USA Today poll...

"If you have to cut back on tech spending, what product are you most likely to put off buying or updating?"

Which product do you think most selected?

http://blogs.usatoday.com/technologylive/2008/03/tightening-your.html#uslPageReturn

That's right... High-definition DVD player

That's the problem with a recession, people need to choose between food or blu-ray and the BDA hasn't educated enough people. They just don't understand that blu-ray doesn't spoil nearly as fast as food does....except for AVP, that movie stunk from the get-go. :D

Mom: Hey kids, it's pizza night!
Kids: Yeah!!!!
Little Timmy: Hey Mom, what are you doing with the Bisquick and old McDonalds Katchup packets?
Mom: Makin' Pizza!

What can you say?

People are stupid, they'll spend over $100 on a dinner and movie but think they're saving money be holding off buying a HD player.

Doesn't matter. These discs and players are for educated audio/video enthusiasts at the moment. People who have the money and time and passion for the best experience.

Years down the line when the general public is ready to get into it, it will be cheap and affordable.

Personally I find it rather silly when people are deemed far from being bright simply because they don't bow down to the HD god. Almost everyone one of my neighbors have designer golf carts (tricked out with chrome wheels, etc.) and I have yet to think anyone one of them are slow... perhaps they simply have other interests?

Personally I find it rather silly when people are deemed far from being bright simply because they don't bow down to the HD god. Almost everyone one of my neighbors have designer golf carts (tricked out with chrome wheels, etc.) and I have yet to think anyone one of them are slow... perhaps they simply have other interests?

I find it silly what your saying. Nobody is saying people are stupid or slow for not buying into HD.

What I and many others are saying that if people aren't Audio/Video enthusiasts, who choose to spend time and research to educate themselves on such subjects they likely won't buy into it at this point. Car enthusiasts choose to learn a lot about cars. Golf lovers like to learn all they can about clubs , carts, and techniques and such and so on and so forth. No one is saying they are idiots for choosing differently.

Simply, that those people aren't the intended buyers for this technology at this time.

Personally I find it rather silly when people are deemed far from being bright simply because they don't bow down to the HD god. Almost everyone one of my neighbors have designer golf carts (tricked out with chrome wheels, etc.) and I have yet to think anyone one of them are slow... perhaps they simply have other interests?

I agree -
and what better way to get both!
While you're golfing, you experience in resolution that blows HD away.. :)

ken

I find it silly what your saying. Nobody is saying people are stupid or slow for not buying into HD.This certainly isn't the only quote (I have read far too many to bother to look for) but it happens to be right here in this thread...

People are stupid, they'll spend over $100 on a dinner and movie but think they're saving money be holding off buying a HD player.

This certainly isn't the only quote (I have read far too many to bother to look for) but it happens to be right here in this thread...
My quote does not say people are stupid for not buying into HD format. My comment was in response to your hypothetical, what people would do to save money. Read the post again, perhaps slowly.
People are stupid, they'll spend over $100 on a dinner and movie but think they're saving money by holding off buying a HD player.

This certainly isn't the only quote (I have read far too many to bother to look for) but it happens to be right here in this thread...

Like the poster of that comment said, he never said they were stupid for buying not buying into HD. Taken literally, the statement says people in general are stupid. Which, I happen to agree with. People as a whole species are blithering idiots. But individual person's can be very intelligent.

My quote does not say people are stupid for not buying into HD format. My comment was in response to your hypothetical, what people would do to save money. Read the post again, perhaps slowly.Sorry, it's a clear fact that they are saving money if they don't buy the player. Whether you approve of how they spend their money is irrelevant.

People are stupid, they'll spend over $100 on a dinner and movie but think they're saving money by holding off buying a HD player.

Everybody has priorities and HD can wait for most people,I only know three people who have an HDTV and none of them have a HD player.
We members who visit these forums are a tiny minority(2%) of consumers.

We are still at a very early point in the adoption process!!!

