HD DVD sales not good

Zim

Zim

Veteran
I keep getting close to buying the DVX100 and this pushes me closer. I'm sure HD will be the norm someday but it's going to take some time. From FreshHDV:



HD-DVD and Blu-ray sales are not as good as analysts had hoped, and retailers are not happy with the market to date. Technical issues and confusion over the competing formats are a few of the reasons cited for the weak market response.
"Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up and other retailers have had the same experience," said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn's.

"...Blu-ray has faced complaints of sub-par picture quality on discs, talk of component shortages for players and other technical issues..."

"...along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung and that's when my expectations were hurt. When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD..."
Here's the biggest reason why I believe the hi-def DVD formats are faltering...they offer consumers no compelling reason to upgrade. I'll elaborate:

*There is no increased convenience or capability.
Some of the reasons consumers embraced the DVD format over VHS were increased capacity, the convenience of chaptering, and no rewinding.

*The quality difference is not THAT MUCH better than SD DVDs.
Yes, you can see it. But it is an incremental upgrade at best, and the average consumer (that is content with cable TV or highly-compressed satellite MPEG-2 streams) does not see the value in the High-Definition upgrade.

We previously reported on the potential blue diode shortages that may limit player availability in the immediate future.
 
Not surprising at all. I think blu-ray/HD-DVD is going to be the biggest "so what" in the history of consumer electronics.

They're going to have to come up with an irresistible "killer app" for them to be adopted (and hint to manufacturers: DRM isn't the "killer app" for consumers to want it!)
 
It's the beginning. It was the same when the DVD arrived, at least in Europe. And after it was what we know.

It depends basically from three major factors IMHO, aside the affordability of the hardware and its marketing or, if you wish, the price of the oil too:

1) DVD home video offer specially the rental one;

2) HDTV offer;

3) HD consumer camcorders sales.
 
Two different formats also doesn't help. The customers are tired of it. DVD-R & DVD+R are together as dual-in-one deck and this isn't by luck. That's why we have a non-reliable OS like Windows is*, rather a Mac based, for example.

EDIT -- * And Bill Gates is the world's first.
 
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Consumer ignorance as to what makes a good picture is what matters, and what you cant have isnt always that great, when you can have it, its the best.

And when that 200gb Blu-Ray disc is available, and affordable, im sure REAL consumers with brains will make the right decision from a 9.5gb disc to a 200gb disc.
 
People shouldnt be bitter that they went out and bought 200+ DVD movies for a "collection" and now something new is out. I know people with lke 500 DVDs and they are upset about Hi Def movies now being out, saying they dont want to rebuy all those movies, but its not like they even watch them on anything special, a 26inch SDTV or something, a moviephile who doesnt care about their home theatre? That just is odd to me.

This one lady at VSDA this year was in the sony booth, an old crippled lady with a cane, telling the sony rep that his product is not enticing her to adopt, and he explained the benifits of it to her, and she said that she still has her beta tapes, and some VHS stuff, and has yet to adopt DVD!!!

I had to jump in and start talking technical with him to where she really didnt understand to save him, she wouldnt leave him alone, i told that guy he owes me a PS3, and he agreed, LOL. im goign to track him down at next years event . GRRRR
 
See, here's the thing -- DVD was revolutionary in that it offered tremendous convenience benefits over the prior format, VHS.

No rewinding.
No tape crinkles.
No fast-forwarding, instead you could jump to chapters.
5.1 channel surround-sound audio which, combined with a $199 home theater setup, created a real difference.
Bonus features, director's commentary, blooper reels, making-of's, alternate versions, all sorts of things.

And -- oh yes, the picture was better. But that wasn't the selling point. That was a cherry on top.

Consumer ignorance as to what makes a good picture is what matters
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So let's go and look at what blu-ray offers: better picture. Higher res.

So?

Guys, consumers by and large don't care about picture quality, they really don't even see it. (can I believe I'm actually saying this out loud? Why, I believe I am!) Why do I say this?

Go to any hotel in the US where they have 16x9 televisions set up. What are they playing on 'em? 4x3 broadcasts. But, heaven forbid we have those ugly gray bars, right? So what to they do? They stretch the picture out wide! And nobody cares!

People are watching images that are distorted by 33% and THEY DON'T CARE. They probably can't even see it.

I've gone to peoples' homes where they're so proud of their new HDTV, and yes they're watching SDTV on it, stretched out wide to fill the screen. Distorted 33%. You think "the camera adds 10 pounds"? Put a 4x3 broadcast on a 16x9 set and you'll see the camera add about 50 pounds...

And they don't care. They like it that way. They'd rather see the image distorted 33% than put up with "those ugly black bars." Heck, we've had pan 'n' scan for how many years? People gladly putting up with 50% of the image being cut off just so they don't have to see "those black bars".

It's taken years to get to the point where widescreen DVDs outsell fullscreen pan 'n' scan DVDs. DVDs first hit the market in about '97, and I think it was around 8 years later (2005) before widescreen versions were selling comparably to fullscreen versions.

