Blockbuster seems to be perpetually behind Netflix in the rental market. Netflix pioneered rent-by-mail, eventually Blockbuster jumped into the market as well as they saw it eroding rentals from their stores. Then Netflix rolled out online streaming, and roughly eight months later Blockbuster acquired Movelink to get a jump start in the online market. Then Netflix launched a dedicated streaming STB with Roku this May, now Home Media Magazine is reporting that Blockbuster is about to do the same - launching their own STB. A key difference is likely to be streaming vs. downloads, as Movielink is currently an all-download service. This would likely mean the Blockbuster STB would need to be priced higher, as it would require storage for the downloaded films, while the Roku box for Netflix does not.

Of course, Netflix has already moved beyond the Roku box, streaming to Blu-ray players from LG Electronics and Samsung, TiVo, and soon Xbox 360. And, of course, PCs and now Macs.

Blockbuster just can’t seem to catch up, let alone get ahead.

Picked up via Format War Central.

According to China Tech News, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has approved eleven Chinese firms, ncluding TCL, Malata, and Desay, to begin producing Blu-ray players and discs, starting in 2009.

While some HD DVD die hards pointed to CH-DVD as if it were some kind of phoenix in the form of which HD DVD would rise from the ashes, it looks like even those hopes have been dashed. The BDA points out that since the demise of HD DVD, Chinese manufacturers have been flocking to Blu-ray, and that while the number of members in the BDA has increased to 187, the number of members in the DVD Forum (which backs DVD and HD DVD) has decreased from 240 to 163! The BDA last fall began evaluating Chinese codecs for inclusion in the BD specification. China has made support of the codecs a requirement for any advanced format released in China, and the codecs were the main difference between HD DVD and CH-DVD. This license development could hint at progress in including those codecs to support a domestic BD release in China.

Video Business reports that high-end consumer electronics retailers expect Blu-ray players to begin outselling DVD players as early as this August, riding a wave of increased player availability and lower prices. On a dollar basis, retailer Crutchfield is already reporting that Blu-ray is outselling DVD 60:40, but that’s largely due to the higher prices on BD decks.

The current Home Media Magazine has a product guide which provides an overview and comparison of the forthcoming Blu-ray players that have been announced. It is worth checking out if you’re thinking about buying a BD deck. Personally I wouldn’t even consider a Profile 1.1/Bonus View deck at this point - stick with Profile 2.0/BD-Live - at least BD-Live Ready.

From Blu-ray.com and Blu-ray Stats.

This week’s Nielsen VideoScan numbers from Home Media Magazine show that, for the week ended 3/30, HD DVD faded to 16% of the high-def market, with Blu-ray at 84%. That puts them at 67/33 since inception. But more interesting is that Blu-ray took 8% of the general market, to DVD’s 92%. That’s up from 6% last week. The growing number of day-and-date Blu-ray releases and increased player sales should see Blu-ray continue to gain market share.

A small change in Home Media Magazine reflects the much larger change in the batter for home video. The Nielsen VideoScan pie-charts, which used to show BD vs. HD DVD for the week ended, year-to-date, and since inception now show BD/HD DVD for week-ended and since inception - and the third box is now BD vs. DVD market share for the week ended. For the week ended 3/23 Blu-ray took 88% of the market, to HD DVD’s 12%. With the last of the HD DVD exclusives gone, and an increasing number of small studios canceling their remaining HD DVD titles, the HD DVD percentage should fall off to zero fairly quickly now. Since inception, BD has taken 67% of the market.

The new BD/DVD chart only compares the top 20 titles by unit volume for each format, but BD has 6% of the market to DVD’s 94%. That may not sound like much, but it is pretty good for a fledgling format just coming off the end of a format war that slowed adoption. As more and more major releases hit Blu-ray day-and-date, especially once Universal, Paramount, and DreamWorks Animation start their BD releases, that percentage should rise steadily - give or take a bit each week for variation.

This issue has a lot of BD coverage - the entire front page is BD-related articles. New releases are seeing an increasing percentage of sales on BD. No Country for Old Men saw 9.8% of sales on BD (the rest on DVD), while Hitman saw 12.6% of sales on BD. That compares to levels of 2-3% for most titles during the format war. With the spike in BD growth, one of the articles examines the issues replicators are facing in adopting to BD demand. The up-front investment in a BD production line runs from $1.5 to $1.7 million for a 25GB line to nearly $2.7 million for a 50GB line. Yields of usable discs is now up to around 75%, from only about half early on. But this isn’t dissimilar to what happened with DVD early on, and over time yields will increase and costs will decrease.

New research from Strategy Analytics predicts that Blu-ray will be in 30 million homes by the end of the year, and 132 million by 2012.