With Blu-ray (and HD DVD if you want to add it in) only at a few percentage points, the critical question is: what do the next group in the adoption process plan to do?

The question is NOT: what does the entire set of consumers plan to do?

Blu-ray will be doing very well if we can get to 15% effective penetration by the end of the year. That represents perhaps 4 times the current penetration.

No new product ever jumps to mass adoption. It is always necessary to work your way through the process. The format war has caused us to lose sight of this.

Blu-ray will be doing very well if we can get to 15% effective penetration by the end of the year. That represents perhaps 4 times the current penetration.



15% won't happen this year,maybe 4%.
Many Americans are behind on their car and house payments,they don't have disposible income like some of us.

Doesn't matter. These discs and players are for educated audio/video enthusiasts at the moment.

At the moment, I wonder about the educated part...

We are still at a very early point in the adoption process!!!


That's assuming the masses are in any kind of adoption process (it has been almost two years). I personally don't think there is any interest in HDm and probably one of the reasons Toshiba bowed out so quickly. Record mortgage defaults, record credit card defaults, gas approaching $4.00/gal. gold @ $1000/oz. and layoffs now starting, muni bonds are even under attack and an all time low for the dollar against any currency - this is a really, really bad time to launch any expensive new format that only some see as only marginally better than the current mainstream product, DVD or even cable/satellite.
Sorry to throw a wet blanket on the BD party but I don't think some of the people here are keeping up with current events.

My $0.02

:eek:

15% won't happen this year,maybe 4%.
Many Americans are behind on their car and house payments,they don't have disposible income like some of us.

I love having 0 debt and no dependents (save for Mr. Kitty) :D

Look at the incredable prices of DVD's at Walldo World and Target. They are selling like crazy like never seen before.

These are hard times and people are enjoying movies for escapism from this terrible reality we are experiencing.

Buying a $400+ Blue-Ray player for a very small selection and for a very small increase in PQ does not make sense in this economic model. Actually its quite sickening to even think about it.

Buying existing DVDs in existing players or cheap upconverters fits todays model.

Buying a $400+ Blue-Ray player for a very small selection and for a very small increase in PQ does not make sense in this economic model.For mainstream users I think this makes perfect sense. I really believe if the studios want HD media to take off they have to do same day releases for most if not all titles.

However I completely disagree about the very small increase in picture quality for us geeks. The difference on both of my displays (55 and 110 inches) couldn't be described as small in any manner.

Today at Fry's I saw a brand new Sony end cap featuring Blu-ray video and audio. What made it different was the fact that it was located right next to their DVD and Blu-ray media not anywhere close to their TVs or other electronics.

Sure the image looks great but when the customer comes in to buy the latest release they will quickly see it's not available on Blu-ray. What good is a pretty image if it's not the one you want to see?

The real stupidity was the idiotic timing of the movie industry decision in killing the affordable HD format. Warner and the other morons said something like "Hey you know, we are staring right in the face of one helll of recession and a rapidly declining dollar. Let's kill the affordable format that people still might be able to buy if things get bad and promote the expensive format that they can't. Yeah that's the ticket" Talking about stupid people.

Heh, after a long lapse of just not much that I wanted (more than any other reason), I finally bought 4 more Blu-ray today. ID4, iRobot, No Country for Old Men, and Hitman.

I'll stop going to expensive lunches before I stop buying Blu-ray. :D

High Definition DVD player means HD DVD player right ? Where is Blu-ray player on the option list ?

The real stupidity was the idiotic timing of the movie industry decision in killing the affordable HD format. Warner and the other morons said something like "Hey you know, we are staring right in the face of one helll of recession and a rapidly declining dollar. Let's kill the affordable format that people still might be able to buy if things get bad and promote the expensive format that they can't. Yeah that's the ticket" Talking about stupid people.
The studios did not want to continue with 2 HDM formats, so they dropped the one that was getting the least support -- by other studios, by CE companies and by consumers. The studios also need to make money during a recession.

