Originally Posted by Mike Adams
I am saying that player saturation means very little. Yes, it might breed familiarity with these strange new discs, but if the millions of Xbox 360s and PS3s aren't hooked up to displays that will show an obvious difference between standard DVDs and HD-DVD/Blu-ray, consumers aren't gonna get that they really are far superior to DVDs, and once those game systems are obsolete, they won't stick with the formats.
And in terms of your arguement, how many people do you know relied on their PS2 or XBox as a DVD player to watch a movie? :hscratch: |
Originally Posted by rfduncan
Well I wonder if the DVD players in the previous generation of video game consoles factored into this survey's calculation...
Originally Posted by DavidH
Again, with DVD, there were *practical* reasons to upgrade for the masses.
One last thing; people had VHS for over 20 years in many cases. They were prime for a new format. A lot of people only started buy DVD within the last five to seven years. They are NOT ready to buy into another format so soon or consider upgrading hardware and software so quickly. Every high definition disc player manufactured for the foreseeable future (probably forever) will continue to play existing DVDs, and they will do so very well. The smart consumer, i.e. the same consumer who moved to DVD in the 1999-2001 time frame, would be looking at the new formats from the perspective that new titles should be purchased in HD, since that will be the way of the future, as opposed to worrying about replacing existing titles in their collections. Most people replace their players every 5 years or so. Given the choice, with all else (price) being equal, why wouldn't a consumer that is considering a new player opt for a player that had the ability to handle all of their existing software as well as new, higher quality software? The problems that remains is which format to choose, and when will the price point reach a level that more people can accept? Had the two warring camps been able to come to a compromise and release a single, unified format, I am confident that HD player and disc sales would have been dramatically stronger than they now are, and that would have helped drive player prices down much more quickly. |
HD will eventually prevail, but I'm not so sure about the HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats specifically. In fact, all things considered, I think they'll probably fail in their goal to become the next predominant format. They'll falter along for awhile until one finally dies off, then the winner will sail along for awhile longer looking like the new laserdisc (i.e. a niche format). Then something else will drop that's 10x better and does have that "killer app" that gets everyone on board in droves the same way DVD did. And the studios will be more than happy to put out all their films on this new format, despite any existing commitments to the HD-DVD and/or BRD camps, once they see the potential to tap the mass market rather than a select one.
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