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HDTV UK: Cheap Blu-ray players will be difficult to find across Europe this Christmastime, potentially affecting sales and success of the format, according to the latest report from media analyst Screen Digest.

In the report the company wrote, “Hardware supply constraints earlier in the year meant that the anticipated European BD promotional campaigns had to be reined in. Rather ironically, the unexpectedly rapid withdrawal of rival format HD DVD from the market in early 2008 caused a problem for Blu-ray by stimulating retailer demand for BD players when a severe shortage of an essential component meant that manufacturing could not keep up.”

The report implies that the more expensive Blu-ray players will be available, presumably because they have lower demand over all.

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Register Hardware: Only one in five households in Western Europe own an HD TV today, and while that figure is expected to jump to 85 per cent by 2012, most of us will still be watching standard-definition content.

So claims market watcher Screen Digest, which pinpointed the poor penetration of HD into Europe on a sparsity of free-to-view HD TV channels, especially over terrestrial broadcast networks.

Only Sweden has terrestrially broadcast HD channels, though the UK and France may soon follow suit. That leaves the vast majority of Europe’s 100 HD channels only available through satellite and a much smaller proportion through cable.

Today, only 1.7 per cent of households in Western Europe have the kit to receive and watch HD broadcasts. Come 2012 that figure will have risen to just under 17 per cent.

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BBC News: The giants of the video games industry gather in Los Angeles this week for the E3 conference, and all sights are set on the mass market.

Microsoft and Sony are both expected to follow the Nintendo Wii’s lead and push into social gaming. Observers say the recent cut for the Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s bid to make the console more appealing.

“There is a strong move to pull in women, young girls and older people,” said analyst Piers Harding-Rolls.

“It’s not just about the traditional gamer anymore. More casual, lifestyle and family-orientated products are going to appeal to a wider demographic,” said the Screen Digest analyst.

Nintendo has had huge success with its Wii console, dominating rivals Sony and Microsoft by focusing on casual and lifestyle titles. “They have created a new category of gaming – lifestyle and training games and this social software genre is doing fantastically well,” said Mr Harding-Rolls.

One of the other key themes of E3 will be the continued growth in online content, he predicted. He said: “We’ll see more downloadable titles. It will be interesting to see if there any more premium titles delivered via digital distribution. Online gaming is becoming increasingly popular across the whole of Europe. Europe is not a small online gaming market anymore.”

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Electronista: The supply of Blu-ray discs may be drastically inadequate for the actual demand this year, say analysts from Screen Digest. The group says that in 2008, it expects companies to want as many as 43 million discs — three times last year’s amount — for purposes such as movies and data storage. It believes, however, that production capacity will only be able to reach 60 to 70 percent of that, at least until later in the year. Sony’s DADC division is spending money on extra capacity, and hopes to produce 38 million discs per month by October.

The surge in demand is being attributed to the premature death of HD DVD, the only major competitor for Blu-ray. With just a single format to consider, electronics companies may now be feeling secure in supporting HD optical technology. Until supply matches demand, however, the public may continue paying high prices for Blu-ray discs.

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ScreenAfrica: Satellite operator SES Astra says one in five European homes now has an HDTV set. “More than 37m HD Ready sets have been bought in Europe since Feb 2005,” said Alexander Oudendijk, Chief Commercial Officer of SES Astra. Using data drawn from GfK Retail & Technology, Oudendijk says almost 40m HD Ready sets, either Plasma, LCD or rear projection, are in use, while another 24-25m flat panel sets (without the HD Ready tag) are in use.

The 2006 sales figure of about 15m sets sold was some two years ahead of forecast, Oudendijk said. The current status of more than 37m sets sold has been achieved three years ahead of the 2005 predictions.

Based on the latest data from Screen Digest, Oudendijk expected Europe to have some 400 HDTV channels by 2012, with about 160 of them on satellite. The bulk of this number will be available only to pay-TV viewers.

Further research from SES Astra has also revealed the 83% of the satellite TV households in Europe and North Africa are digitised. This is more than four times more than in cable where of all households where 20% are digital.

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ihotdesk: The battle for Blu-ray to succeed the DVD will depend on movie giants Paramount and Universal, say industry experts.

Screen Digest, a source of business intelligence, research and analysis on global audiovisual media, claims that after Warner Brothers’ decision to publish its films solely on Blu-ray discs it will now be down to Paramount and Universal to decide whether or not to follow suit.

Helen Davis Jayalath, a senior analyst with Screen Digest, said: “We could see that for Warner to make a decision one way or the other would be a way of persuading consumers that they should in turn make their own decision.

“[This] obviously hasn’t increased Blu-ray’s share of the market, but it will have substantially decreased HD-DVD’s share, in terms of the content available.”

She added that Toshiba is HD-DVD’s main backer and noted that the firm is unlikely to “simply walk away from this battle”.