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Tech Shoppers in the UK Ditch Desktop PCs and DVD Players (ofcom.org.uk)
Brits are ditching DVD players and desktop PCs and are increasingly turning to newer technology such as smart TVs and smart watches, Ofcom research has found. From the research: Shoppers in the UK are predicted to spend billions of pounds again this year on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and much of that is expected to be spent buying tech online. So, Ofcom has crunched the numbers on which tech devices people have been buying in recent years, and which ones they're getting rid of.
Ownership of digital devices such as smart TVs, smart watches and smartphones has grown significantly in recent years, as more people need a constant connection to the internet -- internet users say they spend an average of 24 hours a week online. By contrast, MP3 players, DVD players and desktop computers seem to be falling out of favour as smartphone use continues to grow, particularly for browsing and streaming. Meanwhile, the popularity of tablets and e-readers seems to have peaked. Ownership of both is significantly higher than it was seven years ago, but has levelled out in the last few years.
Ownership of digital devices such as smart TVs, smart watches and smartphones has grown significantly in recent years, as more people need a constant connection to the internet -- internet users say they spend an average of 24 hours a week online. By contrast, MP3 players, DVD players and desktop computers seem to be falling out of favour as smartphone use continues to grow, particularly for browsing and streaming. Meanwhile, the popularity of tablets and e-readers seems to have peaked. Ownership of both is significantly higher than it was seven years ago, but has levelled out in the last few years.
Where have I heard this before? Ahh yes, when it was going to be completely "replaced" by the tablet...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
were they buying DVD players in 2017?
Just not upgrading. These things have become commodities. No one ever complains microwave ovens are being ditched just because no one goes mad over buying them anymore. People are just spending money on the next new shiny things.
Because nowadays, there's barely a point in replacing them.
A 6 year old PC can still play modern games. And games used to be the only thing left that required non-professionals to follow the expensive upgrade cycle.
PCs just are what they always were: A tool for universal data processing.
It's not their fault they were wasted on useless consumer blobs running fixed-function modules ("app[lication]s") to waste their lives.
But of course the money media must keep up the state that anything but by-definition-unsustainable exponentially exponential growing growth is the devil, and the stable balance of infinitely recycling resources that all surviving things in the universe have in common literally means literal death for being Literally Hitler(TM). Literally. ... /s
As that's the only way they can keep leeching on society, by making us work, without working themselves.
Its really not. Most of my friends have quit building. Ill never build, nor buy, a desktop again. Everyone is buying laptops.
Ugh. You mean they are doing this ALL the time now?
Because everyone already has a computer and don't feel the need to buy a new one every year!
Other than gamers who want the latest hardware, most people are content with a computer from 2010... I should know, my PC is from 2010 and still more than usable enough after upgrading to an SSD and changing the GPU to keep up with games.
Fine DVD plsyers ar probsbly a duinge marcket but what about BD anf 4K Bd players. Ore does tfa mean any player for disc based video??
The "Bang for buck" ratio has deteriorated.
ie:
8086 -> 80286 -> good BFBR "Bang For Buck Ratio"
80286 -> 80386 -> good BFBR
80386 -> 80486 -> excellent BFBR [ VESA local bus, faster ram ]
80486 -> pentium -> good BFBR [ pci bus, more ram, much faster speeds, MMX ]
Pentium -> Pentium 4 -> good BFBR [ pcie, more ram, much faster speeds, better video cards, etc ]
Pentium 4 - > Quad Core or Core2 - > excellent BFBR [ pcie, next gen, DDR3/DDR2 memory, much better cores, and more of them ]
Now, we are in the era where we:
-Add slightly faster ram, at the cost of latency - shitty BFBR
-Add slightly faster video cards, at a very large cost - shitty BFBR
-Add slightly faster CPUs, at an obscence cost -- very shitty BFBR
so the BFBR has decreased, where you can spend another $1000, to get 10-15% better performance, measured in "seconds" for most tasks, or less, or a few more FPS, which anything above 30 would be unnoticeable.
spend $100, get an SSD, and make it feel like a new system.
Spend $1000, get a slight performance boost.
I'm still using a 2600k, with 16gb, with a 7770HD video card, I see no reason to upgrade.
4K and higher refresh rates will need new hardware parts to look really great.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
a resurgence in PC gaming has helped mask that a bit, fueled mostly by the insane popularity of Fortnight and PUBG, but folks are buying less and PCs. They'll buy one or two for Junior to do the homework on but they don't usually upgrade them much.
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The problem is almost nobody is building high quality PC software these days. Most new development is out in the 'cloud' with the PC being treated like the old 'dumb terminals' from the Main Frame era. The stuff running on the PC now is mostly front end client software that just sends commands to the servers in the cloud.
