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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
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Originally Posted by Ron-P
A peace offering, are you kidding me. Every single person who invested in HD-DVD knew the risks. No way should Blu-ray pony up for someone else's choice. Bill Hunt's comments are laughable.
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It's a little premature for this anyway, as it seems that Toshiba and the exclusive HD-DVD studios are not yet ready to throw in the towel.
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
The really funny thing is that the idea wasn't floated by anyone from the HD DVD camp. It was suggested by a fellow who was dyed in the wool Blu. I cannot believe how negative people on both sides are to the idea of some kind of "peace offering". I guess now I can understand why peace in the Middle East and other places is so elusive. A lot of people are unable to budge from their hard line positions even on something as trivial as a video format war.
When you have to shoot...shoot. Don't talk!
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
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Originally Posted by Cees Alons
That makes it so suspicious. It was never meant to "help" the HD DVD crowd, but merely to help establish the (false) notion that BD won definitely and HD DVD is out.
Just look who are promoting it. And who don't.
Cees
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.....Exactly what I was thinking.
Once again, until the HD-DVD backers throw in the towel, any discussion of a "peace offering" is mute at this stage imho.
More Harlow on DVD Now! - Red Dust, Bombshell, Hold Your Man, Saratoga, The Iron Man, Goldie, The Secret Six, Beast of the City, Three Wise Girls, Reckless, Personal Property, Riff-raff, Suzy & Girl from Missouri
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
It's quite obvious that Blu-ray is already winning this war. There's nothing more they need to do other then wait. The last two studios will cave eventually. Sony does not, and should not, offer up and type of trade in program. All that will do is keep player / software prices higher for longer to absorb the cost of such a program.
Sometime's you reach what's real by making believe.
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Bl
Instead of looking at such a "peace offering" as a handout, look at it as a promotion.
People who have purchased HD DVD players are the exact market that the BDA hopes to attract. Except for those that bought into both formats, those buyers spent disposable income on a machine that cannot play Blu-ray discs. It's also possible that, now that a purchase has been made, it may be difficult or impossible for those same people to make another purchase just because the format war didn't go the way of HD DVD.
The low-hanging fruit can be picked in the next couple of weeks. Enthusiasts watching the events of the past week might have already purchased a Blu-ray player if they were on the fence, or are planning to in short order. That's the easy sale.
The next easiest sale is to those that have bought into the hobby, but haven't purchased a Blu-ray player.
The hardest sale is to those that haven't bought into either format and may not recognize the advantages of Blu-ray over DVD.
Applying simple marketing shows that you don't need to market to the first segment, because they are taking it upon themselves to make a purchase. The only marketing you need to do to them is to get them to purchase your player instead of someone else's.
The next target is the HD DVD buyer. The sale is easier than the last segment, and the two major obstacles you face are 1) price, and 2) value comparison to HD DVD. By offering a discount to this segment, you allay some level of concern about #1 and you generate goodwill to smoothe over any hard feelings that the potential buyer may have about how things turned out.
#2 is a more difficult proposition. HD DVD buyers know what their players and the format were capable of. Players of equivalent featuresets need to be offered so that the value is a little less lopsided. That rules out any non Profile 1.1 players, and one could argue that it could rule out any non Profile 2.0 players.
Offering present HD DVD owners something on the order of the Panasonic DMP-BD50 for $350 and positioning it as an upgrade from their HD DVD player will make it easier for the fence-sitters to buy into the format. Once you have them, they become evangelists that will help you with that last segment of holdouts.
$350 for the DMP-BD50 may seem ridiculous if you're accustomed to the Blu-ray player market, but if you're coming in from the other side, it's the only player currently available or announced, besides the PS3, that approaches the functionality found in every HD DVD player made. Of course, its support of the advanced audio specs make it better than the A30 and A3, and 1080p24 make it better than the A3, but even at $350, it's also substantially more expensive than all but the A35 HD DVD player.
If the PS3 entered the discussion, I think that a good price to get converts would be $300 for the 40GB version. It's been sold at that price before during various promotions, so I don't think that $300 is unreasonable. It also achieves Sony's goal of getting more PS3's in the wild.
To put these numbers into perspective, if the BDA were to buy 750,000 Blu-ray players valued at $300 each and give them away, that would be a $225M hit to the marketing budget. That's a lot of money, but not a lot when you consider that doing so would buy the entire HDM market and put the issue of multiple formats to rest.
