Who WOULDN'T pick Blu-Ray??? (1 Viewer)

[Shawn Perron]

Truthfully, an early adopter is someone that always has to have the latest and greatest. Sure you may have been an occassionally adopted something early, but you really don't seem to have the early adopter mindset. A real early adopter always buys the latest technology. If you were really an early adopter you'd be talking about hooking your HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players up to your $14,000 Sony Qualia SXRD and talking about the $15,000 SED display you are planning on buying when they come out in a few years.

The true early adopters are beloved by manufacturers because they are the ones buying the cutting edge $10,000+ displays and audio gear that will eventually reach the price range of us poorer home theater buffs. I would like to be an early adopter, but my wallet votes no (despite having bought 2 $4000 tvs in the past 5 years).

Having bought a HDTV at some point and getting a $500 HD-DVD player doesn't really qualify you as an early adopter. The fact that you are even discussing the price difference of a mere $500 between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray really should really make this clear. Generally early adopters know it takes a good amount of money to keep up with the joneses.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Here's a definition from an IT encyclopedia (emphasis mine):

If you were an early consumer of HDTVs but resisted the urge to upgrade, you're no longer an early adopter. Using the Rogers model above would put most of us in the "early majority" camp. Early adopters had an analog tube TV, then a LCD, then maybe a DLP or LCOS/SXRD (upgrading to DVI and/or HDMI along the way), and next year will get an OLED or SED. Like Shawn said, money is the least of the early adopter's worries. Arbitarily assigning the term "upgradeitis" to what early adopters do doesn't disqualify them from being early adopters. In fact, you could say they have chronic (or terminal, if the SO reads the bank statements) "upgradeitis."

 

[David Stanley]

An early adopter doesn't have to be an early adopter on everything. If a "real" early adopter always buys the latest technology, then those "talking about hooking your HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players up to your $14,000 Sony Qualia" are not early adopters unless they have a hybrid vehicle in their driveway and solar panels on their roof.

 

[Shawn Perron]

Quibble about the definition if you like, but I'm talking about the "early adopters" that drive sales of new technologies. It's nice that by the dictionary you qualify as an early adopter because you bought 1 or 2 pieces of equipment fairly early, but you are not the people that most people mean when they talk about early adopters. When people say "early adopters" will decide the 2 HD formats, they mean people that aren't afraid to spend big bucks to set the trends that later people will follow. Just as "early adopters" started the current red hot "flatscreen" market by buying plasmas when they were $15-25k.

It's not often in home theater that something is affordable enough that your average consumer can afford to adopt it early, but there is no need to exagerate in labeling ourselves.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

Who said early adopters are at the forefront of everything? We're talking about HD tech here. By your rationale, early adopters would also be into cryogenics, biomechanical implants, and eating only engineered foods. A lot of early adopters are big on a couple things, but aren't obsessed with the newest of everything (one notable exception being Bill Gates, and even he is fan of old tech). Chances are that the guy with the HD DVD/Blu-ray player and the SXRD set has a top-of-the-line PC, or super-cool smartphone, or yes, the hybrid car. But it's not as if early adopters of HDTV also need the house run by HAL9000 and Mr. Fusion-powered Delorean.

 

[David Stanley]

One more quibble. "Early Adopter" is not an IT term or a technology term. It is an economics termed coined by economists. The term in its intended use does not refer to a person's proclivities as in the phrase "this person is an early adopter and that person isn't". The term refers to a set of actors within a specific market.

As pointed out, early adoptors are a key market segment for covering r&d costs. The HD-DVD and BR camps are looking for high definition disc early adopters to drive their respective formats. This group they seek will not be the same group that will be early adoptors for SED. Sure there will be plenty of people that will be early adopters for both but that is irrelevant when it comes to the adoption of high def optical.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

In the end... what does HD-DVD look like on your display?

How about Blu-ray?

I'll be talking about HD-DVD next week on my web site, based on actual--not theoretical--results. Enjoy.

- Steve

 

[Shawn Perron]

I am talking about home theater. It's nice that there are other things in this world, but there is no need to go offtrack by saying you need to be into cryogenics to be an "early adopter". People tend to have specialized interests and hobbies, and home theater tech is driven by those with far too much money. There are "early adopters" in home audio that really could care less about how nice thier display is. Just because they aren't into movies they aren't "early adopters" anymore?

Buying a HD-DVD player at launch and giving yourself the title "early adopter" is like having $10,000 in your bank account and declaring yourself rich. While it's nice that you are ahead of the game a bit, you don't necessarily fit into a specific category just because you feel you do. I assure you that when people like Nils and David use the term early adopter, they are not refering to someone that buys something early only because it's become affordable.

It's all about context, and in the context the term "early adopter" is used around home theater, it generally refers to those that spend large amounts of money on things as soon as they come out. Early adopter in the context that people have been talking about when discussing people that will drive these formats implies those that will buy 1080p displays and receivers that can digitally decode lossless audio formats.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Perhaps you were not aware of it, but consumers were buying and re-selling 1080i CRT displays for many years prior to 1997. So by your definition (not mine), anyone such as yourself who bought a 1080i CRT display in the late 90's was definitely NOT an early adopter, as 1080i CRT displays were not some amazing new technological product in1997. The difference is that in the late 90's the cost of HD displays dropped significantly – many thanks to those who were early adopters and helped cover the cost of R&D that resulted in lower CRT manufacturing costs.

