New Blu-ray research says more of the same

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 3rd 2008 at 9:30PM

The latest Blu-ray research from The NPD Group pretty much mirrors everything else we've heard through the course of this year: BD adoption hasn't skyrocketed since the demise of HD DVD. That being the case, Blu-ray is making gains in the industry, as some 45% of surveyed HDTV owners now claim to "be familiar with Blu-ray Disc," up from 35% a year ago. It's also noted that just 6% of all respondents stated that they were aiming to purchase a BD player, but the firm did find "purchase intent to be higher [9%] among the growing population of HDTV owners." We know, the general public is still generally satisfied with vanilla DVDs, but we still maintain that BD will have its day just as soon as prices sink down to more acceptable levels.

[Image courtesy of TheDigitalBits]

Filed under: Blu-ray

Tags: adoption, awareness, blu-ray, data, research, survey

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Mike @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:42PM

45% are familiar with its too high a price.

So they know think BD will have its day when prices come down. If I was them I would want my day now...and so would lower prices.

Better hurry with that $100-$120 BD player...I am waiting

Highly Ranked

Gus @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:52PM

Wow, what a surprise, the price gouging format that offers very little improvements to the general public over DVD is struggling, who would have guessed!

Neutral

Spiza @ Jun 4th 2008 10:37AM

Ya, too bad the format isn't dieing/dead so you can get a blu-ray player as cheap as you got your HD DVD player.

Neutral

hughjars @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:54PM

This part is very good - "purchase intent to be higher [9%] among the growing population of HDTV owners."

If lower prices are what they're looking for then they should go to their local Walmart starting this weekend.

Highly Ranked

Gus @ Jun 3rd 2008 11:05PM

Reading the article it says there are 40million HD TVs in America, and what, 750,000 (?) SA BR players, forgetting PS3 for a mo, thats 1 BR player for every 53 HD TVs, or about 1.5%, yikes!

Prices need to halve in price yesterday!

Neutral

Nfinity @ Jun 3rd 2008 11:16PM

Add to this the arrival of super-upscaling and those 6% of customers planning to purchase a Blu-Ray player will at least think twice.

As I said before I think this is great in many ways not because it will make Blu-Ray adoption trickier but because it will force BDA to land down to Earth and drop prices to normal levels.

At that point, I will definitely say that people should buy Blu-Ray.

If Cloverfield BD release at $20 is a sign of things to come, I'm all for it.

Neutral

Achilles @ Jun 4th 2008 10:07AM

Nfinity is crossing over to the dark side. Darth Finity!

Neutral

lakersin2025 @ Jun 4th 2008 11:57AM

That was funny Achillies! Hey INfinity, I'm proud of you. Keep it up. Now didn't that feel good? Just a little? Also, what happened to your cute little helmet cat pic?

Neutral

retro77 @ Jun 4th 2008 2:07AM

DVD was a big jump in features from VHS. Just not seeing that in the BD format.

Neutral

twilight @ Jun 4th 2008 2:43AM

If people cant tell the difference between blu ray and SD DVD they need their eyes tested. On the majority of titles the difference is unbelievable. Do me a favour just compare the SD DVD version of a movie like Con Air (a 2nd tier title in terms of PQ) to the blu ray format. The SD DVD version is murky, lacking in depth and detail while the blu ray version boasts vibrant colours and excellent. I have not bought any SD DVD in over a year - you might as well just burn your money as invest in old technology.

Highly Ranked

kcmurphy88 @ Jun 4th 2008 3:40AM

Problem is, many people buy tiny HDTV sets and sit too far away from them. If you sit across the living room from a 37" 720p set, you too will wonder what the big deal with HDTV is. Especially when you get a bunch of Stretch-o-vision stations pretending to be hi-def. Compared to all that, SD DVD looks pretty good.

Neutral

DrXym @ Jun 4th 2008 4:23AM

LCDs are getting larger and larger. I expect most people buying a living room set would get 40" or higher where the difference should be very noticeable.

Neutral

chefgon_ign @ Jun 4th 2008 8:57AM

I own a 37" 720p LCD set and sit on the other side of the living room and the difference between DVD and Blu-ray is dramatic. Night and day. I can't stand to watch standard DVDs on my TV because the clarity of the screen makes the MPEG2 compression look like a streaming YouTube video.