From the perspective of the movie studios, I definitely feel like Warner Bros. betrayed the consumers. They were quoted as denying any change in plans as recently as mid-December. Not too many people are going to believe that they didn't know what was up by then.
Warner Bros. could gain an incredible amount of goodwill by exchanging discs for consumers. They could even partner with a big box retailer to perform the exchanges for them, as the retailer would gain from getting people in the door and they would have the chance to market to those people and perhaps persuade them to buy more Blu-ray hardware and software while they were there.
Customers get immediate gratification without dealing with the delays and hassle of mailing discs, Warner Bros. doesn't have to deal with fulfillment (not a strong suit of the WB store at this point in time), and retailers get customers walking in the door. I don't see how the cost of such a program wouldn't be outweighed by the direct and indirect benefits.
The hardware and software promotions could be combined. Instead of offering 5 free discs by mail, which might show up sometime around May, offer the players at a trade-in discount and an even exchange for the discs. The players get recycled by the pallet-full instead of being sent in one at a time or some such nonsense, and customers walk out with brand new hardware and most of the same movies (at least from WB) that they had before. That's a lot of happy customers!
This isn't about anyone asking for a handout. It's about using marketing to overcome obstacles to purchase. Every sale has a cost, and it's just a matter of how much cost-per-sale is acceptable to obtain one's goals. Blu-ray has a long uphill battle ahead of it against standard definition DVD. It needs as many happy customers as it can get.
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
" Blu-ray has a long uphill battle ahead of it against standard definition DVD "
At last , some sense . The war hasnt been won , a lot of money changed hands to achieve a certain result and that could happen again
With over a million Hd-dvd players in the wild ( and usually pretty good Sd upscalers ) any Hd discs that do come out will make some sales .
Warners interpretation of 2:1 sales advantage as being ' the consumer making a choice ' has left a bad taste in a lot of mouths .
Paramount announced a deal this week to allow downloading sales of HD movies either as PPV or to a dedicated Hard Drive which may be a timely illustration that Warners/Sonys/BDA desperation to 'win' the war by fair means or foul in record time is because they know that BD IS NOT the only choice available to enthusiasts in the medium to long term .
As regards the OP's original idea , it's a nice thought but after May I think it will be just more BDA hardball , Warner's included . I wish I was wrong but my next purchase is going to be a really good Video Processor because I'm not rebuying all my 1500 Criterion and World Sd discs this time around ( and how the hell are they going to convince people about BD while Region Coding is still being enforced ? )
~M~
I have just two words to say to you..... Shut the f*** up !
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
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Originally Posted by Edwin-S
The really funny thing is that the idea wasn't floated by anyone from the HD DVD camp. It was suggested by a fellow who was dyed in the wool Blu. I cannot believe how negative people on both sides are to the idea of some kind of "peace offering". I guess now I can understand why peace in the Middle East and other places is so elusive. A lot of people are unable to budge from their hard line positions even on something as trivial as a video format war.
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Very good point indeed.
BTW, I posted much earlier saying I agree w/ the idea of a peace offering, but that doesn't have to mean that I feel people should not be responsible for their own actions. In fact, elsewhere, I've expressed that sentiment too.
Still, I think a peace offering can be a good idea for the companies themselves. Afterall, their bottom lines are to make $$$. And if a peace offering somehow helps their bottom lines in the long run, they should do it even if it might seem silly to some of us. Let's face it. People as a whole are not exactly very rational creatures. And it might do the companies some good to come out of this w/ the best PR possible, particularly wrt early adopters, including the growth of the early adopter market. Who knows? They could very well use better PR for their next new endeavor (beyond HDM) that requires strong support from early adopters. Considering people still regularly point back to the 30-plus-yo Beta vs VHS war, etc. in the midst of this format war, it certainly wouldn't hurt them to present themselves in better light than otherwise, if it's feasible.
At the end of the day, it's all just about good business for them afterall...
_Man_
Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Bl
100% agreed regardless of whatever sentiments, except the part about BDA buying 750K players for the HDD owners is an example that's probably too exaggerated to offer proper perspective for some.
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Originally Posted by Scott Jentsch
Instead of looking at such a "peace offering" as a handout, look at it as a promotion.
People who have purchased HD DVD players are the exact market that the BDA hopes to attract. Except for those that bought into both formats, those buyers spent disposable income on a machine that cannot play Blu-ray discs. It's also possible that, now that a purchase has been made, it may be difficult or impossible for those same people to make another purchase just because the format war didn't go the way of HD DVD.
