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Woolworths, one of the UK's largest high street retailers of high definition discs has announced that it will drop the HD DVD format from its stores from March. After March, they will only be stocking HD DVD titles on its online store.
The retailer made this decision based on its poor HD DVD sales, where 10 Blu-ray discs were sold for every HD DVD disc throughout its stores over the Christmas period. It claims that switching to Blu-ray will provide one clear offer to customers when it comes to choosing a high definition movie format, particularly with over 750 thousand homes being able to play Blu-ray with the success of Sony's PlayStation 3.
It did not take long for Toshiba to later respond to Pocket Lint with a different view of HD DVD's sales and its disappointment by Woolworth's decision. According to Toshiba, HD DVD players are available from £150, around half the price of other HD formats. It also mentione that HD DVD had represented over 60% of the overall standalone high definition market and that around 3.5 movies were sold on average per player, compared to under one movie sold per Blu-ray device.
It is not clear if Toshiba includes HD DVD Xbox add-ons and PS3 consoles in its comparison of standalone high definition player sales. However, it certainly seems to include PS3 consoles when it compares the average number of movies are sold per player between the two formats, since a lower number of movies sold per PS3 would be expected considering most consumers buy a games console primarily to play games on.
Thanks to ehnonymouse for letting us know about this news.
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Hey, Toshiba, stop selling those paperweights! Who cares if they sell for £150? They still are very expensive paperweights.
So, I guess that, apart from utterly disappointed, Toshiba is also, according to you, "mad"?
The relatively low price must be considered as stock dumping. They know they must get rid of it all fast...
