A retailer's comment on HD (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

No one is saying that picture-quality is the *only* reason behind purchase decisions. Just that it matters. And guess what... it does! Everyone I know who bought a WII says the number one thing they hate about it is the 480i resolution (and these aren't all HT people, one guy at work has an HDTV but only watches sports)... and that they're hoping to upgrade ASAP once Nintendo comes out with an HD version!

Had X-box or Sony been releasing an HD version of the "WII" at the same time... with the same motion-controller and games, those consumers might have skipped Nintendo altogether.

 

[Shawn Perron]

Actually, the real trojan horse for HD is sports. Once any sports fan catches his favorite sport in HD, they realize what an awesome thing it is. Once they get used to that quality week in and out watching sports, they will really start to feel that SD doesn't look very good. The main reason people care about quality is because they are used to being around it to start with. Once people have established a new baseline for video or audio quality, the lack of it will motivate them to correct this situation. As more HDTVs are sold into homes and people start watching thier favorite things in HD, they will begin to migrate over towards wanting more HD. There will be a market for HD movies in peoples homes regardless of how this current battle ends.

 

[Edwin-S]

Looks like the euphoria over the controller gimmick is wearing off for some people and now they are starting to notice the WII's weakness in the graphics department. Now they are starting to realize that quality graphics and sound really are worth something.

People thought $600 was too expensive for HD quality PQ, a 60GB drive, wi-fi, support for most of the latest sound codecs, and the latest version HDMI connector. However, $300 was a steal for 480i, Prologic surround sound......PROLOGIC???!!......, and a controller gimmick. It just makes me laugh.

I have to admit I was curious about the WII controller, but there was no way that I was going to spend $300 on a Nintendo Game Cube with a gimmick, because from where I sit that is all the WII is: a $100 console with a $200 gimmick.

 

[Edwin-S]

Getting back to OP's comments. I think it is too early to conclude that HD optical media is essentially flop from observations of conditions in one's local region. I do not think that HD DVD or BD is going to catch fire the way DVD did; however, I do think that HD DVD or BD will eventually supplant DVD just by osmosis. Almost all displays being sold now are HD capable. HD players are going to be purchased as people replace their older SD DVD equipment. In comparison to DVD I think the trajectory will be shallower for the adoption of HD media; however, HD media will be adopted and eventually supplant SD DVD.

 

[EricW]

i think alot of people can't even tell the difference between HD and SD, sports or otherwise. i had a fellow HT friend come over to see the HDDVD version of Corpse Bride and his jaw dropped. it was the best HD thing he'd ever seen. i had another friend come over and he couldn't see anything special (granted, he did dee it after i showed him the SD version)

 

[MarkHastings]

I agree with the poster who said that sports are the best way to get the average consumer into HD. A lot of my non-techy friends RAVE about how awesome sports look in HD.

That got me thinking, since these same people really can't tell the differences between SD and HD movies, why do they notice it with sports? Probably because they are sports fans and it's something they care about.

Most people here care about movies and technology, which is why we can see the difference, but most consumers don't care that much about movies to really notice (or care about) the differences. But they do care about sports and with that, they notice a major improvement.

Sports are definitely the way to go.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Sports are also something people have more experience seeing live, and the guys directing the coverage aren't trying to achieve much other than clarity. There's no grain, no filters, no attempt to flatten the image, make one part stand out, or work around the limitations of the set. You see sports (or something on Discovery HD), and it's just, damn, that looks almost real.

 

[BrianShort]

Thank you for saying this! I've seen so many comments from people here and at other forums about the "patheic" sales numbers of both HD formats, and that they're dead before they've even begun. Now, I didn't join the ranks of DVD owners until late 1999, and looking back, it seems to me that even then, DVD didn't have a whole lot more support than HD has now. Sure, the players were a bit cheaper, but this was 2 years after the format's debut! Shouldn't we give HD a bit more time before we decide if it's going to be a failure or not?

 

[thalazy]

Screw sports, show the Discovery HD Theater and they will become a believer. I show that to people all the time and they are left stunned and in awe by what they saw.

 

[MarkHastings]

That wasn't the point of my reply about sports.

It isn't enough to get people interested in HD and see the picture improvement, it's also about showing them how it relates to their everyday life. Most of your average consumers watch sports shows and not Discovery channel.

I bet you could convert more J6P's with HD sports than most people can with Discovery channel, even if the Discovery HD was of better quality HD than the HD sports.