The low-hanging fruit can be picked in the next couple of weeks. Enthusiasts watching the events of the past week might have already purchased a Blu-ray player if they were on the fence, or are planning to in short order. That's the easy sale.
The next easiest sale is to those that have bought into the hobby, but haven't purchased a Blu-ray player.
The hardest sale is to those that haven't bought into either format and may not recognize the advantages of Blu-ray over DVD.
Applying simple marketing shows that you don't need to market to the first segment, because they are taking it upon themselves to make a purchase. The only marketing you need to do to them is to get them to purchase your player instead of someone else's.
The next target is the HD DVD buyer. The sale is easier than the last segment, and the two major obstacles you face are 1) price, and 2) value comparison to HD DVD. By offering a discount to this segment, you allay some level of concern about #1 and you generate goodwill to smoothe over any hard feelings that the potential buyer may have about how things turned out.
#2 is a more difficult proposition. HD DVD buyers know what their players and the format were capable of. Players of equivalent featuresets need to be offered so that the value is a little less lopsided. That rules out any non Profile 1.1 players, and one could argue that it could rule out any non Profile 2.0 players.
Offering present HD DVD owners something on the order of the Panasonic DMP-BD50 for $350 and positioning it as an upgrade from their HD DVD player will make it easier for the fence-sitters to buy into the format. Once you have them, they become evangelists that will help you with that last segment of holdouts.
$350 for the DMP-BD50 may seem ridiculous if you're accustomed to the Blu-ray player market, but if you're coming in from the other side, it's the only player currently available or announced, besides the PS3, that approaches the functionality found in every HD DVD player made. Of course, its support of the advanced audio specs make it better than the A30 and A3, and 1080p24 make it better than the A3, but even at $350, it's also substantially more expensive than all but the A35 HD DVD player.
If the PS3 entered the discussion, I think that a good price to get converts would be $300 for the 40GB version. It's been sold at that price before during various promotions, so I don't think that $300 is unreasonable. It also achieves Sony's goal of getting more PS3's in the wild.
To put these numbers into perspective, if the BDA were to buy 750,000 Blu-ray players valued at $300 each and give them away, that would be a $225M hit to the marketing budget. That's a lot of money, but not a lot when you consider that doing so would buy the entire HDM market and put the issue of multiple formats to rest.
From the perspective of the movie studios, I definitely feel like Warner Bros. betrayed the consumers. They were quoted as denying any change in plans as recently as mid-December. Not too many people are going to believe that they didn't know what was up by then.
Warner Bros. could gain an incredible amount of goodwill by exchanging discs for consumers. They could even partner with a big box retailer to perform the exchanges for them, as the retailer would gain from getting people in the door and they would have the chance to market to those people and perhaps persuade them to buy more Blu-ray hardware and software while they were there.
Customers get immediate gratification without dealing with the delays and hassle of mailing discs, Warner Bros. doesn't have to deal with fulfillment (not a strong suit of the WB store at this point in time), and retailers get customers walking in the door. I don't see how the cost of such a program wouldn't be outweighed by the direct and indirect benefits.
The hardware and software promotions could be combined. Instead of offering 5 free discs by mail, which might show up sometime around May, offer the players at a trade-in discount and an even exchange for the discs. The players get recycled by the pallet-full instead of being sent in one at a time or some such nonsense, and customers walk out with brand new hardware and most of the same movies (at least from WB) that they had before. That's a lot of happy customers!
This isn't about anyone asking for a handout. It's about using marketing to overcome obstacles to purchase. Every sale has a cost, and it's just a matter of how much cost-per-sale is acceptable to obtain one's goals. Blu-ray has a long uphill battle ahead of it against standard definition DVD. It needs as many happy customers as it can get.
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Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".
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Dave Moritz
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
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| It's a little premature for this anyway, as it seems that Toshiba and the exclusive HD-DVD studios are not yet ready to throw in the towel. |
While I would agree it is premature to call this format war over. Toshiba may not have a choice in the matter and that is only a matter of time at this point. IMHO retailers ,studios and the industry itself has grown tired of the format war. If retailers start pulling HD-DVD off there shelves or giving it less retail space. Both Universal and Paramount will have no choice but to switch to Blu-ray. Another thing that can end the war without Toshiba having a choice, is if public perception is that HD-DVD is dead. Then nether Toshiba, Universal or Paramount will have a choice. IMHO its out of Toshiba's hands and while Toshiba can prolong the war a little longer. Unless things change drastacly in there favor the end result is still going to be the same. And Sony's Blu-ray will still be the winner in the HD format war.
