Content – Page 4 – Devices View

Consumers Still Think They Have HD When They Don’t

November 14, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

The Leichtman Research Group (an ex-Yankee Group analyst) put out a press release with some interesting stats on consumer HD awareness. LRG claims that over 75% of HDTV owners believe that they are watching HD programming, but LRG estimates that "about 53% of all HD households are actually watching HD programming from a multi-channel video provider (cable, DBS or a telco), and about 4% are watching HD programming via broadcast-only – leaving about 20% of those with an HDTV erroneously thinking that they are watching HD programming when they are not." That may actually be better than previous studies, which …

DVD / Industry

State of HD Disc War

September 9, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 2 Comments.

Engadget just posted a nice wrap-up of their CEDIA coverage. (I was not able to attend CEDIA; after Nokia’s big London event last week, I went to RIM and Motorola events this week and even had to follow the Apple announcements from afar due to scheduling). The big news both at CEDIA and in the press last month is around the HD-DVD Blu-ray war; HD-DVD gained a studio just when it appeared Blu-ray was pulling away with software sales, and both Samsung and LG have new dual-format players coming to market demonstrated at the show. Back in January at CES, …

DVD

Getting Harder To Sell Obscure DVDs

March 5, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

The New York Times (free registration required) has an article up on the difficulties facing independant DVD labels: DVD sales are stalled Retail is flooded with titles Retail space is shrinking (big box stores are cutting back, while independents and record chains are going out of business) Shelf space that might be dedicated to less mainstream titles is instead allocated to HD-DVD and Blu-ray The most important point? Overall DVD sales are stalled. I suspect that sales will start to fall next year as collectors have built their libraries and the market is saturated: anyone who doesn’t already own a …

Displays / DVD / HDTV / Industry

50% of HDTV Owners Don’t Have HDTV

February 28, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

The Wall Street Journal has a great article (subscription required) quoting a recent survey showing that 50% of consumers who bought an HDTV set don’t actually have HDTV service. What’s more frightening – and yet entirely believable – is that 25% of HDTV owners think that they do have HDTV when they don’t. Well worth a read. -avi

Audio / Computing / DVD / Industry

What it takes to launch a new media format

July 6, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

JupiterKagan’s Michael Gartenberg has a great post about the three elements needed to successfully launch a new consumer media format. He concludes that neither HD-DVD or Blu-Ray measures up. -avi Full disclosure: I created the diagram that Michael uses to illustrate his point back when I was an analyst at what was then called JupiterResearch and he was my Research Director; it was for a report on next generation audio formats.

DVD / HDTV

Samsung Blu-Ray Launch Did Not Impress

June 16, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I attended Samsung’s Blu-ray Disc player launch this evening at the Samsung Experience in New York and came away disappointed. There were several things wrong with the launch, starting with the fact that it was off by ten days (the players won’t actually be available for sale until the 25th): Samsung’s prepared remarks were overwraught, telling us over and over again how much we would be blown away by Blu-ray, and to prove this they showed a cheesy video and a few movie previews that, quite frankly, weren’t all that impressive on the pair of Samsung DLP TVs at the …

Computing / DVD

Sony Kills Blu-Ray Advantage with PS3 Pricing

May 9, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

When assessing the relative strength of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray for high definition disc format war handicapping, I have always been quick to point out that DVD is the likely successor to DVD, as it is "good enough" for most consumers and addresses a larger installed base of non-HDTVs in addition to HDTV sets with decent anamorphic ("enhanced for widescreen TV") performance. But the other thing I have noted time and time again is that Sony’s Playstation 3 (PS3) was a potential trojan horse, bringing Blu-Ray playback to the masses. At E3 today, Sony announced the pricing and availability for the …

DVD

Half a Format War Arrives: HD-DVD is Here

April 22, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

HD-DVD was formally launched last week with a single, $499 Toshiba deck. HomeTheaterView has not had a chance to get in a review unit yet, but Evan Powell over at Projector Central bought a unit and gushes buckets about it. Part of his review is a primer on the difference between 1080i and 1080p at the source vs. how its delivered to the display; this type of arcane differentiation is what pushes normal people to choose formats based on even dubious specs. For now, there’s nothing concrete to compare HD-DVD to in the market. But there’s so little content for …

Audio / DVD / HDTV / Industry

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 4: Media Formats

January 16, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Part IV of my post-CES scribbles; each of the next few posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. This installment: Media Formats In 2005… The warring HD disc camps (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc) could not achieve compromise, but did not actually ship anything to the market, either. With nearly no support from content owners, SACD and DVD-Audio essentially died in 2005. At CES 2006… Toshiba hyped its first HD-DVD player at the modest price of only $499. In contrast, Pioneer announced a single Pioneer Elite Blu-Ray Disc player …

DVD / Industry

Format Wars II: Revenge of the DVD

August 31, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Tekrati picked up my post last week on the death of VHS, and implied that I said that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD killed off VHS. Nothing could be further from the truth! I often question whether there’s any mass market demand for a high definition format in the first place (and before I get flamed, yes, there is strong enthusiast demand. I certainly want to go beyond 480p). But only 11% of households have an HDTV, and anamorphic ("enhanced for widescreen") DVD looks pretty darn good on those sets. We’re also going into the format war without clear and massive support …