These sorts of vague discussions don't seem particularly helpful to me. While it is surely true that some are struggling, there are many who are not, but who are concerned about the future more than they were a few months ago. Whether this will significantly impact the demographic that buys HD players outside of the holiday season, I have no idea. I doubt others do either. We can probably agree that boom times would be better than an economy either in recession or teetering on the brink of recession, but it isn't clear to me that this will matter much over the next 6 months. If it is even tougher at Christmas, that would be a bigger deal, but again, I don't think that people facing foreclosure are the ones with 50" HDTVs and 7.1 receivers anyhow.

And it would be nice if the former HD-DVD owners got over it and stopped posting their laments in every thread. Yes, it was cheaper, but didn't sell better than Blu-Ray and it is dead now.

High Definition DVD player means HD DVD player right ? Where is Blu-ray player on the option list ?

I understand that High-Def DVD in the poll means both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, not just Toshiba's.

I think that, even without threat of recession, HDM is not priority for most people. It can wait few years after new cell phone, or iPod, or HDTV. DVD is good enough for the time being, unless it is broken.

Most people would not buy HDM player holiday of this year even under normal economic condition. Those who can afford the HDM player this year are relatively affluent people who will not affected much by the coming recession. Even if Blu-ray does not sells well this years not much as Sony is expecting, Sony can't blame recession. HDM player is just too early of its age to be sold en mass this year.

So the recession would not affect potential sales of HDM.

The studios did not want to continue with 2 HDM formats, so they dropped the one that was getting the least support -- by other studios, by CE companies and by consumers. The studios also need to make money during a recession.

According to an article posted today at VB - Hollywood feels that they are a recession proof industry. We will find out if this is true or not this year.

All I know is that between October 2006 and December 18th 2007, I gathered a collection of over 100 BD's. I've purchased 3 BD's since then, all within the last 7 days, and I regretted purchasing 2 of them.

I'm putting what extra money I have into music gear. I just picked up a $1900 guitar amp for $1200, and I can liquidate it at a later date if I have to for most of what I paid for it.

The real stupidity was the idiotic timing of the movie industry decision in killing the affordable HD format. Warner and the other morons said something like "Hey you know, we are staring right in the face of one helll of recession and a rapidly declining dollar. Let's kill the affordable format that people still might be able to buy if things get bad and promote the expensive format that they can't. Yeah that's the ticket" Talking about stupid people.

+1.

but but..., didn't Warner choose BD because of rising gas prices?:confused: :D

+1.

but but..., didn't Warner choose BD because of rising gas prices?:confused: :D

Soon someone will blame Iraq as well.

HD-DVD was never cheaper than Blu-Ray, unless you only buy the player and Zero Discs.

I find the condescending tone in the some of the posts here pretty deplorable. $35 for a movie that you already own is a pretty ridiculous way to spend your disposable income if you ask the most people that are not on this forum. Most of you vastly overestimate the number of people with 1080p TVs and 7.1 setups.

Gas for my H2 or a Blu-ray title?

Nah, I can always walk.

From yesterday . . .

CE Sales Expectations Low

http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=67800

Putting off buying Blu-ray player or titles is not stupid at all.

I can wait till my favorite old/catalog titles to be more affordable. Many of my favorite titles are not yet available on Blu-ray. I can wait them to be release on HD, watching DVD version of them for the mean time.
For new movies, I can enjoy them on ultra high definition wide TV at $10 a pop. ( a.k.a. theater :) )

With Blue-ray player or PS/3, I would be able to watch HQ movie (and game for PS/3) at home once or twice a week. With same $400, I can replace my aging HDD iPod to new top of the line model, iPod Touch. I can enjoy sweetness and lightness of $400 all the days.

What bugs me is BR fanboys making threads attacking people who wish to talk about the BR player price hikes!
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/blu-ray-march-2008.jpg
They have clearly gone up in price, thank god there are still bargains to be had on the software side :rolleyes:

Just because I have disposable income does not mean I like to throw it away!

