'Round these parts, we prefer to read the fine print first, so it should be noted that none other than Macrovision -- you know, the firm that purchased the now-cracked BD+ DRM scheme for $45 million last year -- financed this here study. According to poll results from US and UK consumers, around 1 in 3 individuals admitted to "making copies of pre-recorded DVDs in the past 6 months, up over a quarter from the previous year's study." Predictably, males aged 18 to 24 were most likely to wear an eye patch and own a DVD burner (if you catch our drift), and while revenue loss due to illegal copying is certainly a valid concern, researchers did find that 62% of American respondents (and 49% in the UK) were duping flicks they already owned. Arrr!

[Image courtesy of George Dillon]

A lot of things in the high-def world are going down in 2012, so it's not shocking at all to hear that we've got yet another thing to look forward to during that fateful year. ABI Research has just loosed a new report that tags wireless HD as being in its "incubation" stage, with fewer than 100,000 devices in the sector scheduled to ship in 2008. Furthermore, analysts are suggesting that 2012 would be the earliest point in which one million wireless HDTV installations occurred worldwide -- and that's an "optimistic forecast." We posed the question a few months back wondering just how long it would take for this stuff to take off. 'Spose we have our answer, huh?

[Via Connected Home News]

While research firms chime in on the rate at which Blu-ray is being adopted worldwide, a handful of studio executives have suggested that Blu-ray revenue industry-wide could break $1 billion in 2008. During the Home Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles, presidents at Warner Home Video, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment all agreed that the $1 billion mark would be surpassed this year, while Paramount Home Entertainment president Kelly Avery maintained that $750 million was a more realistic figure. Notably, the bigwigs did admit that the growing popularity of digital downloads could eat into profits, but even we'd agree that BD is probably safe from too much erosion in the short-term.

[Image courtesy of Blu-ray]

Ruh roh. Seems you can't use the "it's good for my health" excuse to watch just one more hour of Sunrise Earth, as a recent study has shown that watching serene scenes on HDTV just doesn't have the same calming effect as does watching a similar scene in nature. The University of Washington-based study discovered that heart recovery rates in people exposed to minor stress were the same when viewing peaceful imagery on a plasma or starting directly at a blank wall. Yeah, a blank wall. It was also noted that heart rates dropped more quickly when these same folks viewed a calming scene through a window, suggesting that technology may not be ready to replace reality just yet in this particular case. We just have to wonder if they were using true HD signals on the display -- nothing gets our heart racing like a bad episode of Pool Watchers in SD.

[Thanks, Ben]

Considering that this report doesn't really jive with everything else we've already heard this year, we'd certainly take all of this with a grain of salt. Sure, Blu-ray has had its fair share of supply issues, but there's no denying that average price points are still well above the level at which casual consumers would be willing to bite at. Nevertheless, some industry analysts are expecting standalone Blu-ray players to outsell DVD decks "on a unit basis" by August of this year, and they also expect free-flowing supply around the same time. Yeah, we know DVD sales are slowing and it's only a matter of time before BD starts gaining some serious ground -- but August?

[Thanks, xdragon]

Kids these days -- understanding way more than their parents do about all this newfangled technology. Shortly after hearing that millennials were entirely more savvy about emerging TV technologies than the older crowd, a new study commissioned by Motorola has found that this same demographic (ages 16 to 27) is starved for video-on-demand. Beyond that, the 1,000 person study discovered that 62% had "influence over which HDTV set and programming package to buy," while 70% felt that "their expectations and demands are far greater than their parents' for rich media experiences." The report also found some pretty interesting figures dealing with transferring media from DVRs to portable devices (among other things), so be sure and dig into the read link below if you're a sucker for stats.

Don't freak out, you're not experiencing any weird case of déjà vu -- reports are simply continuing to come out that suggest that Blu-ray adoption isn't taking off. The newest of the bunch comes to us from Harris Interactive, which surveyed upwards of 2,500 individuals in mid-April. Results showed that 87% of those polled owned a DVD player, but just 4% owned a dedicated Blu-ray deck while 5% owned a PlayStation 3. Comically enough, 6% claimed that they had an HD DVD player, while another 1% owned an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on. Most notably, just 9% of respondents stated that they were "likely" to purchase a BD player within the next year, even when made fully aware that BD was the victor in the now-concluded format war. Of course, just 35% of those polled owned an HDTV, which is certainly worth considering, but even analysts at Harris agreed that getting BD player prices well below $300 was necessary for adoption to surge. Hit the read link for lots more stats.

[Image courtesy of Syracuse]

Ruh roh. Research firm DisplaySearch has just unleashed a new report that takes an in-depth look at the ultrathin XEL-1, and it ended up finding a video lifetime barely half of what Sony promises. Apparently the company ran a couple of Sony's OLED TVs for 1,000 hours, after which it found that blue luminance degraded by 12-percent, the red by 7-percent and the green by 8-percent. Extrapolating the data it gathered, it estimated that the unit would lose half of its brightness in 17,000 hours -- Sony says you can expect 30,000. Of course, Sony is still standing by its numbers, and even we can see that DisplaySearch's methods aren't perfectly scientific, but if you were honestly expecting to watch this thing for the next decade (and not a year less), you may want to hit the read link and snoop around.

