Lukewarm interest in blu-ray Harris Poll  

this is the same poll being beat to death by various blogs, etc. Of course, they are taking it at face value, and not realizing how busted up it is.

The data terminology is so screwed up, it is practically useless.

Somebody in the QA department of Harris blew it big time when they let this turd out of the door. Or the person conducting the poll has no clue what the hell bluray, HD DVD and upscaling actually are.

I agree. It is evident that HD DVD is actually upscaling players (at least 99% of them).

however, there is enough here to make one think (specifically the part about a lower percentage contemplating a BD player than last year)- but that could simply be the economy.

The poll is a big red herring....

The first clue is when they make the claim that HD DVD is installed in more homes than BD.

[DR EVIL]Riiiiiiiiiight.....[/DR EVIL]

I think it is obvious that people in the poll with upscaling players believe they have "HD DVD".

This along with the very low percentage of people planning to purchase Blu-ray players points to a very poor job of marketing the format to the public at large. HDTV has a great buzz and interest, but Blu-ray has not caught on at anywhere near the same level.

It all depends who this survey was administered to. If it was targeted at the HT demographic who are the people that are most likely to upgrade in the near future then I will sound the warning bell, but if this poll was designed for the overall consumer market then I am not too concerned. I saw similar polls when DVD was at about the same point in its lifecycle that questioned its long term viability also.

While having a yard sale in neighborhood over the weekend, I had a pile of DVDs out to sell and I had several comment to me that were upgrading to Blu without even initially mentioning it. The biggest problem facing BD is it ONLY CAN BE USED TO ITS FULLEST IF YOU HAVE A HDTV. Blu's install base and future growth is pretty much directly tied to the HDTV install base. This is one BIG ISSUE DVD did not have to deal with. But everyone who talked Blu with me absolutely love the quality it delivers.

47% of those who took the survey noted that they had HDTVs. Their sampling methodology is noted in the report. The main statistical anomaly in the polled population seems to be that 100% of those polled were online, which should make them generally more tech savvy.

That is very fishy and my guess is that a lot of the people who responded that they had HD DVD players own upscaling DVD players. Here is what Engadget said about the Harris Poll:

Sound like an opinion to me. Where is your reference data? We are at eleven years into HDTV and the penetration is about 50%.

I will depart from my normal and make a prediction:

Before long many of the anti Blu-ray disc folks will post in this thread. The Blu-ray disc supporters will make counter post. At some point the mods will tire of the bickering and lock the thread. Nothing will be gained and it will be time lost. And the format war continues!!!

From what was said in the Harris Poll press release the sampling method was online, consisted of people who had agreed to take Harris Interactive surveys, and the results of the surveys were weighted based on age, sex, race, education, region, and household income. As such because of the way this poll was done Harris Interactive couldn't give a theoretical sampling error.

Did you read the first post?


The question is not about the growth curve. It is about current consumer interest and excitement. I have never stated that Blu-ray did not have a path to success. But this poll certainly suggests that those behind the format are not doing a good job of communicating their message.

One thing is certain...
Once everybody is excited about something...there isn't much reason to be excited about it anymore.

That article you linked to is more problematic than the Harris poll. That guy (I guess we'll call him loosely a "journalist") is banging the death knell for Blu. Wow, just wow. Hardly unbiased.

Agreed, and I also found most of the comments to be pretty facepalm-worthy. Talking about being able to shuffle your movies from here to there and all this - yeah, nice idea, but you can't do that *legally* with any of the download services; even the most lenient are pretty stingy with how many devices you can allow, and the restrictions are pretty significant. The only way to do that is to do it outside the bounds of the law. So what, then, don't pay anything for your movies, just torrent them? Great, then they'll bitch and moan when the movies they like don't get made because the people who would have financed their making downloaded them illegally instead, so the studios won't pay to keep making them.

These people clearly aren't thinking their "arguments" through very hard.

Harris Interactive is usually a sound professional methodology , and its uses a pre screened pool as a basis for random selection and they weight it appropriately demographically.

Its usually reliable but because its self administered question wording on a complicated subject can sometime be an issue.

Obviously here the number of people claiming HD DVD ownership is many times more than the Toshiba HD DVD ever produced and 2009 sales and overall sales greater than the PS3 is absurd. Not surprising some respondents confused "HD DVD" players with upconverting to near HD DVD players especially since HD DVD players have not been advertised since 2007 and at major retailers since 1Q 2008 as clearance items.

Its an artifact of the polling methodology and poor question wording and a poor non critical write up by the dude who wrote up the press release and took the survey data at face value.

