Most Consumers Sitting Out The High-Def War

The New York Times notes that, despite the increasing variety of programs on the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, most US consumers are staying out of the DVD format war. This is a wise decision, the article states, because the two formats are essentially at a stalemate. "The two camps are victims of their own earlier success with DVD. The standard DVDs offered a quantum leap in quality from the picture and sound of VHS videotape, and for many that was more than adequate. In addition, DVD players that can convert images to near high-definition quality can be found for under $100, hundreds less than a true high-definition DVD player, further reducing the urgency to upgrade to one of the new formats."

Comments

Killing their customer base

[mulhollandj]

How many are staying out of this because they don't like the copyright 'protection' which really hurts the functionality and ends up hurting the experience of legitimate users?

Re:Killing their customer base

[stewbacca]

I assure you, only a small group of slashdot users think like this. Name ONE non-techie family member or friend of yours that has ever ripped a DVD to a computer for the "experience of legitimate users".

Almost completely agree

[debest]

Lastly, a HUGE number of consumers can't even tell the difference between DVD and HD quality! The difference in sound is total marketing drivel. But the difference in picture- oh yes, it is major. But that goes to show... if most consumers can't even tell the difference, why should they pay more?

Although there may be some that can't tell the difference in quality, I think a far larger proportion of people just don't care about the increase in quality (myself included). I've seen demos in stores. I've seen a Sony disc that tries to show the difference side-by-side on the same movie (splitting the screen of a scene to show the left side as DVD and the other as Blu-Ray). Yeah, it's way better, but I don't give a crap! I don't have the cash, or the desire, to upgrade my television. DVD is good enough for me, and will be for a long, long time. I do not have interest in paying one cent more for the better quality video.

Never mind how much more difficult it is to rip the content!

Re:Almost completely agree

[Jonny_eh]

Boo on VHS! Most of the movies on that format are Pan and Scan!
The greatest thing DVD did for home video was making letterbox/anamorphic widescreen mainstream.

Re:Waiting For Dual

[Anonymous Coward]

"Another group of prospects are waiting for ripping capability, so they can assert their fair use rights (even though they don't have any under the DMCA)."

Whoa, there. People DO have fair use rights under the DMCA. Those rights haven't gone away. The peculiar situation introduced by the DMCA is having fair use rights, but not being able to legally exercise them because of the encryption and the illegality of circumventing it.

It would be kind of like paying to have the right drive your car on the street because you have a license, insurance, etc., but not actually being able to exercise that right because there is a wall built at the bottom of your driveway by the people who own the road, and it is illegal to knock it down.

[Okay, *you* come up with a better car analogy]

Re:How about "Phoning Home" and DRM?

[jamesh]

By this I mean anything that forces the user to do something he does not want to like the PUOPs on standard DVDs. You can be forced to watch previews when you start a disk without having the option to skip forward or advance the track. I expect HD and Blu Ray to be worse in this matter.

The kids got a stack of DVD's for Christmas. I'm bordering on _FURIOUS_ that on some of them we have to sit through about 3 minutes of previews and "You wouldn't steal a car... video piracy is stealing" warnings. Honestly... it's crap like that that makes me want to just download instead of purchasing. Why on earth should someone who's actually doing what the recording industry wants and buying instead of stealing be the one who has to sit through the warnings and ads???

Re:DVD vs HD quality

[walt-sjc]

Agree on the quality of standard DVD's with a good HD set and player... But there is another issue too. I won't buy an HD player until I can be sure I can make media backups 100% of the time like I can with standard DVD's. THAT, more than anything else, is what is holding me back.

Re:Waiting For Dual

[ScrewMaster]

[Okay, *you* come up with a better car analogy]

Okay, instead of a wall at the bottom of your driveway you have a motorized gate with a numeric keypad. You need a code to open the gate so you can drive your car, but the people who own the road won't give it to you. You could easily download a road-gate-code-cracker, but that's been made illegal.

Re:DVD vs HD quality

[h4rm0ny]

Seconded. I want to be able to stream all of my movies from my home server on demand, not fiddle around with discs that can be damaged. But a big point with the DRM is that if one of the formats didn't have it, that format would suddenly become safe to invest in. It wouldn't be ideal to have to re-burn all of my HD discs if the format went under and everyone used Blueray, but I (a) wouldn't need to as I could play them from the file and (b) would at least be able to without as much cost as replacing them if I so chose.

Get rid of the DRM and you're not taking a big risk in buying that media.