And, mind you, this is a product that people could just plug into their existing television sets. With HD-DVD and blu-ray it isn't that way. You'd have to first HAVE an HDTV to get any benefit from it, and second, you'd have to have recently bought that HDTV because the first generations of HDTV won't work with blu-ray and HD-DVD in high-def! If your set doesn't have HDCP, you don't get high-def playback.

So HD-DVD and blu-ray had better offer something far more compelling than just "better picture quality" before consumers will buy it.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD are "too little, too early". Marginal improvements in any way that the consumer actually cares about, and they can't take advantage of it anyway because the extremely vast majority of households don't have any HDTV sets anyway.
 
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I say that HD-DVD's and BluRay won't become mainstream for another 5-6 years. Just my guess. I agree with everything you said Barry.
 
Barry_Green said:
And, mind you, this is a product that people could just plug into their existing television sets. With HD-DVD and blu-ray it isn't that way. You'd have to first HAVE an HDTV to get any benefit from it, and second, you'd have to have recently bought that HDTV because the first generations of HDTV won't work with blu-ray and HD-DVD in high-def! If your set doesn't have HDCP, you don't get high-def playback.

So HD-DVD and blu-ray had better offer something far more compelling than just "better picture quality" before consumers will buy it.
Click to expand...

Heck yeah Barry!:grin:
 
Barry_Green said:
And, mind you, this is a product that people could just plug into their existing television sets. With HD-DVD and blu-ray it isn't that way. You'd have to first HAVE an HDTV to get any benefit from it, and second, you'd have to have recently bought that HDTV because the first generations of HDTV won't work with blu-ray and HD-DVD in high-def! If your set doesn't have HDCP, you don't get high-def playback.
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last ive read about this was that its debunked and it will not be implemented. Im pretty recent on the news, but if someone can prove other wise, id like a link.
 
I didn't want to chime in to say that because I was almost sure that I'd get ripped.

So, thanks, Barry.
 
Cynic, it's true that we don't have to worry about HDCP quite yet, but content producers still have the option to implement it right now and they *supposedly* won't fully enable it until about 2012 or something like that, whatever the time was when all analog broadcasts would cease and digital broadcasts would replace them worldwide.

Sorry I don't have an appropriate link, but I'm sure a search under Google would bring up some results.
 
no search neccessary, i follow this super closely, I am already developing a seriese of HD-DVD's/Blu-Rays that will be at retail soon hopefully, (replicators want too much right now).

I just wanted to make sure before i stated something unless something else had been announced.

I think the big boom of HD-DVD and Blu Ray will be the release of the console version. Every house has a PS2, and with the new system coming out, blu-ray will get a quick boost in its market share. Mafiasoft will be releasing the HD-DVD add on for the Xbox 360 and 360 owners are a very very strange bunch, i know them very well from another forum, and they are going to be picking up this add on which is speculated at only 200 bucks.

Hi Def DVD formats may not make people buy an HDTV , but i will tell you ONE THING FOR CERTAIN, Hi Def gaming is making every single gamer go and get and HDTV, and now that the install base will be growing, its sure to pick up. Gamers are a different breed of videophile ill tell ya.
 
Another issue is simply that the vast majority of HDTV sets are merely 720p. When we're talking about differences in picture quality, SD anamorphic DVD's scaled to 1280x720 can still look quite acceptable. If you play a 720p HD DVD it looks nearly the same, and it's only when you play out full 1080 that it looks noticeably sharper...but is it enough to care?

It's going to be a long time before lots of people have full 1080p sets, and that will be the inflection point when DVD's look unacceptable compared to HD DVD/Blu Ray.

Most people get HDTV's because they like the flat screen/space savings and, like Barry says, watch squashed hyper-compressed SD on it and say "look at how sharp the image is!".
 
Elton said:
Most people get HDTV's because they like the flat screen/space savings and, like Barry says, watch squashed hyper-compressed SD on it and say "look at how sharp the image is!".
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My parents, lol. I totally know what you mean... Though now I've shown them how big a difference HD broadcast footage makes...:thumbsup:
 
Brandon Rice said:
My parents, lol. I totally know what you mean... Though now I've shown them how big a difference HD broadcast footage makes...:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

once anyone who has an HDTV has seen its full uses, even at 720p, they cant watch anything again stretched out in SDTV. I personally dont navigate to any of the other 600 channels i have on digitcal cable, i stick to my 15 HDTV channels, even if ive seen the programming 100 times already, and i really really have to disagree with a 480p DVD on an HDTV being even close to comparable as an HD-DVD / Blu-Ray played on the same TV, its night and day, just like a SD broadcast to HD Broadcast minus the artifacts in high action scenes. Its the god of imaging
 
Damn straight Barry. All of what you said.

My oppionion is that is boils down to the old truth about anything:
Content is king.


- Mikko
 
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