HD-DVD vs. Blu ray - still playing fast-and-loose with the numbers…

In case you hadn’t heard, HD-DVD is still more popular than Blu ray!  Wait, does that make any sense at all?

“Currently, 11% of Americans own an HD-DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player.”

According to the chart, that might be technically ‘true’, but only if you willfully disregard that the Sony Playstation 3 is, also, a Blu ray player.  Adding BD Players and PS3 ownership bring Blu-ray to 16%, not 7%.  Along those same lines, a XBox 360 with the HD-DVD external drive is, also, a HD-DVD player, bringing HD-DVD ownership to 14%.  Still, something is fishy…

There are a number of odd things about this survey, like Playstation 2 ownership dropping 2% when, by most accounts, PS2 outsells PS3.  In March 2008, Toshiba, the sole provider of HD-DVD players and technology, abandoned the format and ceased all production. Yet, according to this chart, between 2008 and 2009, ownership of HD-DVD players nearly doubled - despite no one manufacturing any players.  The US has a population of approx. 300 million people.  For the installed userbase of HD-DVD players to nearly double would mean that Toshiba had about 13-14 million HD-DVD players in unsold inventory…  we’re talking about 24.6+ million square-feet of inventory, with an MSRP value of about $30m.

Like I said, there is something very fishy about this survey…