Once upon a time, all the cool new software was running on a PC that was not connected at all to the internet. Local databases, spreadsheets, word processors, etc. were all designed to work on a standalone PC with you controlling all your data. I think the pendulum can swing back and bring demand for more HEDT machines if compelling PC software once again is created. The backlash against big cloud providers that either abuse your data for their own profit, or fail to protect it from hackers will be a major factor in the pendulum swing if it happens.
It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, especially as we don't even get a day off work out of it as they do in the States! It seems to have taken over from the traditional Boxing Day/January sales here in the UK, even though those sales were a place to pick up a bargain (in terms of unsold stock brought in for the Christmas rush).
If anything, it seems to have hastened the demise of our High Streets, as people now expect discounts (whether real or imagined) before Christmas rather than afterwards... right during what used to be peak profit-making season.
When Ryzen came out I thought it was time to upgrade and throw AMD a bone. So I bought a new computer system. Motherboard, CPU, but then... the DRAM and NAND were expensive like heck and the GPU prices were ludicrous because of those god damned coin miners. So I put an old GPU card on it and got lower end memory and NAND products.
I ended up with a M.2 NAND drive which was not any larger than the SATA one I had in my old PC and cost about as much if not more... A couple months passed then Meltdown and Spectre came around. So basically I've left it in another floor collecting dust while I'm still working on my old PC. I can't feel assed about transferring the file systems and applications from my "old" PC to the new one. Oh and the case they got me had no 5 1/4" frontal drive bays whatsoever for my legacy discs so I had to buy an external reader. At one point I thought I was better off with a laptop.
I blame the memory cartel pricing, obscene GPU prices which are like 2x what they should be right now, and the CPU manufacturers for a) screwing it up b) Intel keeps spinning new revisions of the same shit over and over and calls it a new product.
So it is little wonder few people want to upgrade. Also 4K just made everything more expensive and it is useless for gaming.
Everything has this cycle, where it gets to the point that what you already have is good enough, and further small tweaks do not justify the cost of replacing.
The sound of the D5 is generally Dolby Digital, and its code rate is 384~448kbps. D9 generally has DTS (as long as the positive film is not too long), and there is THX certification, DTS code rate is much higher than Dolby Digital, the lowest is 768kbps, the highest is up to 1.5Mbps. And the DTS encoding capacity is also amazing. Sometimes the D9 can also be equipped with LPCM lossless sound. Therefore, the D9 format of the disc, of course, the sound effect is undoubtedhttps://www.newbecca.com/product/10075941340
People are building their own desktop computers by purchasing the components they want to use. Demand is massive.
Yeah, no. The average joe/jane is not "assembling" their own PCs. Time is money for most people. Only enthusiasts are "building" PCs for themselves or their friends. Demand is not really that massive. Supply for a lot of components is constrained at times because of supply chain issues.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I have an ASUS VivoBook S15 S510UN hooked up to a 50" TCL 4k TV. It works fine. I get work down on it just fine on. I can also play Starcraft II in 4k on it as well with the dedicated GFX card. It does not run at 60hz but I don't care. It was pretty cheap and the form factor of a Macbook air without the sticker shock. I don't need a desktop. My work also supplies a 15" dell latitude for work. It has enough power for coding and debugging .NET services. The point is that laptops can both do real work and game enough for the average person.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
We don't.
Shops have been trying to make it a thing, for about 2-3 years now.
After some footage of Black Friday Walmart rampages a few years back on the news, suddenly shops decided they wanted that and tried to induce it.
Pretty much nobody cares. To us, it's just a pre-Christmas sale when you spend most of December Christmas shopping anyway. And the price reductions are even more fake than other sales. At least "January sales" actually happen as shops sell off leftover stock. Not everywhere, but they do.
Black Friday is also not just a "day"... it's a week and they're trying to make it a month. Nobody really cares. It's all hype and rubbish. There's literally no increase in sales over what you'd expect before Christmas.
It's not like the US where you effectively get two holidays in short succession. We get Christmas, and that's it. So nobody is going to splash out in November because everyone who was going to buy you gifts for Christmas will do the old "Oh, no, don't buy that, leave it for later (because I've already decided to buy it for you and I have no other ideas!)".
Black Friday isn't even that old in the US. It's been around a long while in the sense it's known that the Friday after Thanksgiving is a popular day to go shopping, but it's really only the last 10-15 years or so when the retailers have been hyping it up into a major event. Though it seems to be dying the last couple of years for a variety of reasons - people buying online, the retailers pushing it to be a week and the entire month of November which just means people spread out their spending, and people not wanting to deal with the crowds and lines. Finally, the big thing is that people are realizing it's all hype and games and the deals aren't even that good. As you say, if you want a deal wait until it's January and the stores are actually trying to clear out some inventory.