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Jack! Jack!!…

Posted by David Aiken (A) on June 27, 2007 at 22:01:14

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

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