I supported HD DVD. It lost. I am currently not willing to place another bet in the same risky game.

I will wait to see if Blu Ray grabs hold. When it starts getting more traction I may re-enter. For now I am sitting on the sidelines. (If MS releases a BD add-on at a reasonable price that supports profile 2.0, this may get me...but i digress...)

Many believe downloadable content will kill off HDM. I do not. I like having a shiny disk to hold and play whenever I want without having to pay for it again and I believe most others feel this way too. With that said I did get a small twinge of fear this weekend... This weekend my wife and I were looking for something to do and decided to watch a movie. Because my prefered format has died I have not bought any more movies in that format and I won't buy in the DVD format because I do not want to buy the same movie again if/when BD becomes viable. This all lead to not having a movie to watch. But my wife remembered we have movies we can rent from Comcast or Microsoft! That is exactly what we did. While I prefer having physical media if BD does not lower their prices and get in-roads into people's houses, they may actually TRAIN people to D/L content. With humans being creatures of habit, once you train them that HD content is fine being downloaded I fear it will be even harder to get them to go with HDM.

BTW - I have a 110" HDTV with 5.1 surround sound in a dedicated home theater. I have disposable income. I AM the market that HDM is looking to entice!

Blu-ray and HD DVD were the little fish in a big pond.

Blu-ray alone is a little fish in a little pond.

I think I'll rent instead of blu-ray discs and put that savings towards improving my home theater system.

Everybody has priorities and HD can wait for most people,I only know three people who have an HDTV and none of them have a HD player.
We members who visit these forums are a tiny minority(2%) of consumers.

2%??

less than 1% and I am being overly generous.

Total members on this AVSForum is 582,553. That stat is located on the main forum page towards the bottom. That is for all of AVS. Let say that 100% of those attend the HD forums. 600k people roughly. Still not alot.

That's assuming the masses are in any kind of adoption process (it has been almost two years). I personally don't think there is any interest in HDm and probably one of the reasons Toshiba bowed out so quickly. Record mortgage defaults, record credit card defaults, gas approaching $4.00/gal. gold @ $1000/oz. and layoffs now starting, muni bonds are even under attack and an all time low for the dollar against any currency - this is a really, really bad time to launch any expensive new format that only some see as only marginally better than the current mainstream product, DVD or even cable/satellite.
Sorry to throw a wet blanket on the BD party but I don't think some of the people here are keeping up with current events.

My $0.02

:eek:

+100

I picked up three new releases this week. None HDM, all SD-DVD.
I guess you can consider my belt tightened. BD is going to have to gain enough confidence for me that I believe 99.99% of all releases will be perfecttion. Until then only a few select titles will be purchased on HDM for me.

I was totally over the top gun ho when HDM first launched, now you can almost call it a 180 degree turn around on it for me.

What bugs me is BR fanboys making threads attacking people who wish to talk about the BR player price hikes!
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/blu-ray-march-2008.jpg
They have clearly gone up in price, thank god there are still bargains to be had on the software side :rolleyes:

:rolleyes:

That's assuming the masses are in any kind of adoption process (it has been almost two years). I personally don't think there is any interest in HDm and probably one of the reasons Toshiba bowed out so quickly. Record mortgage defaults, record credit card defaults, gas approaching $4.00/gal. gold @ $1000/oz. and layoffs now starting, muni bonds are even under attack and an all time low for the dollar against any currency - this is a really, really bad time to launch any expensive new format that only some see as only marginally better than the current mainstream product, DVD or even cable/satellite.
Sorry to throw a wet blanket on the BD party but I don't think some of the people here are keeping up with current events.

My $0.02

:eek:

Another post from MichaelZ...


I glad all you HD-DVD supporters have jumped onto the Blu ship but I think it's going to sink as well. I will never get on board and I am continuing to buy HD-DVDs and I've even bought an AppleTv which is doing better than I expected not to mention cable HD downloads. No blu here not now not ever.

