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Universal have a big stock of HD DVD. They were selling well

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Ole Lund Christensen

In Reply to: RE: True, but Warner's announcement came four months away from its BD exclusivity posted by Jazz Inmate on January 18, 2008 at 13:49:54

until January 4th 2008.

Universal have ZERO stock of Blu Ray. It will take about 3 months to build up a stock of Blu Ray.

If Universal today announce they go neutral, they will have close to ZERO sales of HD DVD, and ZERO sales of Blu Ray for 3 months.

So their 1stQ will be worse, if they follow your advice.

If Universal secretly build up Blu ray stock during the next 3 months,
they will sell HD DVD for 3 months, and then sell Blu Ray.

Over the next 1o years, they will sell the same amount of Blu ray, also if they wait 3 months. They control their movies! Nobody else can sell their Blu ray version.

Universal is calm and they will wait, you are impatient.

Warners case were very different, they had stock of both formats, and they did now in advance, what they would do 4th January.
So Warner could secretly reduce HD DVD stocks before Christmas.

I have seen companies go bankrupt by announcing new products too early.
But journalists of course have trouble understanding this :-)

Follow Ups:

No HD DVD with the possible exception of Planet Earth and Transformers is selling "well" - Jazz Inmate 16:52:07 01/18/08 (1)
...at least not the way studios define selling well. Sales of HD DVD are negligible to Universal. Their DVD sales and theater gross sales are far more important. You are pretending that Universal's financial well-being is riding on sales of HD DVD. That is just not true, and those who are buying Universal HD DVDs now, will continue buying them regardless of a blu announcement...especially if the price is knocked down.

I am very patient, but like Meyer (Warner CEO) said, there is a window of time to make an HD optical format succeed. Warner's case was not much different in terms of available HD DVD stock. Warner is a big company with significant DVD sales. We pretend these companies are riding on their HD numbers, but it's not true. I hope someday it will be, but now it isn't.
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"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
- "especially if the price is knocked down" - Ole Lund Christensen 08:46:02 01/19/08 (0)
  that is what Universal do not want to do. This is also called "making less money."
  
  I am not claiming Universals well being is riding on HD DVD, but making less money on a product in stock is always bad.
  
  And Universal have nothing to gain by going neutral now.
  
  The Blu Ray format is growing just fine anyway, and the format war is over in terms of movie sales.
  
  HD downloads is future dream. Building the infrastructure will take 7-10 years for most of the population.
  
  So Universal have 7-10 years to sell Blu Ray. No need to rush.
  
  You fail to understand that consumer wishes and manufacturing realities are very different.
  
  Prices of HD DVD went down too fast and too soon. Blu Ray showed that you can make more money now by charging more for the player and still sell the same number of players in USA in 2007.
  
  The main purpose of Blu Ray is to demand more money from the consumer.

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