Acer Bets on Blu-Ray

By Greg McNevin

September 3, 2007: The Blu-Ray vs HD DVD battle is raging on, with every week bringing a new development that tips the scales in one or the other direction. This week, Blu-Ray scored another feather in its cap from Acer.

Recently, the introduction of extremely cheap HD DVD players had many pundits claiming that consumer favour would deftly swing towards the format (particularly in Australia where HD DVD has been leading the next generation DVD charge) and give it enough oomph to eventually out Sony’s Blu-Ray.

This week, however, Acer has come out and announced that it has decided to become the latest member of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA), giving the format another colossus in its corner.

Acer has become one of more than 170 consumer organisations, computer companies and content providers to sign up with the BDA, and as it is one of the three largest personal-computer brands in the world (and the top dog in Europe) the announcement could prove quite a blow for the HD DVD camp.

Aussies are already reportedly been leaning towards the Blu-Ray camp thanks to consumer demand, this combined with data compiled by Home Media Research and GFK Research in the US and Europe shows Blu-Ray slipping further into the lead.

During the first half of 2007 for example, Blu-ray movie titles made up 66 percent of the high definition movie sales in the US, and 60 percent of high definition movie sales in Europe. No small gap considering movie players can still make or break a format like they did with VHS and Betamax.

Even with Blu-Ray’s current statistical lead, there is still no clear-cut winner. That said though, and while HD DVD may have some more tricks up its sleeve, Acer becoming the latest large PC vendor to embrace Blu-Ray (alongside others such as Dell and HP) could certainly give the format what it needs to win the battle and the war.

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