I acknowledge that BD won but I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. Enjoy the dog food!

You might call it trolling, sour grapes, etc. but I am going a separate path and I truly hope you enjoy yours but I won't be joining,

Have fun. I am,

How would ANYONE ever get such a strange idea. :D

According to the media the economy's been crap for the last 8 years.

Sure things aren't perfect, but for now it's mostly just hand wringing. Employment figures are still very good. People will force a recession to become reality if they listen to the media and panic.

What bugs me is BR fanboys making threads attacking people who wish to talk about the BR player price hikes!
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/blu-ray-march-2008.jpg
They have clearly gone up in price, thank god there are still bargains to be had on the software side :rolleyes:

Nice sample range they used, why don't they look at BR player prices starting at a year ago to get a true sense of the price changes. Looking at prices in such a small window doesn't factor in things such as holiday season prices, overstock sales that happen right after the holiday season, clearance pushes that happen before and after inventory season (mid feb for retailers with FY ending March). Maybe if people would look at graphs like the one you copy and pasted with a critical eye they would see how rediculous it is to take a 2 month price sample on a product that will obviously across seasons.

I think many are missing the point of the poll (at least for me) that the somewhat techie consumers (why else would they be on USA Today's tech pages) rate HD media as their lowest interest.

Considering that most of them already own all of the other items listed it appears there is very little interest in HD media. Such that they would rather update what they already have than buy into HD players and media.

Look at the incredable prices of DVD's at Walldo World and Target. They are selling like crazy like never seen before.In what reality? Actual sales figures show a decline in DVD sales.
Buying a $400+ Blue-Ray player for a very small selection and for a very small increase in PQ does not make sense in this economic model. News flash: DVD wasn't mainstream in 1998, either. No movie format was, is, or ever will be essential, even as escapism.

Also, by your "recession rationale", people shouldn't have been buying VHS in the late 80s and early 90s, yet somehow they managed.
Actually its quite sickening to even think about it.:rolleyes:

This is the same extreme rhetoric we were hearing from people who called the BDA terrorists.

The real stupidity was the idiotic timing of the movie industry decision in killing the affordable HD format.As proven by sales data (including today's revelation that Toshiba's Consumer Electronics division lost $1 billion on HD DVD), it was only "affordable" because of artificial market manipulation by Toshiba. Even Toshiba's partners (Onkyo, for example) made that perfectly clear.

Nice sample range they used, why don't they look at BR player prices starting at a year ago to get a true sense of the price changes. Looking at prices in such a small window doesn't factor in things such as holiday season prices, overstock sales that happen right after the holiday season, clearance pushes that happen before and after inventory season (mid feb for retailers with FY ending March). Maybe if people would look at graphs like the one you copy and pasted with a critical eye they would see how rediculous it is to take a 2 month price sample on a product that will obviously across seasons.

Um, maybe because there was competition up until the first of the year? Remember how blu-fans cried that HD DVD was forcing price to be too low?

I do agree that we need to look at a longer time period, but there just isn't one right now, and the data we do have CLEARLY points to prices rising not falling.

What bugs me is BR fanboys making threads attacking people who wish to talk about the BR player price hikes!
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/blu-ray-march-2008.jpg
They have clearly gone up in price, thank god there are still bargains to be had on the software side :rolleyes:


Has the prices went up or has the dollar declined? Expect to pay MORE for all imports until the economy settles down a bit.



Last Updated: March 6, 2008: 12:51 PM EST

Cheap dollar, weak open

More Videos
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- The euro continued its record climb unabated Thursday, reaching a new high of $1.5347 before falling slightly back after the European Central Bank held its benchmark rate at 4% and another round of dour U.S. economic reports were released.

The euro hit its new high in European morning trading and fell back to $1.5317. It was the latest in a string of records for the 15-nation euro, following the $1.5302 it set on Wednesday before easing back to $1.5262 in New York.

Meanwhile, the British pound broke through $2 again after weeks of trading between $1.95 and $1.99; it pushed higher after the Bank of England also decided to keep its key refinancing rate unchanged at 5.25%.

