Latest sales figures show Blu-ray Disc outselling HD DVD seven to three , Blu-ray’s strong sales since the beginning of 2007 have given it a 7 to 3 sales ratio vs HD DVD ,From Jan 1 2007 sales of Blu-ray are 549,730 units and for HD DVD its 249,451 units (source : Neilsen Videoscan) .
When blu-ray was announced, many people wrote it off saying it was another one in Sony’s list of unsuccessful formats along with Betamax and the soon to be killed UMD , coming back to the present , 90% of the CE industry and most of the major motion picture studios are backing blu-ray as the format of choice , the Blu-ray disc association now has the support of 170 of the largest and most respected consumer electronics companies . Microsoft a staunch supporter of the HD DVD camp seems to be distancing itself from the format, Why do I say this ? Well the recently announced Xbox 360 Elite does not include an inbuilt HD DVD drive , and reasoning that the elite is supposed to compete with the lower end blu-ray enabled PS3 20gb basic package , it makes sense to say that MS is playing safe here , if they see HD DVD taking a fall they’ll switch over to blu-ray.
So Is this the time to go blu-ray , No! i would say .. because every new format takes some time to standardize , there are talks of hardware standardization for Blu-ray players by Oct 2007 to include features like true PIP among others. Another factor would be cost , the prices for blu-ray drives will fall by end of 2007 , many majors have announced that they are already working on low cost blu-ray drives . I live in India and i dont see myself buying a Blu- ray player anytime before 3 years from now, but for the lucky few out there I would suggest sometime around Christmas 2007