[Via Yahoo, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

One step forward, two steps back. Just days ago we found that Blu-ray sales as a whole were up over 300-percent year-over-year from Q1 2007, but new data from NPD has found that sales of BD players -- Sony's PlayStation 3 notwithstanding -- sunk a staggering 40-percent from January to February in the US. Furthermore, sales only grew 2-percent from February to March. Of course, these figures tie in nicely with ABI Research's take that Blu-ray wouldn't "dominate" the market until players broke the magical $200 price point (and included Profile 2.0), and it also makes sense that the PS3 would lead the sector until 2013 if things continue at this rate. According to NPD's Ross Rubin, an "overwhelming majority [of surveyed consumers] said they weren't investing in a new next-generation player because their old DVD player worked well and next-gen players were too expensive." That pretty much sums it up, now doesn't it?

[Image courtesy of kev]

ABI Research has just confirmed feelings that we've had for months: Blu-ray just isn't going to dominate the market until prices sink down from the stratosphere and players emerge that are fully-featured. A new study from the previously mentioned firm has suggested that we still have "12 to 18 months" before the BD market really kicks into gear, and it specifies that "fully-featured" decks need to come in at $200 or below before the general public will consider coughing up the cash required to make the jump to high-definition media. It's also noted that many are perfectly satisfied with the quality of DVD, and until prices make it manageable to switch, the outfit feels that huge chunks of consumers will simply stay put. Additionally, we're told that PS3s will "make up over 85-percent of the BD players in the field" during 2008, and we won't see Sony's console fall from the top until 2013 when the installed base of standalone decks / PC-based BD players overtake the installed base of PlayStation 3s. Yeah, you're hearing echoes on that last tidbit.

[Image courtesy of LA Times]

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) expected Super Bowl XLII to drive over two million HDTV sales, and drive it did. According to a recent study by Frank N. Magid Associates, around 5.5 million US households brought home an HDTV for the very first time during the 2007 - 2008 holiday and Super Bowl season. Of course, these two events weren't the only reason so many folks opted to make the leap to a high-def set -- the study also credits the looming digital TV transition as an encouraging factor. It's also noted that the forthcoming Olympic Games in Beijing may convince even more folks to spend that incoming stimulus check on an HDTV, further boosting the percentage of US households with at least one HD-capable set. Now, if all of these slow-to-move cable carriers would get their acts together and provide a decent array of HD channels to enjoy, we'd be set.

[Image courtesy of AT&T]

Okay, so we've seen some fairly amazing results emerge from these so-called studies, but this one practically takes the cake. Oliver Wyman, an international management consulting firm, reportedly surveyed some 2,000 US consumers and found that "a price point between $7 and $9 is optimal for the next generation of video-on-demand VOD and internet movie rentals." In other words, respondents confirmed that they would pay up to $9 per HD VOD film if they could have instant access on the day-and-date of the title's DVD release. Granted, we recognize that consumers will indeed pay more for convenience, but still, $9 just seems extraordinarily steep at the moment. It should be noted, however, that the same study did find that consumers would likely pay a small premium for packaged media that included a Digital Copy (or similar) -- that we actually can wrap our heads around. Hit the read link for more details, and please don't agree that $9 is the new $3.99, okay?

[Image courtesy of Verizon]

Just in case you haven't been schooled enough by HD research articles of late, here comes another to toss around inside that skull of yours. Based on a forecast by Informa Telecoms & Media, around 4-percent of worldwide households (read: not just homes with HDTVs) will "actively watch HD programming" before 2009 dawns. Just to put that into perspective, only 2-percent of homes globally were tuning into HDTV at the end of 2007. According to Simon Murray, principal media analyst at the company, a "major contributing factor is that set and set-top box prices have fallen substantially in the last two years," and it should come as no surprise that HD adoption has been highest in North America. Per usual, an HD study couldn't conclude without some reference to 2012, and sure enough, Informa is expecting around 179 million worldwide abodes (16-percent, give or take) to have HD programming in less than four years.

[Image courtesy of AT&T]

While we can't argue that HD spots are entirely more enjoyable to view than their SD counterparts, a new survey commissioned by Google takes a look at the viability of advertising in online programming. Given that content on the 'net is growing substantially and more and more users are turning to the web browser to get their TV fix, Google found that online video advertisements compared "very favorably with traditional TV commercials." The research honed in on 30-second spots shown on traditional TV, YouTube and embedded within an online viewer, and according to Marianne Foley, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Harris Interactive (who collected the data), the end result is that "nothing is lost and much can be gained" by running commercials online. Of course, online ads have the advantage of being forced upon viewers, whereas DVR owners can skip around if they're okay with viewing timeshifted material. Peep the results in full in the read link below.

[Via NewTeeVee]

It's something we've all been wondering about, and now we've got the numbers to satisfy our curiosity. Interpret has surveyed groups from a variety of regions around the globe in order to see how high (or low) Blu-ray awareness is now that it stands alone as the sole next-generation HDM format. Unsurprisingly, the UK and US were tops in knowing what's what at 56- and 60-percent, respectively, while Japan checked in at 45-percent; both France and Germany notched percentages that were slightly lower at 49-percent and 30-percent. Also of note, data from the UK and Japan showed that consumers that already own HDM players were still purchasing standard-definition DVDs at a higher rate than HD DVDs / Blu-ray Discs, but the opposite was (just barely) true for the US. Nothing too earth-shattering here, but check out the read link if you're lusting after some fun figures to toss around at the water-cooler.

[Via Audioholics, image courtesy of TheDigitalBits]