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In Reply to: RE: Questions, comments posted by Jack G on June 27, 2007 at 13:36:03
Jack,
You're not going to win me over when you say "I *think* the numbers are US, but that is most of global anyway." I'm part of the rest of the globe and being reduced to a pimple on the US' arse for the purpose of this discussion does not predispose me to view your views favourably. :-)
Can you be a little more tactful about the rest of the world? After all, Toshiba and the HD people ignored us for over 6 months before deciding to release their products here 2 months after Sony and BD hit the market, a mere week or two after their US release. Who do you think cares most about customers here? I don't think it's Toshiba and HD, and that sends a very clear message to me.
You also said "The low numbers speak for themselves.
When the top seller is only 100,000 for both formats together, sales are pathetic."
Yes, you are right on that point. The sales aren't good but I have to wonder what the reason for that is. I think part of the reason is that the public doesn't like a format war. No one wants to take a risk on a product and get burned and the odds are that at the end of this war those who bet on one of the two competing systems will be burned. The worst case scenario is that the whole hi-def thing fails and every customer gets burned, no matter which side they picked.
Another part of the reason may well be bad information from dealers. I've been contemplating purchasing a BD player and asked some questions yesterday in a major retail store that sells a lot of plasma and LCD screens and has a hi-def display running with a BD player. I was confronted with ignorance, and there's probably no other way to say it. No concept of what was involved, no discussion of features of competing BD products, nothing. If I said "I want one of them", he could have sold me one. As to answering a question about it, forget it. If a customer walked in, saw the BD movie running and was impressed and started asking questions about hi-def and what the differences were, I hate to think what they would have been told. That's hardly an approach that's designed to move product for the store, much less get hi-def players sold.
If you keep shooting yourself in the foot, eventually the holes you create will leave you with no foot to shoot. Toshiba did it here for HD DVD by failing to get in first and letting BD get a 2 month jump on them. Stores are doing it with hopeless marketing. Sony does it by botching the quality of some of their releases. The marketing stupidities make you wonder whether anyone really wants to win or whether they're just trying to see if they can come up with a new way to sell boat anchors.
David Aiken
Follow Ups:
I meant no offense, but right now, the vast majority of (the few) sales is in the US. Its nothing personal, but we had a head start, so there's more releases available here than other places. That's not so much of an issue with HD DVD, since it doesn't have region coding, but it is more of one with BD.
While the "war" may have some effect on sales, the biggest factor, IMO, is the fact that most people are very happy with DVD. Most just don't think the difference is worth the extra money. Now, if the players and discs get down to DVD prices, then we've got a shot. I still think both will end up being niche products-hey, laserdisc was a niche product, and it lasted a couple of decades. :-)
Jack
No offence taken—I did insert the smilie for good reason.
Yes, the US did have the head start but only for HD DVD because it seems that Toshiba and the HD DVD side decided not to care about anyone else. That may have been a critical mistake. I don't know how much of the decision to get BD out of the door fast in other parts of the world was determined by the fact that HD was ignoring them but it was probably a very good marketing decision and it also probably hasn't done HD DVD any good.
The region coding on BD annoys me. In Australia, DVD players are region free because of a court decision that said it was illegal to prevent access to material on discs encoded for other areas. The Australian courts apparently took the decision that people had the right to be able to play discs from other regions which were legally acquired, either by purchase in other countries and brought back into Australia by the purchaser, or by purchase over the internet. DVDs released here are region coded—the court decision did not restrict the right of DVD makers to regionally code discs and choose their disc release strategies—but it did result in pretty well every player now sold in Australia being region free. I've heard no comment about whether that region free status for players has followed through to the hi-def players or whether that battle is going to have to be fought again. I'm not overly worried about region coding on discs if players are region free.
I think you may well be right about DVD quality being 'good enough' for most people given the price differential for players. The difference between DVD and hi-def disc prices here doesn't seem as great in relative terms as it appears to be in the US. A lot of BD discs here are selling for anywhere between roughly the same price as some new release DVDs to a few dollars over. On some the difference is greater. Our new release DVD price is significantly higher than yours—often between $30-40 Australian which is roughly equivalent to $25-34 US. More than a few BD discs are being released at the $35-40 Australian mark. The disc price isn't a major issue for me on that basis. I keep hanging off because I'd like a machine that can handle both the Dolby and DTS new audio formats, and none seem to handle the new DTS formats yet, and which incorporates the BD video changes coming in later in the year. I can't see the point of buying a machine which can't provide all of the features of the format. Hopefully by the time such machines appear, prices will have fallen a bit anyway.
David Aiken
> > > Yes, the US did have the head start but only for HD DVD because it seems that Toshiba and the HD DVD side decided not to care about anyone else. < < <
That's not quite right. I don't know how competative they are down under though. Japan is BD mostly because of recorders, they aren't buying movies. Europe is still up for grabs and is still compettive-especially since Europeans can get movies from the US, thanks to no region coding. China will supposedly be going HD DVD using their own codec, and manufacturing their own players (only a different chip than what the west uses). .
Its still way too early to jump to any conclusions, despite the FUD spreaders. Time will tell what really happens.
enjoy,
Jack
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