The conclusion of a high-level meeting between presidents of the various company home entertainment divisions (as reported in videobusiness.com), is that DVD-Video sales will exhibit an average growth of zero for 2007. In fact, the analysis concludes that even a fall in sales could be anticipated before an ensuing recovery towards the end of the year, when titles currently showing at cinemas are released on DVD.

At least this analysis shows that the content producers are being realistic about the comparatively slow acceptance of high-definition discs of either format. However, hidden behind the quotations of "zero growth" and "fall in sales", lies the fact that a huge number of consumers are still steadily buying standard definition DVDs. As a statistical analogy; just because a car is not accelerating, does not mean that it isn't already going pretty fast and capable of maintaining its speed.

There could be many reasons for a lack of consumer enthusiasm in adopting HD versions of movies: the relatively high price of HD players and titles; the wide availability of DVD-Video players that have the ability to upscale standard definition DVDs to HD; the lack of HD recording units with the ability to access, edit and archive recorded material; the fact that commercial HD titles can't yet be easily backed up... etc , etc. Of course, many consumers have bought large widescreen TVs that are 'HD-ready', but presumably they are happy with the benefits of the styling and ergnomics of these sets, together with the extra impact of watching their standard definition versions; and simply prepared to wait until the cost of replacing their AV collections comes down drastically.

A notable theme from the conference report is that the movie content providers have identified game consoles, such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, as the trojan horses for introducing HD movie titles into the domestic environment. Although in the US, Europe and Japan, sales of the Blu-ray based PS3 are expected to dominate the HD-DVD based Xbox; worldwide the balance could be in favour of the cheaper HD-DVD format. Clearly mangling the dictionary of religious terminology in her presentation, Helen Davis Jayalath, senior analyst video at Screen Digest said during one session: "Studios will feel they can’t afford to ignore the other constituency, and manufacturers will become agnostic.” (err... surely that's 'polytheistic'...Ed.). Interestingly the assessment includes the observation that the data may be of limited use, since gamers apparently have less time to watch movies and therefore usually buy substantially fewer discs than those with set-top boxes.

In fact one wonders how useful the entire range of these predictions are, based on such a biased dataset; and perhaps other simpler statistics make more interesting reading. In assessing the penetration of the HD-capable hardware platforms in the US, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) reported that to date, there are about 1.5 million homes with Blu-ray capability; only 100,000 of which are set-top boxes and the remaining 1.4 million being PS3 consoles. For HD-DVD, 300,000 homes are equipped for playback; but this is split evenly between stand-alones and Xbox 360 drives.