have this gut feeling that they will wind up splitting the studios and then joining a pact that lets them keep some of their moeny and dual players will be the only new player sold.

  28.7.2007 11:40 #21

• error5

  Originally posted by ChromeMud: Roll on Holographic disk with 4320P I say.Now that would be tempting.4320P. Let's see if this will work.
  
  This is the chart we use to see the relatioship between viewing distance, screen size, and when resolution becomes a factor:
  
  http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadg...ution_chart.jpg
  
  
  
  
  1080p resolution begins to have an advantage over 720p when you have a 60 inch screen and your sitting about 10 feet away.
  
  Now let's take ChromeMud's 4320p resolution TV. In order to see an advantage for 4320p over a lower resolution TV while sitting at the same distance of 10 feet the screen would have to be about about 240 inches across (1080 x 4 = 4320 and 60 x 4 = 240). That's a 20-foot screen. Anything less than a 20-foot screen at 10 feet away and you won't see an improvement over lower resolutions. You can cut your viewing distance to 5 feet but you still will need a 10-foot screen for 4320P to have an advantage. Now watching a movie that's 10 feet diagonally from just 5 feet away is insane. It's just the way the human eye works. There's just a point where higher resolutions become impractical in normal household viewing.

  28.7.2007 11:57 #22

• error5

  Originally posted by hughjars: They need HD DVD out of this 'game' but as we will see at X-mas time and into the new year HD DVD's best time is yet to come (and the Blu-ray strategists know it hence all thse little PR moves to try - once again - to create 'momentum' in their favour).HD DVD may have the hardware price advantage come Christmas.
  
  However, content could be another matter.
  
  http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=...CUME&order=desc
  
  The holiday season is when the summer blockbuster titles usually come out on disc. According to Variety's US box office numbers - of the top 10 highest grossing films so far, 6 come from BluRay exclusive studios, 3 come from format neutral studios, and only one (Knocked Up at #8) comes from Universal. If you go down the line to the top 25 there's only two other Universal titles - Evan Almighty at #13 and I Now Pronounce You Chuck... at #20. The rest are either BluRay exclusive or neutral.
  
  I think the HD DVD strategists also know this. I also think that further price cuts and low cost Chinese players may not be enough of a strategy.

  28.7.2007 12:23 #23

• borhan9

  Looks like Woolworth's has picked a side and is sticking to it. Gutsy move I like it. We have them in Australia and it wont really hurt them cause they are primarily a supermarket store more than anything.

  28.7.2007 15:02 #24

• club42

  Quote:Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were launched too early in my opinion.
  They keep changing the firmware,adding extra layers to the disk,updating the HDMI port,changing the copy protection and all this is making current equipment obsolete before the bleedin' warranty runs out. I agree with this statement entirely. While they are both a pleasant upgrade from dvd I wish they would have waited a little longer for the money shot. A lot more stable of a picture and less compression artifacts but hardly the "next generation" in my opinion. That said I still bought both lol.

  28.7.2007 20:22 #25

• ChromeMud

  @ error5
  
  I remember when someone posted that they saw a TV demo of 4000 resolution and was utterly gob-smacked how the image quality was improved over 1080P.
  Now I won't argue with your scientific explanation that looked sound but I shall reserve judgement until I can compare the two myself.
  Some people thought 16bit sound was good enough until they heard 24bit which has a more open sound therefore isn't it reasonable to assume that more lines of resolution will have a similar effect.You may not see every individual pixel but it's overall effect may be more convincing to the eye.

  30.7.2007 05:50 #26

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by ChromeMud: @ error5
  
  I remember when someone posted that they saw a TV demo of 4000 resolution and was utterly gob-smacked how the image quality was improved over 1080P.
  Now I won't argue with your scientific explanation that looked sound but I shall reserve judgement until I can compare the two myself.
  Some people thought 16bit sound was good enough until they heard 24bit which has a more open sound therefore isn't it reasonable to assume that more lines of resolution will have a similar effect.You may not see every individual pixel but it's overall effect may be more convincing to the eye.theres probably a filtering tech/thing they are missing for video "screens" that once found will improve the image,but really some of this is going beyond what the eye can "see".

  30.7.2007 06:02 #27

• dblbogey7

  @ChromeMud: I don't think the next step is an increase in resolution above 1080p.
  
  I think The next step is Deep Color with 16 bit processing with elimination of color banding.
  
  BTW here are some specs of the NHK demo of UHD:
  
  http://www.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/externa...t=1185804343890
  
  4320-scanning line system
  7680x4320 pixels (32 million pixels) 16:9 AR 60 fps
  22.2 channel sound
  3.5 TB of data (about 750 DVDs worth) for 15 minutes of show
  served at 24 Gb/s over 16 parallel SDI channels
  
  Quote:NHK is just showing off the technology, especially for the capture, storage, manipulation, and distribution of such massive amounts of data, and is pitching this format to museums and other large venue exhibition spaces. As Ian mentioned, this isn't really meant for cinema application.So it's not really meant for cinema, much less for home theater.
  
  Besides, the bandwidth needed for this kind of signal is still at least 10 - 15 years away from the regular consumer IMO.

  30.7.2007 06:04 #28

• hughjars

  No-one is broadcasting anything besides 1080i or 720p right now......and I've yet to even hear of anyone planning a 1080p broadcast service (the bandwidth requirement is vast and vastly expensive, as is the whole new set of equipment that would be required for it).
  
  To all practical intents and purposes 1080i/720p is 'it' for some time to come as far as broadcast TV is concerned which means it's not really going to go further for some time to come if there's absolutely no chance of mainstream mass-market adoption.

  30.7.2007 07:17 #29

• ChromeMud

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Video
  
  It sounds like science fiction for now but give it 10 years and it will probably be do-able.
  Maybe the PS4 will have it built in and probably cost £4000,I'm placing a pre-order now,then Ebaying it for 10G :D

  30.7.2007 08:53 #30