For example: When I showed my brother the differences between OAR and P&S, he understood why OAR was better, but he just didn't care because he hates movies. He's only interested in sports. He still prefers "Filling the screen" because he just doesn't have the passion for OAR.

Now with HD, I had to find something he was passionate about before getting him excited about HD. He thinks the Discovery Channel stuff looks awesome, but it wasn't until he saw a Red Sox game (on my HDTV), that he went nuts about getting an HD set. The only reason he got an HD TV (and HD cable) was to watch NESN and ESPN in Hig Def. Now he has two HD TV's and went to great lengths to make sure each of his Cable Boxes had HDMI outputs!

I guarantee you that if it weren't for sports, he wouldn't have jumped in so enthusiastically.

He doesn't even have his 60" SONY hooked up to a surround sound system. He listens to the tiny speakers on the set because, for him, they're "Good enough for listening to sports."

It takes a lot to get him into technology, so I still stand behind my "Show someone something they're passionate about and they'll get excited about the technology" theory.

 

[Ryan-G]

200,000 DVD Players sold into homes in DVD's first year(U.S.), 125,000(I think I saw here) HD-DVD add-on's sold into people's home in HD's first year. Add in BR players, HD-DVD stand-alones, and PS3's and HD Media is selling as well or better than DVD in it's first year.

 

[Fozziwig]

Source: videobusiness

22% of 1 million is 220,000. Add that to the 100,000 Blu-ray standalones and it's only 70,000 more than HD DVD. Which would make Blu-ray owners more enthusiastic movie buyers.

1.5% of 1 million is only 15,000 which would mean that there were fewer than half 'active' Blu-ray players than HD DVD players - which wouldn't really explain the 2:1 Blu-ray lead in disc sales.

Even if you take PS3 worldwide then it would be 1.5% of 2 million (30,000) and that doesn't make sense either.

So I say close to 40%. Paramount Exec. says 22%. You say 1.5%.

I think your X-box % might be a bit low also. Approx. 5.7 million X-Box 360's have sold in North America. My generous estimate for add-on sales to date is 150,000 which is slightly over 2.5%. Your figure actually puts sales below the known sales reported up to the end of December - approx. 90,000.

 

[MarkHastings]

Reread my previous post.

The reason J6P doesn't like black bars is because he doesn't have enough enthusiasm, about what he's watching, to want to learn to watch it the 'correct' way.

Again, I've explained the reason for black bars numerous times and even though these people understand why they are there (and why they are better that way), they don't care enough to want to watch programming that way.


Now, I understand what you (Ryan) are saying about picture quality: I can agree that it's a no brainer that J6P would pick HD over SD quality even though he chooses P&S over OAR, but what I meant previously is, I don't think J6P cares enough about picture quality increase to want to spend the money for an HD player.

Now, to bring the to examples together: If J6P is doesn't care enough to buy OAR DVD's over P&S DVD's (even though OAR DVD's don't cost any more to purchase), then why would he pay MORE money for an HD player when he already owns an SD-DVD player?

Again, unless there is a passion for the material they are watching, people aren't going to spend the money to get into it...and I don't see much passion in people who buy P&S movies.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

The reported "attach rate" for BD-purchasing with PS3 owners, as reported from several sources, is 20%. I'm not sure how that number is being determined, but that's what industry sources seem to think. I believe this number refers to the % of PS3 owners also using their gaming machine as a BD player, though it doesn't indicate how much software they may or may not be purchasing. That number is probably very vauge and I suspect the attach rate is actually larger given how few games are available right now and how much BD software is selling.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I suspect more PS3 owners (of the gaming ilk) will rent the BR discs vs. buying them because of the gamer's mentality in their cost/benefit analysis: Pay $60 for a PS3 game and get hours and hours of entertainment (depending on how fun the game is, or how long it takes to "beat the game", usually 40-100 hours), or pay $20-$30 for a BR disc for 2-3 hours of entertainment (add another 2-8 hours if they actually go through the extra supplements/commentaries).

 

[Norman Matthews]

Fozziwig, your estimates are disastrously off, because you're making an incorrect comparison.

When you say, "Presently Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by 2:1 on the disc side," you act as if that's total sales. It's not; it's only sales for the past few months. In total sales, Blu-Ray is only fractionally above HD DVD, and those are the numbers you should be looking at if you're talking attach rate.