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Douglas Monce
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Bl
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Originally Posted by Ron-P
It's quite obvious that Blu-ray is already winning this war. There's nothing more they need to do other then wait. The last two studios will cave eventually. Sony does not, and should not, offer up and type of trade in program. All that will do is keep player / software prices higher for longer to absorb the cost of such a program.
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I think they better damn well do more than wait. They still have to convince the general public that an HD format is better than what they have now. So far they have been doing a pretty crappy job.
Doug
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Sanjay Gupta
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
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Originally Posted by ReggieW
Once again, until the HD-DVD backers throw in the towel, any discussion of a "peace offering" is mute at this stage imho.
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In my book a 'peace offering' would be made to bring about 'peace'. Thus any 'peace offering' would abviously be made only while the 'war' is still on. Once HD-DVD throws in the towel, the 'war' will be over and thus will nullify the need for any 'peace offering' to be made. The companies involved, exist to make money for their shareholders, not to go around giving handouts, which is what the 'peace offering' would be if made after HD-DVD officially throws in the towel. Thus in my opinion if there are any 'peace offerings' to be made, they will be now, or they ought to be, rather than later.
In the current situation, the only party that ought to be making any kind of 'peace offerings' is Warner, since it is their customer who might feel cheated due to their decision to go Blu-Ray exclusive. It might make good sense for Warner for PR purposes to try and make up to their HD-DVD customers. As for the 'offer' itself, personally I feel, that instead of it being a simple exchange of title for title, there should be a small fee for the same. This would also serve to cover Warner's costs towards the excercise. I don't know exactly how much it costs Warner to manufactur a Blu-Ray disc, but I presume a $3 - $5 fee ought to cover the cost of manufacturing and also any costs incurred for the replacement excercise. I am sure lot's of people might find such an offer quite reasonable and enticing. I know, I would jump at any such offer if I were in the predicament that so many may find themselves to be due to Warner's decision.
Sanjay
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Bl
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Originally Posted by Douglas Monce
I think they better damn well do more than wait. They still have to convince the general public that an HD format is better than what they have now. So far they have been doing a pretty crappy job.
Doug
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The joe six packs of this world are not ready for HDM, it will be a very, very long time before Blu-ray or any other type of HDM is accepted on a mass scale.
As for doing a crappy job, hardly. The advertising has been done well, the shelves of all my local stores are lined with Blu-ray and they all have displays set up promoting it. Not much more they can do other then wait for J6P to accept it and buy in and that will not happen fast.
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Douglas Monce
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Bl
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Originally Posted by Ron-P
The joe six packs of this world are not ready for HDM, it will be a very, very long time before Blu-ray or any other type of HDM is accepted on a mass scale.
As for doing a crappy job, hardly. The advertising has been done well, the shelves of all my local stores are lined with Blu-ray and they all have displays set up promoting it. Not much more they can do other then wait for J6P to accept it and buy in and that will not happen fast.
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I'm not so sure of that with the rate that HDTVs are being sold.
Doug
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
The only thing holding it back is the price of software, and to a lesser extent hardware. HDM will move slowly as long as HDM media is priced 10 dollars higher than SD. I bought into this early, but even I sit back and think long and hard about whether I want to spend 30 or more dollars to replace a title that I already own on DVD. Most of time I just put it back on the shelf. A lot of movies are impulse buys and the impulse to buy is vastly reduced with 30 dollar price tags.
When you have to shoot...shoot. Don't talk!
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Re: Should WB and the BDA give HD DVD owners a "peace offering" to welcome them to Blu?
" The best and simplest "peace offering" they could do to their customers is: reverse the decision to stop bringing out HD DVD from June 1st on.
After all, they were making a lot of money on it, so it's not an expensive offering. "
The notion that a dual-format world could survive has come up before . Gamers are not ' confused' when asked to select between X-box and PS3 or even Wii so why is it so implausible that movie fans would be able to make that choice ?
Having a single format does not IMO guarantee widespread HD adoption . Many of us here only really got going with our movie collections when Dvd arrived and have no intention of rebuying them all again . If that proves to be the case , sales will remain quite sluggish even if player-sales ( PS3 included )
increase .
For those who enjoy World Cinema , Region Coding is another complex issue posing problems. I dont believe that my collection of Sds suddenly became worthless with the advent of these formats . 'Casablanca' looks fabulous in HD but it will be some while before Hitchcock , John Ford or Film Noirs become available.
~M~
I have just two words to say to you..... Shut the f*** up !
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