High Definition DVD Market "Static"

[Specialist]

http://tinyurl.com/g28kp

"'Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up, and other retailers have had the same experience,' said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio-based specialty store Bjorn's Stereo Designs Inc."

"But since Samsung Corp. rolled out the first Blu-ray player, priced at $1,000, in late June, Blu-ray has faced complaints of subpar picture quality on discs, talk of component shortages for players and other technical problems."

"'High expectations were set. At every meeting with Sony, every demonstration was spectacular,' Dybdahl said."

"'Then along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung, and that's when my expectations were hurt,' he said. 'When we put the disc in, all the salespeople looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD.'"

"Toshiba launched in April its first HD-DVD players, priced at about $500, and its lower pricing gave HD-DVD an initial lead in unit sales. Research company The NPD Group Inc. said HD-DVD player unit sales were 33% higher than Blu-ray player unit sales in their respective first six weeks on the market."

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[tdan]

Not surprising to me.

The majority of consumers are not obsessed with striving to watch the highest quality picture on their TVs. I know many people that only upgraded to DVD because they stopped making the movies in VHS, not becuase they saw any advantage from a quality perspective.

Often for the mass market, "good enough" will sell the most.

[jntaylor63]

Neither will take off until;

1.) We can have hybrid players

or

2.) Price is equal or near DVD.

or

3.) and the biggest, One Format Only!

[greymalkin]

what a shocker!

the unit that's half the price sells more! Now pay me my marketing research fee.

[rgs_uk]

I would say most people still have relatively small TV screens and, from across the room, most probably cant see much difference. S-VHS never really took off for the same reason. Nothing is going to happen until everyone goes big screen.

It Britain there will be no high-definition digital terrestrial until after 2012 when the analogue signals are turned off and I don't believe we will see really big take up of large screen televisions until then.

[Wile_E]

one format - Yep, they are now hurting themselves because the industry didn't agree on ONE STANDARD FORMAT. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray should've been combined into one format, with the best abilities of both. Most consumers are not as dumb to early adopt in today's time.

hard coat - Plus they are too cheap to put a hard coat "armor plating" on the data side of the discs. I've already heard of people scratching both formats, and discs becoming unreadable. It is bad enough on DVD-R's with scratching. Yet my TDK "Armor plated" discs resist any and all scratches.

Original master tapes/Digitally remastered - Studios need to spend more time with cleaning up the film. It is not enough to just run the film through the digitizer machine and encode this on the disc. I have seen too many DVD's where dust, dirt, debris, hair showed up in the transfer process. This is very annoying to watch and looks like a shoddy job. Even current movie releases suffer from this problem.

lossy compression VC-1/MPEG4 - How much more lossy compression can the consumer take before tossing it into the garbage? Stop compressing the sh*t out of the video. Maybe we should all go back to laserdisc format?

You mess with consumers and release poor quality product or player, you lose money in the end. People are not stupid. Give us quality products and one single format! Just say no to format wars!

[Deane Johnson]

Wouldn't you think all the high salaried guys in expensive suits could have figured out this would be the exact scenerio given the way they brought this stuff to market.

I have front projection and can use the benefits of HD, but I'm certainly not going to spend a dime until this whole thing is resolved. That means one format, good software transfers, reasonable prices.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Price trumps again.
Most consumers will buy the lower priced product...whether it be a car,a coffeemaker or DVD player.
If the studios decide on one format,give us a full film library and reasonably priced...then BD/HD-DVD might have a chance.I still see BD/HD-DVD being relegated to a small niche market like SACD/DVD-Audio.

[SingSing]

Wouldn't you think all the high salaried guys in expensive suits could have figured out this would be the exact scenerio given the way they brought this stuff to market.

There was a ( MMCD vs SD ) format war about DVD too. The man in suit, Warren Lieberfarb, twisted a lot of arms to give us the "DVD" as we know it. They fired him.

If the studios decide on one format,give us a full film library and reasonably priced...then BD/HD-DVD might have a chance.I still see BD/HD-DVD being relegated to a small niche market like SACD/DVD-Audio.

So movie studios are the winners. Both Sony and Toshiba are the losers.

[satviewer2000]

The format wars is certainly a factor, but I doubt that even if there was a single HD-DVD format, that it would be selling well.

To watch BlueRay or HD-DVD, you not only need to buy a ridiculously expensive player, but you also must have an HDTV to use it with. And not just ANY HDTV! You must buy one of the newer models with HDMI input! I have an HDTV that I bought about 4 years ago for $3000 and it only has the component inputs, and I'm not about to spend another $3000 for one with HDMI input any time soon.

On the other hand, to watch DVDs, you can use pretty well use ANY TV set and still appreciate the improved quality. When people are used to paying $50 for a useable DVD player, how many do you think are going to pay $1300 for a BR player (or even $700 for an HD-DVD player).

Actually, all of the technology for viewing HDTV content on DVDs already exist (eg. Avel, Buffalo, etc). The main reason for the new formats and hardware (in my opinion) is for content protection. They've gone so utterly overboard with content protection that they've eliminated 99.9% of the market.

[MOVIEGEEK]

So movie studios are the winners. Both Sony and Toshiba are the losers.

My point is the studios "own" the films and if they(studios) can't come to an agreement on one format then they will shoot themselves and the hardware manufacturers in the foot.The average consumer doesn't care which format they use as long as they can buy their favorite movies...no movies=everybody is a loser.

[waheed]

Another nail on the coffin which not mentioned by any of the posters above is their copy protection scheme. All equipment needs to be HDCP complaint, otherwise you may not be able to enjoy full resolution. This more or less rules out early adopters of HDTV's with no HDMI or DVI.

[SingSing]

Video and TV go hand in hand

In the 60~70s, Color TVs are mostly 13in and 20in. VHS looks great on them.

In the 90s, you need DVD to enjoy your 27~32in TV and large screen TVs. These large screen TVs are 50" and up, based on CRT, and up to component video input. (EDTV).

Currently, flat and lighter are the trend of TV, with HD input. The TVs are actually getting smaller, becase large LCD, Plasma.. TVs are beyond the cost of "just buying another TV for the house". This will not drive the demand of Hi-Def DVD, because people can't see the benefits with 40+" TVs.

The fortune of blu/hd DVD may depends on the next affortable large screen TVs technology.

[Bigdaddybrat]

You know I'm not really sold on the either of the HD players yet anyways....

Although I don't have a HD set yet (waiting till someone figures out a system with the HD tuner integrated into the tv or Im going projector... havnt decieded) I have been visiting the local Bestbuy looking at the technology... They have been showing some movies (i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean) and the image looks grainy as hell! Why would I pay all that money for the disks and players when the image looks worse than my DVD.

I have been doing alot of research into the technology and I have been reading that both have their own bugs that need to be worked out. Why would you invest in the technology (and alot of money at this point) if they are still having problems with it AND there is two formats to fight over.

Besides when the dvd image at the moment is almost as or just as good as the HD stuff and a heck of alot cheaper... why not wait till the dust clears.

[Conquest10]

Besides when the dvd image at the moment is almost as or just as good as the HD stuff

That's not right.