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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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| Well, it is always easier to spend other people's money, right? |
| 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. |
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Originally Posted by Joe Fisher
In a society where we feel the need to compensate people for there f**k ups is becoming a sad and normal routine.
There is no accountability anymore in American or better human society. If I make a mistake IT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT!. I, the person who made the initial decision is blame less. Thats why I feel the idea to make a "Peace" offering to the HD people is a big pile of BS. Sorry, you made a choice and LOST. Since December 2nd, 2007, I have made an $1200 investment in Blu-Ray products that include hardware & software. I have also made a investment in a HD-DVD player that included 12 free movies, but only cost me only $177.84 total. Now suppose WB went HD instead of Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray died, should I be offered some sort of compensation to come over to the HD side. NO! Because I made a choice and I lost. I'll deal with it and move on. Except your choices wether they are good ones or bad ones and stop blaming someone else for your faults and expecting a reward because you f**k up in life. Have a good day. |
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Originally Posted by Ron-P
Every single person who invested in HD-DVD knew the risks.
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)| That is just not true. The earliest adopters knew the risks and those who frequent boards like this one, but I know that HD-DVD players were purchased during the holiday season by people unaware that a sudden change like this was even possible. These are the people I feel bad for. |
| The really funny thing is that the idea wasn't floated by anyone from the HD DVD camp. |
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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 |
| 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. |
| These plans would be extremely expensive |
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 .
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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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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. |
| 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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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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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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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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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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Originally Posted by Sanjay Gupta
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.
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