The British pound traded as high as $2.0033 before falling back to $2.0023 compared with $1.9916 the previous night.

The Swiss franc also reached an all-time high against the dollar in Zurich on Thursday. The Swiss currency traded at $0.9720 before falling back to $0.9693 in afternoon trading. A year ago the franc bought $0.8192.

"Inflationary pressures similarly remain something of a high-profile concern of the Bank of England, but speculation continues to point toward a quarter point cut during the second quarter," said James Hughes of CMC Markets.

The dollar drifted lower to 103.48 Japanese yen from ¥103.87 on Wednesday.

As proven by sales data (including today's revelation that Toshiba's Consumer Electronics division lost $1 billion on HD DVD), it was only "affordable" because of artificial market manipulation by Toshiba. Even Toshiba's partners (Onkyo, for example) made that perfectly clear.

Give away the razors, sell the blades. Give away the consoles, sell the games. Give away the players, make money on the disc royalties.... Sell, the players at an inflated price and pay hundreds of millions to the studios.

The BDA has a TON of $ to recoup.

Sell, the players at an inflated price and pay hundreds of millions to the studios.

Seemed to work alright for DVD...

My first DVD player was over $700.

I think many are missing the point of the poll (at least for me) that the somewhat techie consumers (why else would they be on USA Today's tech pages) rate HD media as their lowest interest.

Considering that most of them already own all of the other items listed it appears there is very little interest in HD media. Such that they would rather update what they already have than buy into HD players and media.

Not so sure about that after reading the comments (see below)

js3atl wrote: 2d 14h ago
I don't need it (HD DVD player). The same for TiVo, game system, and iPod. I have a cellphone, TV and digital camera. As time goes by all of this stuff will become less expensive and when that happens I might spring for these toys. I have a library card and enjoy reading, gardening and playing golf (walking when possible).


mensan70 wrote: 1d 2h ago
The high-def dvd player is clearly the item least likely to be replaced. Other than price, give them a year or two to work on the features. Up-converting dvd players look pretty darn good to me.


walton3595 wrote: 1d 1h ago
I would delay ALL purchase of consumer electronics


rjmorita wrote: 23h 34m ago
TiVo? What's that? I don't own one. HD DVD player? I don't have one. I don't even have a HD TV. I'm still watching an old tube TV. Video games? I've never played a video game. iPod? I don't own one. So I don't have much to cut back on.


Travis Bickle wrote: 23h 32m ago
I don't have any of these toys :(

Not so sure about that after reading the comments (see below)Well we all know who typically makes comments.

Seemed to work alright for DVD...

My first DVD player was over $700.
Mine was a Toshiba that I picked up soon after Twister came out and was over $700 also.

Like the poster of that comment said, he never said they were stupid for buying not buying into HD. Taken literally, the statement says people in general are stupid. Which, I happen to agree with. People as a whole species are blithering idiots. But individual person's can be very intelligent.


Including us as early adopters, willing to PAY to be beta testers for products, myself included...It was a choice I made, and fortunately, it worked out....however, the recession HAS affected my spending on tech...I am happy with my present setup, nothing fancy, but it does the job...Optoma 720P projector, Elite 92" screen, Onkyo 5.1 receiver, Sammy 5000 Duo player, connected via Optical and Component.

At times like this, I have to weigh what is important vs what isn't...and right now upgrading to the whiz-bang audio and 1080P wonderfulness isn't on my plate......Basically, what I have now is good enough, and that is how "the masses" will view the situation regarding DVD vs HDM.......

As proven by sales data (including today's revelation that Toshiba's Consumer Electronics division lost $1 billion on HD DVD), it was only "affordable" because of artificial market manipulation by Toshiba. Even Toshiba's partners (Onkyo, for example) made that perfectly clear.
That is not how corporations work. When there is some bad news to report, you search high and low to write off everything you can that can remotely be associated with that concept. That way, future quarters look more profitable. Further, if Toshiba wrote down inventories and equipment, those would all be there too and not cost of selling HD DVD business in the past. Ditto for getting out of advertising/marketing programs worldwide.