I do have a 26" 720p set in my bedroom, and the difference on that is not nearly as pronounced. Maybe those little TVs are what you were thinking of. 37" TVs are actually pretty large, and more than enough to see a dramatic jump in picture quality when upgrading to Blu-ray.

Neutral

Achilles @ Jun 4th 2008 10:08AM

@Murphy +1^^

Stretch-o-vision sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Neutral

ChiWax @ Jun 4th 2008 5:47AM

Where on earth did the research say the prices were going to go down? Since when does wishful thinking about the marketplace mean prices are going to go down? As far as I can tell the newest releases are still 30 bux or more....found for 25 in some places but still...Q

Good luck on that price drop...

Highly Ranked

Doc @ Jun 4th 2008 8:28AM

I love HD in any flavor and I'd like to think that price will help drive sales. I do HD consulting as my second job, and it always surprises me how many people just don't care about HD disks; mostly because they don't "see" the difference( which is mind blowing to me). Secondly, it's the price they don't see the value in buying a movie for $10-15 more than a decent DVD of the same movie.
Sure "WE" understand the difference he, but joe 6-pack doesn't and with DVD players under $50 upscaling or not they don't care to spend 7x that, and especially with gas being as high as it is, I don't see the growth from joe 6-pack becoming reality until we have cheaper disks and much cheaper players IMO.

Highly Ranked

Achilles @ Jun 4th 2008 10:11AM

Cheaper, more reliable, full generation players. Not the crap that is still coming out today. "BD-ready with future firmware upgrade".... crap like that needs to stop. That's just greed and that is not helping the cause!!!!!!

Highly Ranked

Doc @ Jun 4th 2008 10:29AM

Well said.. I completely agree with you. Sadly that is what was great about HD-DVD in that every player from the oldest to the newest could all use the same features.
Does anyone know if sony has some sort of clause in the BDA that restricts 2.0 player from being released until they allow it? Give me a 2.0 player for $149 and I'll be happy.

Neutral

JimmyStewart @ Jun 4th 2008 8:49AM

*yawn*

Another story about people not wanting to buy Blu-Ray? At first I just thought people were surprised at how long the entire HD revolution has taken to get off the ground. Compared to DVD it is a little bit slower, so I can understand that. But the constant release of these pseudo news stories is really starting to make me think there is a Blu-Ray bias out there. It's almost like you guys want the format to fail. I mean come on, the format war just ended. Give it some time to actually take hold before you start calling the time of death. I think there should be a year waiting period at minimum after a format war ends to see what's happened since. It's far too early to be able to say anything that's worth saying. For as horrible as the economy is right now and for as much as people are struggling to pay their bills I think it's remarkable the sales Blu-Ray already has.

Neutral

Mr. E @ Jun 4th 2008 11:27AM

It's true. I don't know why so many people seem to think that Blu-ray either needs to take off like a rocket or it's going to die. The evidence is all around that Blu-ray adoption is increasing. Whatever the rate that it's increasing is really immaterial. The studios primarily wanted Blu-ray to make up for declining DVD sales, and it's clearly doing that, so it's a success.

Here's an interesting blog post. 11 million Blu-ray discs sold to date, and preliminary data shows more BDs sold between January and May 2008 than in all of 2007 (and yes, that includes all the end-of 2007 BOGO sales). Heck, we didn't even have all studios releasing during that period! I can't wait to see how things are looking after holidays 2008.

http://www.hollywoodinhidef.com/blog_detail.php?id=201

Neutral

Larry @ Jun 4th 2008 9:38AM

Who would have thought it people don't want a bad product that is over priced.

Neutral

Truth Teller @ Jun 4th 2008 11:01AM

Barring the odd coupon deal (such as the latest US-only $100 off a PS3) I don't see anything much on the horizon to change this.

Blu-ray is crawling at a snail's pace towards lower prices & the supposedly 'final spec'.

Movie prices aren't much better, again relying on limited deals to attract rather than simply having a generally attractive starting price.

