The Blu-ray Disc Association believes that the HD DVD Promotional Group is misleading the public with what it considers a gross misrepresentation of data in the Group's latest report on the HD DVD attach rate. Going by the HD DVD report, where figures were gathered by the independent research firm GfK, European HD DVD player owners have so far bought an average of 3.8 movies each, compared to just 0.8 movies per Blu-ray player owner.
The main thing that caught the eyes of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s European Chairman Frank Simonis is that up until now, the HD DVD promotional group refused to accept the PS3 as being a Blu-ray disc player, at least in its hardware sales reports. But to help make their figures look better this time, they included PS3 hardware sales for its attach rate. However, one thing they ignored is the comparison of how many discs of each format were bought, such as since the beginning of the year.
According to Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association would never do something like what the HD DVD Group has just done. He also pointed out that of the year-to-date HD disc sales in Europe, 73% of these were Blu-ray and 27% were HD DVD.
It would be interesting to see how the attach rate figures compare if PS3s are left out. From what I can see, comparing the attach rates of players (not just Blu-ray vs HD DVD) does not show how well a format is doing, since as Simonis has pointed out, it is very straight forward to skew the figures by deciding what to class or not class as players to make one format look better over the other.
Further info can be read on Pocket-Lint and DailyTech.