The 7% intention to buy also was not asked from the people who owned Blu-ray players or PS3s so you just can't say that 93% of the USA is indifferent to Blu-ray either as some blogs wrote up. Besides that was done in April and prices have well dropped already for Blu-ray players since then.

Best info is in table 4 where 25-43% of existing Blu-ray owners show strong intention to buy Blu-ray over DVD.

You know how polls used to have disclaimers like "Acurate to within plus or minus 3%, nineteen times out of twenty"? Meet 20.

Plus while my typing and spelling skills may leave a lot to be desired, you would think that a pollster would know better. Check out chart image for the last word on the 2008 line. I didn't know we had a format WAY a couple of years ago.

Glad to know ZD is so careful with their copy these days

How about this sentence from the article:

That was after:

How are consumers supposed to keep this straight if even the writer of the article can't seem to? Is a "high definition DVD player" something different than an "HD DVD player" or is one just a shortcut (acronym) for the other? Is a PS3 a device that plays Blu-ray, which is a type of HD DVD? If not, why does the sentence that starts, "Looking at the other devices for playing HD DVDs ..." immediately include the PS3? That is, is "HD DVD" a specific type, or both a specific type and a general type, which includes Blu-ray?

I have an idea, but I'm not sure the writer of the article does.

As I basically said in another thread about this subject matter, I figure I can make a bunch of money by starting a company that is going to sell something I am going to call an "HD Display". Maybe Harris could do a poll about how many people own my product (an "HD Display") before they even go on sale and show that lots of people have plans to buy my "HD Display". They could have questions like, "Do you plan to buy an HD Display in the next year?" Would the venture capitalists be dumb enough to think anybody who said "Yes" was saying they were going to buy my product?

--Darin

Indeed. And there are more of those "journalists" who came to similar conclusions. All biased.

Then there are those (like Engadget, or blu-ray owners) who say this poll means nothing - that blu-ray is doing a fantastic business and gaining widespread adoption worldwide. Perhaps they are biased as well.

And the 93% of consumers who don't own a blu-ray player are not likely to buy one in the next year. They are all "biased" as well.

Question is - who's bias matters most?

So a spelling error directly copied and pasted from the Harris poll press release is somehow ZD's fault.

Or looking at the charts and seeing that apparently:

- Respondents bought more HD DVDs than BDs during the last six months

- The installed base of the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 has tripled between 2008 and 2009

Really, what happened to critical thinking? Anybody with a casual knowledge of HDM would notice at once that none of the above makes sense.

Answer is - neither. Because no one walking into Best Buy has seen this poll, or this website, or most of the other websites that copy and pasted the flawed poll.

And it will make zero difference in their decision to continue buying bluray movies (if they already have a player), or buying a player for the first time. So, sadly, this poll will not bring about the demise of bluray. Keep your head up though....maybe the next one will.....

Don't forget the one passage that suggests the PS3 is a "HD DVD" player....

But hey, it is perceived bad news...so let's all run with it, even though it is demonstrably flawed in many ways.

Worst...poll...ever.

1 million people forked over $200-$300 for the new iPhone over the weekend.

Even Recession Can't Dampen Demand for a Faster iPhone

Other factors would be whether the number of respondants is a statistically viable sample. How many were in each income bracket? How where these people obtained? It does not seem to me on a technically statistical level that this was valid regardless of the conclusions. Further, it appears that the survey suggests that less people are planning to buy a Blu-ray player in 2009 than in 2008. The actual sales statistics clearly shows this to be invalid by a statistical certainty. Actual sales up 400% v. less people planning to purchase?

I would also like to see the survey, how it was prepared and presented, and who paid for it. It seems to me that statements made by that survey would carry legal ramifications when published due to the obvious invalidity.

Good to see some good news among the tons of bad. Of course if you believe other sources Blu-ray is doing just fine.

Blu-ray player sales on the rise
Kevin Weiner on 06 May 2009

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/0...r-sales-rising


The report, collected via an online survey of 6,994 consumers between February 25 and March 6, states that 400,000 units of standalone Blu-ray players, not including the Playstation 3 with its built in Blu-ray support, have been sold in the first quarter of 2009. That's an increase of 72 percent over the first quarter of 2008. Furthermore, the intent to purchase a Blu-ray player has risen slightly. 6% of the responders said they would be "extremely or very likely" to buy a Blu-ray device in the next six months, compared with 5 percent who responded in August 2008.

Didn't know iPhones also require a HDTV.

Oh wait, they don't.

We all know bluray has hurdles, one of them being HDTV adoption. Which after 10+ years on the market, still isn't in a majority of households.

Point is - the potential consumer base for a new cell phone is much higher than the potential consumer base for a bluray player.

But don't let that stop you from ringing the knell's....