Even the (unconfirmed) news that there are now proper licences being issued to the Chinese (as opposed to the assembly & component manufacture which has been going on since day 1) does not indicate significant change any time soon.

(I wonder what the reference design is going to be?)

For those who find this difficult to believe remember that it took Toshiba & the Chinese over 2 years from signing the contracts of their licencing deal(s) - Sept 2005 - until product actually appeared in the stores - Nov/Dec 2007.

The early adopters & PS3 crowd might yell about it not being so but the truth is that Blu-ray is being all but ignored by the mass-market.
It's invisible to the a/v mass-market because it is far too reliant on a game console most will have no interest in & never want,
it is grossly over-priced compared to DVD (players & discs)
and worst of all just simply not 'worth' the improvement it offers.

I have a nice HD DVD player, a decent & recent HD TV set and I've seen plenty of Blu-ray on good HD TV sets.
All set-up properly & with care too I might add.
Personally I like my high def, but on some movies I have to admit, there's a bit of 'the Emperor's clothes' going on here, far too few care to admit that it can be desperately underwhelming.
That's not saying DVD is 'better', of course not but sometimes it's close enough for anyone not to care too much about or for.

Anyone who wants to pretend that every high def disc looks utterly amazing
(especially on the mass-market 'sweet-spot' of HD TVs @ 32" - 50")
is IMO just kidding themselves and worst of all obviously trying to kid others.
The question must be asked, why?

Neutral

theefman @ Jun 4th 2008 11:41AM

Its funny to see the blu-sheep post links to sites that are either pro-br or sponsored by the bda....

Neutral

Mr. E @ Jun 4th 2008 2:00PM

Go ahead and dispute the numbers if you can. They're from Home Media magazine.

What's not funny is seeing the HD DVD zombies trying to bring down HD for everyone just because they have sour grapes.

Highly Ranked

Gus @ Jun 4th 2008 7:17PM

Can you understand MR .E that being anti BR has got nothing to do with HD DVD.
For me personally, I will buy BR when a quality spec 2.0 standalone player is in the $150 bracket, at the current rates that should be about 2015, but a lot of people myself included, just do not like, and will not support sony which has a dreadful record for failure when trying to force proprietary formats onto consumers at grossly inflated prices.

You may be happy outlaying an outrageously large amount of $ for an slightly improved DVD player, but the majority of the population is not.
So will you all get off the HD DVD bitterness campaign, that is long since gone and forgotten, but there are still plenty of us who will not blindly follow sony on its well beaten path of self destruction at the expense of early consumers.

Neutral

Mark @ Jun 5th 2008 5:56AM

@Gus, blu ray is not a "slightly improved DVD player". Why are you making such grossly ignorant remarks? If you love HD DVD you will love blu ray. That is unless you've developed an irrational hatred for a video format of all things. The feature set for both is nearly identical, especially for picture and audio quality. Complaining bitterly about the prices won't make player prices move down faster. Where did you conjure up your $150 figure from anyway? Toshiba didn't start slashing prices that low until the format was dead in the water. The A3 originally cost $299 and even the Venturer was selling retail for $200. It should be very easy to pick up a Blu Ray player in that range this year, some of which may even do bd-live.

Highly Ranked

Gus @ Jun 5th 2008 8:43PM

@Mark
I bought an A2 for $99 with 4 free movies and an XA 2 with 11 movies for $300, hence my $150 ish price range, I might consider $250 for say a profile 2.0 Panasonic.
Subsidized or not, to me thats all a DVD player is worth, I wouldn't have paid $300+ for a HD DVD player either except the XA2 for $300 and 11 movies was just to good to pass up. Even on todays cheapest BR standards @ $15 per movie, that still represents $165 in movies, that means I only paid $135 for an XA2!!
I know you blu faithful don't believe it, but DVD via my XA2 is so stunning that BR will have to be cheap for me to bother, the minimal benefits are just not worth the $ outlay.I don't even bother with HD DVD movies now and there are plenty to be had very cheaply, the differences just don't warrant the outlay!

Neutral

RussTC3 @ Jun 6th 2008 8:44PM

Wait, are you telling me that two formats (i.e. competition) was better for the high-def optical market?

No way!!!

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