Note that I am sure HD DVD had not gotten to the profitable point for Toshiba from a program point of view (patent royalties had to kick in and they had not). Just commenting on the news reported above :).

Nice sample range they used, why don't they look at BR player prices starting at a year ago to get a true sense of the price changes. Looking at prices in such a small window doesn't factor in things such as holiday season prices, overstock sales that happen right after the holiday season, clearance pushes that happen before and after inventory season (mid feb for retailers with FY ending March). Maybe if people would look at graphs like the one you copy and pasted with a critical eye they would see how rediculous it is to take a 2 month price sample on a product that will obviously across seasons.

No, it does not contain all data of every player since inception. It factors in pricing of certain Blu players from before the Warner announcement and death of HD-DVD to date.


Which is what makes the graph relevant to to the discussion and current situation.

The problem is that these players are increasing in price as people are being seen to be cutting back due to the economic situation.

Now part of it may be that retailers and CE manufacturers are raising prices due to the weakened dollar vs. the actual cost of these imported players or due to some sense that with HD DVD gone, the price can go up due to being the only game in town or a combination of both.

Any way that you look at it though, increasing prices of what are indisputably luxury items during a recession (or economic slowdown or whatever Washington is trying to call it today) is not going to increase the likelyhood of the average consumer purchasing them.

Give away the razors, sell the blades. Give away the consoles, sell the games. Give away the players, make money on the disc royalties.... Sell, the players at an inflated price and pay hundreds of millions to the studios.

The BDA has a TON of $ to recoup.Wow, strawman much? That wasn't the point I was making, nor is it any more relevant to this discussion than how much the DVD Forum had to recoup through 1999 or what JVC had to do to break even in the 80s.

The studios did not want to continue with 2 HDM formats, so they dropped the one that was getting the least support -- by other studios, by CE companies and by consumers. The studios also need to make money during a recession.

I don't buy that argument, because at mere 3% overall HDM penetration, they could have chose whatever format they wanted and not felt the slightest pinch.

People can't say on the one hand it's now way too early in HD adoption to say sales for BD are bad, and on the other, it was too late for HD DVD, the market had spoken.

I gotta agree that choosing the least affordable option both at the consumer and production level while heading into a recession, has never made a bit of long-term sense to me. I think the driving-force has been up-front "incentives" more than serious plans to implement HDM as the next big thing in home-video.

I don't know...DVD seemed to still grow after the 2000/2001 recession.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html

That is not how corporations work. When there is some bad news to report, you search high and low to write off everything you can that can remotely be associated with that concept. That way, future quarters look more profitable. Further, if Toshiba wrote down inventories and equipment, those would all be there too and not cost of selling HD DVD business in the past. Ditto for getting out of advertising/marketing programs worldwide.

Note that I am sure HD DVD had not gotten to the profitable point for Toshiba from a program point of view (patent royalties had to kick in and they had not). Just commenting on the news reported above :).

Amir

thanks for pointing that out.

The funny thing about Toshiba that coincides with their Westinghouse acquisition of 2006......

Now they are purchasing Nuclear Fuel Industries (NFI)

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTKB00299720080313

I wonder what exactly they are writing off in that HD-DVD "loss"... lol

I picked up three new releases this week. None HDM, all SD-DVD.
I guess you can consider my belt tightened. BD is going to have to gain enough confidence for me that I believe 99.99% of all releases will be perfecttion. Until then only a few select titles will be purchased on HDM for me.

I was totally over the top gun ho when HDM first launched, now you can almost call it a 180 degree turn around on it for me.

The thing I'm doing is buying HD-DVD's at the firesales at rock-bottom prices....I'll already have them in HD if/when they come out on Blu, so I avoid Blu's higher pricing...When BD pricing comes down to where I want it, I may buy in, but I lose nothing by staying with all my HD and DVD disks at the moment.....