 

[Fozziwig]

I agree, a large number of PS3 owners will be renting. However, a substantial number of PS3 owners are also buying discs. There is no other way to explain the present 2:1 sales lead for Blu-ray.

Another interesting example of the potential buying power of Blu-ray can be seen in this latest Amazon chart:



This is during a sale on Blu-ray discs and of course the arrival of Casino Royale on Blu-ray (currently the highest selling HD title and standing at #14 in the overall Amazon DVD chart).

There is something like a 2,000 place gap between the average rankings for the top 25 in each format at the moment. That may well close again when the sale ends but it illustrates that when the price is right on movies, the Blu-ray buyers come out in huge numbers.

In the early stages of the sale there were 21 Blu-ray titles in the Amazon top 100 DVD's and of the top 30 HD titles, 29 were Blu-ray.

 

[Fozziwig]

I am correct. Unless my grammar is disastrously off the term "presently Blu-ray is outselling" means what is happening now, not what has happened in the past or what the total volumes are.

Just to clarify so that I am no longer disastrously off.

Nielsen Videoscan report the following weekly sales since January 21.

Week Blu-ray HD DVD
01/21/07 67.8%32.2%
01/28/0768.8%31.2%
02/04/0769.0%31.0%
02/11/0769.6%30.4%
02/18/0765.5%34.5%
02/25/0767.8%32.2%

So, shall we say that since at least January 21 Blu-ray has outsold HD DVD by 2:1 (or thereabouts)? On year to date it certainly has (BD:67.2% to HD DVD:32.8% - Nielsen Videoscan, March 4)

Now the "fractionally above" figure you are referring to is the 'since inception' figure. The total voulme of discs for each format sold since lauch.

This presently (as in, the most recent figures from Nielsen VideoScan) stands at 52.2% for Blu-ray and 47.8% for HD DVD.

The actual volume estimates vary depending on who you listen to, but roughly it seems the Blu-ray total currently stands at approx.744,000 and the HD DVD total stands at 680,000.

Hope that clears up any misconception you may have picked up from my earlier post.

You can see the latest sales figures (market share, not volumes) reported here:

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom031107/

I am always interested in hearing alternate figures so if you have them it would be interesting to see and compare them to the existing, widely reported numbers.

Edit: Forgot to say that when you consider the PS3 effect remember it only launched in November and the bulk of PS3 sales occured in December.

 

[Austan]

I own a PS3 and so do 6 other friends. No one besides myself is a HT enthusiast... Since their PS3 purchase, all of them have bought Blu Ray titles that they don't own in SD. Why? because people who own next generation electronics are not going to invest further in last generation. After spending $500+ on a PS3, a $22-$29 movie is not a big deal... also, they are not buying 10 movies at time... A once in a while $30 purchase in todays standards is a "spur of a moment buy" not a "financial decision".

Since the PS3 launch, Blu Ray media sales have caught up to HD DVD sales (which at some accounts on HTF were as high as 13:1) and now has surpassed it. Stand alone player sales still have HD DVD in the lead. THE PS3 HAS MADE AN IMPACT!!!

 

[Norman Matthews]

If that was your point than your logic is even more flawed than I thought. Of course Blu-Ray buyers are buying more movies than HD DVD buyers right now. They have more new options to choose from, and that includes all those standalone owners. I wouldn't hesitate one second to say the average Blu-Ray standalone owner has bought more HD discs in the past two months than the average HD DVD standalone owner, since he's had less time to get what's already on the market and he's had more new options being released each week. So that blows every aspect of your post about the PS3 out of the water.

Look at it this way: If Blue-Ray's total sales to date are about 744,000, as you say, then let's guess that 150,000 of those sales occured in February. I think that's more than generous, but if you want to quibble about that number, let me know. Blu-Ray outsold HD DVD in February by about 2:1, so that means, when you say, "Presently Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by 2:1 on the disc side," you're talking about a whopping 75,000 discs. Now, by what metric does a differential of 75,000 discs get you to 400,000 PS3s buying discs?

Seriously, look at the numbers you yourself posted! 744,000 total Blu-Ray disc sales. That's not even enough total sales for 20% of PS3 owners to have bought 4 discs apiece. If those market-shifting 20% of PS3 owners bought 3 discs apiece, that leaves 144,000 total discs to have been bought by those 100,000 Blu-Ray standalone players. How about 2 discs apiece for those 20% of PS3 owners? That might work. And this is over the life of the format!

Sorry, but your armchair analysis is still disastrous.