Anyone see this article over at IMDb? (1 Viewer)

[Doug^Ch]

Joseph, thanks for that incredibly detailed rebuttal of my argument that HD discs are the laser discs of my time. I hope you are right and that these new formats do take off at some point. I just wish that someone in my circle share my enthusiasm for HD. I would not be at all surprised if the Feds extended the deadline for conversion to HD an additional two years, because I still think the majority are not ready to give up their old sets or get converters.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I doubt there will be any further extensions to the DTV (not HD) deadline.

1) The Feds badly want the revenue that will come from auctioning off that newly-available broadcast spectrum.

2) Industry badly wants to buy that spectrum for a whole host of current and future applications.

3) The whole "replace your set or get a box" thing is way overblown. The vast majority of Americans already have a set-top box. It was provided by their cable company or they bought it to go with their satellite service, and most of them are already accepting digital signals and coverting them to analog for viewing on a standard TV. Collectively these folks represent between 80 and 90% of TV viewers. When the DTV cut-over takes place, nothing will change for them except where on the dial some of their local stations appear.

The remainder will buy boxes or new sets. Many will do both - upgrading the main TV and buying a box for the bedroom set. Or they'll finally sign up for cable or satellite after years of refusing to. Those who can't afford an STB will be able to get a voucher from the Feds that should cover pretty much the entire cost of picking one up at the local Big Box Store.

The delays in the DTV mandate that have been imposed in the past have all had to do with broadcasters requesting more time, not with the preferences of consumers. As noted above, you never saw thousands of people on the Mall in D.C. chanting, "No more NTSC, We want HDTV!" DTV and its HD subset have always been one of a number of sometimes competing interests that converged in the decision to abandoned NTSC. Public demand hasn't really been that much of a factor.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I didn't actually own a 13" B&W set at the time, and my 56" widescreen had RCA jacks and s-video inputs. (No component, though.) But a friend of mine did own such a set, and it had RCA jacks as well. (Nobody ever bothered to connect a DVD player to it, but we could have, no special stuff needed.) But even an RF modulator for a couple of bucks was not the barrier to hooking up a DVD player to any existing set that the total incompatibility of Blu Ray and HD-DVD with non-HD sets represents, so I think the essential point is still valid.

Joe

 

[John Berggren]

Comparing any new tech to the launch of DVD is kind of foolish. DVD was phenomenally successful and had some of the fastest adoption rates of any consumer tech ever.

 

[ppltd]

To correct some earlier statements made on the numbers of DVD's sold.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

DIVX players, of course, played both DIVX and "open" DVDs. Circuit City not only carried DIVX players made by its partners but "open" DVD players. In fact, it initially had no choice. While they announced DIVX in the fall of 1997, they didn't actually deliver any DIVX players until about six months later. The 1997 "vaporware" announcement was designed to sow confusion in the marketplace and slow the acceptance of "open" DVD. But CC didn't want to be frozen out of the market, so of course they were selling regular DVD players by the fall of 1997, just like everybody else. And I bought my first DVD player the very month of the DIVX announcement at Best Buy, along with my first two titles. There were 20 or 30 titles on the shelves at that point, as I recall. I had also checked the prices at CC.

Look, I was there when this all happened, I'm not researching ancient history with Wiki and Google.

Regards,

Joe

 

[ppltd]

So was I. I owned my first LD player back in the 70's and was at Ken Cranes the first day DVD's were released. In fact my first purchase, if memory serves, was 'A Boy and his Dog'. As far as the link I posted, I perfer to temper my comments with facts along with memory. The addition of the links is to validate my memory of the time. But we seem to have differing memories of the time.

Being a large LD collector I followed the sales of DVD's very closely and have been collecting from the the first day of DVD's release.

 

[Ryan-G]

You're right, it doesn't take DVD sales numbers to come to any conclusion at all. It does require that two other sets of numbers be assessed.

1. The number of HDTV's currently in homes.
2. The number of HDTV's currently in homes with modern HD capability.

The number of HD Players sold is directly a function of HDTV's sold, and partially a function of the quality of HD capability of those TV's. Many early HDTV's are still in use, and aren't capable of displaying a quality HD picture.

Without considering the penetration of HDTV's, it's absolutely impossible to draw any conclusions at all on the sales of HD Players.

For example...

For DVD...

Players Sold/300,000,000 people in the U.S. * 100 = percentage of sales.

200,000 / 300,000,000 * 100 = 0.06% penetration in the first year

(Calculator had an overrun, might be off, but I think it's right.)

For HD(Numbers pulled from memory for the end of 2006, take with grain of salt.)

Players Sold / (300,000,000 * (installed base / 100)) * 100 = percentage of sales.

200,000 / (300,000,000 * 0.1(is 10%) * 100 = 0.6% penetration in the first year.

I believe that 200,000 is approximately correct when allowing for 360 addon's which could only be used for HD Players, and the penetration percentage for HDTV's at the end of 2006 was somewhere between the < 10% 2006 started with and the ~15% now quoted.

With rough data, HD Players outsold DVD Players in the first year of each. If anyone has accurate data for the number or Players sold in 2006(Counting 360 add-ons, not counting PS3's) and accurate data for HDTV penetration a better approximation can be reached.

I could be wrong with my equations, I'm sure someone will correct me if I am, but I think it generates the numbers properly.

 

[Cees Alons]

In principle it isn't. Just another bit of a less secure investment.

But in the realm of this thread:
(1) As noted by other posters already, those people will never constitute a substantial amount of consumers significantly influencing the sales numbers.
(2) It is basically an argument against the "niche-market" aspect of HD, because these consumers would be thinking that HD will be in their future and they plan to further buy into it the moment they feel they can afford to do so.


Cees

 

[Camper]

You didn't need to upgrade your TV to switch over to regular DVD.
HD DVD & blu-ray are at the mercy of to amount of homes that have a HDTV.
Also, usually even homes that have a HDTV have only one.
My 4 TVs in 2001 ALL had DVD players!
I now have one HD DVD player and one HDTV.

 

[Douglas Monce]

The last time I was at Best Buy, the HDTVs on display outnumbered standard TVs by about 4 or 5 to 1.

I think in the next year or year and a half your going to see a very high number of homes with HDTVs in them.

My parents bought their first color TV when I was about 7. They had that TV for 25 years, but today I don't think most people have a TV for much more than 5 years.

Doug

 

[Jason Seaver]

Depends who you know. We're probably a bad sample here, likely to upgrade often, but the only family members and friends I know who have upgraded their television (aside from myself) this century are my brother and his wife, and that was only because their old one crapped out. People still expect those suckers to last, especially the big one in the living room.