This issue of Home Media Magazine has an article, ‘Battle of the Boxes‘, which compares the four main options for watching broadband downloaded video on your TV: TiVo, Apple TV, VUDU, and Xbox 360. Overall the article is kind of down on the download services in general:

“Not a consumer interviewed wants to buy another set-top box,” said Richard Doherty, research director for research firm The Envisioneering Group.

I certainly can’t argue with that, I’m loathe to add another STB to my stack. And I’ve said so repeatedly. I think that gives TiVo and the Xbox 360 an edge - people buy them for other functions (DVR & gaming, respectively), and the downloads are kind of a bonus. And when it comes to HD, I have to agree with this as well:

Richard Bullwinkle, chief evangelist for Macrovision, predicts a layering effect. Macrovision has looked at TiVo, Xbox 360, Vudu and Apple TV.

“The best experience on a large TV is Blu-ray,” he said. “None of the download boxes gives you the same experience.”

But I thought what they said about TiVo in particular was unfair.

But download times are long, nothing is available in high-def, and the 24-hour rental period once the movie has started can be problematic.

The download times are roughly comparable to other services - but it, of course, will vary a lot. The TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD have had progressive download since 9.2 - which means they can start playback once enough of a buffer has built up, with no need to wait until it is all downloaded. I’d expect the Series2 to get the same in the next update. (They’re still on 9.1.) And the article makes the 24-hour window sound like a problem unique to TiVo when it is common to all of the download rental services. They don’t mention it when talking about the three other products, so readers who don’t know what will think this is a TiVo limitation. But there is more:

However, Bullwinkle said, TiVo offers the worst quality of any of the movie downloading options he’s tried, and the number of TiVo owners who download movies is small.

Ouch. That especially stings given who it is coming from. Why? For those who don’t know, once upon a time Richard Bullwinkle was known online as TiVolutionary. He was one of the early TiVo employees and their primary online evangelist on forums like TiVoCommunity.com. Back in May of 2002 he left TiVo and went to work for ReplayTV. And now he’s with Macrovision.

The quality issue is largely subjective, so I’ll leave that as may be, but how does he know how many users download movies? I don’t believe TiVo or Amazon release those numbers. Did they do an independent survey of TiVo owners? Where is the data to back up the claim?

But TiVo isn’t the only one to get a little heat in the article. All four products get what I consider to be fairly poor reviews, highlighting their shortcomings. But read the article for yourself.

TiVo also got another mention in this issue, with a small article on the roll-out of TiVo Desktop 2.6. (And I apologize for not having my review of said up yet, the behind-the-scenes work on the renaming took a lot more time than I expected.)

Hmm, Home Media Magazine wasn’t out on Friday as it normally is (I’m guessing due to the holiday), but I just checked it and it is up now. For the week ended 3/16 HD DVD took 22% of the market to Blu-ray’s 78%, putting them 76:24 year-to-date and 66:34 since inception. But with the last of the big studio HD DVD releases gone, the best HD DVD placed in the top 10 sellers was ninth, with American Gangster. Tenth also went to HD DVD, with Beowulf. Personally I was happy to see a niche anime title like Appleseed: Ex Machina placing fourth, and selling 12.27% of the volume of first place No Country for Old Men. I’ve read other reports that Appleseed moved roughly 30% of its volume on Blu-ray, the rest being DVD. (It placed 16th on the DVD sellers list.) Which shows that niche markets, like anime fans, tend to be early adopters - anime fans also jumped on LaserDisc and DVD earlier than the general market.

It may not be long for this world, but HD DVD had a good week. For the week ending 3/9 it took 35% of the market, to Blu-ray’s 65%. That puts them at 75:25 year-to-date, and 66:34 since inception. Beowulf on HD DVD was once again the top high-def seller, 30 Days of Night on BD took second place with over 80% as many copies, but HD DVD’s American Gangster came in 3rd with nearly 70%.

It is a bit ironic that, after the ‘death’ of the format’, the HD DVD studios have released some of the formats strongest titles ever. This has boosted HD DVD’s market share in its final weeks. For the week ended 3/3, HD DVD took a 25% share, with Blu-ray holding the other 75%. This puts them at 76:24 for the year, and 66:34 since inception. HD DVD didn’t manage to take the top selling spot this time around, that went to 30 Days of Night on BD, but it did grab the second and third spots - with the new release Beowulf, and American Gangster, in its second week of release. Beowulf was close, selling 82.52% of 30 Days of Night’s sales. After this, there aren’t really any Blockbuster HD DVD releases left. So I expect their percentage to start falling off again.

This issue of Home Media Magazine also includes an article which states Sony and Microsoft are in talks to bring Blu-ray to the Xbox 360. President of Sony Electronics U.S., Stan Glasgow, said that a Blu-ray drive could be incorporated in the Xbox Elite model, or as an add-on, as originally reported in the Financial Times online edition. Glasgow also said that Sony is in talks with Apple about the use of Blu-ray in Macs.