So what exactly where you being an early adopter of then? A lower cost HD display? Sure, but there were new technological advancements even in 1997, so at least at that time I would say you were an early adopter, but not of high definition. It was just new to you, not the market.

Those that bought the first CRT displays decades ago were certainly early adopters. Those that bought the first LCoS displays nearly ten years ago were certainly early adopters, as were those that bought the first HD LCDs, DLPs, Plasmas, ect. Were all early adopters. Within each of those technological format6s there have been many additional technological advancements, such as new DMD chip designs for DLP, new panel designs for LCoS and LCD, new tube designs for CRTs – and anyone who bought the first products that had these advancements I would say were early adopters. The same goes for new technological advancements in electronics, including inputs.

However, I would also suggest to you that there is no specific definition of an early adopter as it is used in so many different ways, by so many different industries, and changes depending on the products and the message that is being conveyed.

However, someone with upgradeitis could very well be a continual early adopter – assuming they are always upgrading with newly released technology, and not simply upgrading their equipment with better, but long proven and existing technology.

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

I'm sorry that Shawn, me, and most people's definition of early adopter as it applies to HDTV doesn't fit into your narrow definition that changes with each rebuttal. We'll all try harder to be wrong next time.

 

[David Stanley]

No need to get pissy. My definition is less narrow than the IT specific one you provided.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

And yet following your own logic and definition of what constitutes an early adopter, you only proved that you were in fact (by your definition) not an early adopter because 1080i CRT's were not a new technology in 1997.

In other words, in one paragraph you managed to not only criticize me because you were so sure that I did not understand the meaning, which has not been the case, but the definition/example that you offered even proved your own statement to be false – or at least made it a paradox.

It should not therefore be too difficult to understand why your posts have created a certain level of frustration, as you appear to be arguing points that do not even work together as a whole.

 

[Shawn Perron]

He also wrongly assumes that no one adopted early and then purchased atleast 1 more display later. I'm sure there many people on this very forum that have purchased atleast 2 HDTVs or front projectors since 1997. I would guess that those people that have already once spent that much on a HDTV are probably far more likely then your average consumer to spend that much again.

 

[Thomas Newton]

 

[David Stanley]

For what it's worth, people using 1080i displays prior to 1997 would be categorized as innovators, not early adopters.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

What you have is a display based on a technology that has been refined for nearly 100 years with 1080i capable products available long before 1997 – so by your definition you were not an early adopter.

I have to say David, it seems with every post you continually modify your own definition of what an early adopter is, and often contradict yourself in the process.

Before you dig a deeper hole, may I suggest you put down that shovel, turn off the PC, and watch some great HD on that marvelous 9-year old 1080i display of yours.

At the very last, perhaps next time before you jump into a thread and criticize someone for not understanding a concept, you might want to be sure you are clear on the concept yourself.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

I may point out that the "1080i" format was, in some sense, new about 1997. High-defintion equipment and displays manufactured around the 1125-line, 30 Hz interlaced 2:1 studio standard were first put on sale in 1978. Those units, however, were designed for the slightly narrower 5:3 aspect ratio, and were intended to display only 1035 visible lines.
The 16:9 aspect ratio was adopted in the middle 1980s, as a result of studies of motion-picture technology at Sarnoff Labs. The 1080-visible-line specification, however, was basically introduced into the ATSC standard, along with the "720p60" scanrate, as a concession to computer-hardware manufacturers, and so cannot really be said to have become operative until ATSC went on the air. From this we may conclude that Mr. Stanley has some small grounds for his claim that 1997 purchasers of 1080i equipment were innovators; a true "early adopter", of course, would have a "1035i" display and a MUSE decoder!

 

[David Stanley]

My definition hasn't changed, just trying to clarify it.

The first time I recall that a consumer could walk into B&M retailer and walk out with a high definition diplay with an integrated or outboard ATSC tuner that he could go home an actually view hi def content with it was around 1997. Am I wrong in that?

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

So what you are saying now is that you were not an early adopter of the display technology, but of the ATSC tuner?

 

[Ed St. Clair]

You buy them books, you buy them books, yet all they ever do is eat the covers!

People can not make up their very own personal definition for a word of common usage.
(if everyone could, it would make cool [cool, means "NO" to me] sense for me to be typing these letters in a specific order)

Someone can not make up a definition for the word; "reference". We had someone on the software forum that wanted to declare WB's DVD of the 1933 King Kong, a "reference disc" for video quality.

Someone can not make up a definition for the word; "exclusive". Someone on another forum was trying to 'sell' the fact that because Disney would come out on BD first, they were indeed "exclusive" to BD, even though Disney clearly stated they would also be releasing on HD-DVD.

"Early Adopter" is not up for grabs! It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.

Even though I have posted this before for people that are posting on this thread ^^^ ;-), here's the run down;
http://www.zonalatina.com/Zldata99.htm
Some people have it correct about; "Innovators".
Most people here are way off on; "Early Adopter"
Many don't even know about; "Early Majority"
That's funny because a lot of people are posting about EA's when they are actual addressing the characteristics of I's. Or, vice versa.
And many people are actually EM's, thinking they are EA's.

If you know the true meanings of the terms, this thread is a crackup!
If you don't know the meanings of these terms, is may be one of the most frustrating threads you have ever been on!

And once again, to get the thread back on track;
I would not pick Blu-ray.
Because I am pro mega-multi.
On with the discussion!

Pease, Love, & HiDef Forever.