I don't know...DVD seemed to still grow after the 2000/2001 recession.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html

We should be using the 1999 monthly numbers since this about where we are compared to DVD player sales. Do we have any numbers other than for the PS3 per month. To be keeping pace with DVD's growth BD needs to be selling 200K players a month and over 500K by the years end. That would be a telling stat as to where things are as far as adoption is concerned. Starting April DVD player sales will be outpacing PS3 sales based on this report. Here is some additional information that was used for the above report. It gives the average msrp price of all DVD players as around $443 in 1999 with a low of $200 to $1200. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpidvd.htm

No, it does not contain all data of every player since inception. It factors in pricing of certain Blu players from before the Warner announcement and death of HD-DVD to date.


Which is what makes the graph relevant to to the discussion and current situation.

The problem is that these players are increasing in price as people are being seen to be cutting back due to the economic situation.

Now part of it may be that retailers and CE manufacturers are raising prices due to the weakened dollar vs. the actual cost of these imported players or due to some sense that with HD DVD gone, the price can go up due to being the only game in town or a combination of both.

Any way that you look at it though, increasing prices of what are indisputably luxury items during a recession (or economic slowdown or whatever Washington is trying to call it today) is not going to increase the likelyhood of the average consumer purchasing them.

Good post. This is bad timing for Blu-ray. Toshiba went home before the first clouds of the perfect storm emerged on the horizon. Blu-ray is standing out in the open -- gleeful that they are the last HDM format standing. Folks, IMHO, this is not a slowdown, nor a recession, that we see coming. All the economic fundamentals -- including peak oil, dollar collapse, financial sector meltdown -- are there for a genuine depression. There is no easy way out of this one. The Fed is peeing against a tsunami.

These sorts of vague discussions don't seem particularly helpful to me. While it is surely true that some are struggling, there are many who are not, but who are concerned about the future more than they were a few months ago. Whether this will significantly impact the demographic that buys HD players outside of the holiday season, I have no idea. I doubt others do either. We can probably agree that boom times would be better than an economy either in recession or teetering on the brink of recession, but it isn't clear to me that this will matter much over the next 6 months. If it is even tougher at Christmas, that would be a bigger deal, but again, I don't think that people facing foreclosure are the ones with 50" HDTVs and 7.1 receivers anyhow.

And it would be nice if the former HD-DVD owners got over it and stopped posting their laments in every thread. Yes, it was cheaper, but didn't sell better than Blu-Ray and it is dead now.

Guess what, there are plenty of people facing foreclosure that have both if not more expensive toys? Why, because they purchased their house with teaser rate mortgages or used the equity in their homes as a ATM machine and purchased things like fancy cars and TV's. Now, with their rates jacked up or facing the loss of equity, they are in big trouble. I have seen some of these people just walk away from their homes as they have little money invested in it. That is the problem with this mess, it is effecting people across the spectrum. As home prices decline further, more and more people will be in the same boat, with their homes now worth less than their debt. While I live in a rather affluent area there is at least one million dollar home down the street in foreclosure. Yes, those people had a 60" TV and a HT system.

Lets hope you are wrong. A depression is very serious and something we don't see to often. Not sure if all the ducks are in a row for a depression. It will be interesting to see how CE's in general do this year. If we flip into a depression the least of my concerns will be AV.

The studios did not want to continue with 2 HDM formats, so they dropped the one that was getting the least support -- by other studios, by CE companies and by consumers. The studios also need to make money during a recession.

What by paying one actor $30 million for one movie what a joke.:)

Since hardly anyone cares to address the thread's topic I have asked for it be closed. Frankly over 90% of the posts are stamped duplicates that never belonged where they had been previously posted.

I just don't see why they need to be repeated thousands of times especially considering they aren't even close to being relevant. Personally I either believed you or not the first time and regardless of how many times you repeat it I'm not changing my mind. :)

thank you