As a guy who regularly talks about trends in media consumption and distribution, allow me to make the observation that people who talk about trends in in media consumption and distribution are idiots. Including me. We're hardly ever right about anything.
However, money talks. DVD buying peaked between somewhere around 2007, and has been trending downward since then. While Blu-ray buying is on the rise, it doesn't amount to much in the overall video buying world - certainly nowhere near enough to compensate for the decline in overall DVD sales. Says a senior analyst at Screen Digest, "We don't expect BD to be driving even minimal sector growth until 2010."
Now, it's easy to blame this on an economic downturn...which wasn't happening in 2007. It also doesn't take into account one of the most remarkable statistics I've come across in a long, long time:
47 percent of consumers now own a high-definition TV, up from 35 percent a year ago.
Read that again, slowly. HDTV ownership is up by nearly one third in the past year.
Nearly half of America owns an HD TV.
And yet, the number of people who say that they are likely to NOT buy a Blu-ray player in the past year is UP a little! 93% of people surveyed say that they are NOT likely to buy a Blu-ray player in the next year!
Read it again: HD television sales are UP nearly 30% this year over last year. People are LESS likely to buy a Blu-ray player this year than last year.
It's not the economy. Millions of people saw the value in buying an HDTV. They do NOT see the value in spending a fraction of that on a Blu-ray player.
It's not the cost of disks. You can rent a Blu-ray disk for hardly more than an SD DVD disk.
It's not any lack of confidence in the quality of Blu-ray. Anybody who bought an HD set saw Blu-ray aplenty in the store.
It's that they don't see the value in Blu-ray over the HD programming that they get from cable and satellite.
In other words, they could get a Blu-ray player for about the price of a month of cable with premium channels...but then they don't need the Blu-ray disks.
In my case, I watch TV around 5 hours a day, which puts me right in the middle of the pack for adult America. With the exception of an odd commercial here and there, 100% of what I watch is in HD. I watch a ton of movies in HD. This week, that includes "The Dark Knight," "Tropic Thunder," and "X-Files: I Want to Believe." I haven't watched them yet, because they're parked on my DVR. I'm also not in a hurry for the first two, because I saw them in HD on Demand BEFORE they were on Blu-ray. (I'm not in a hurry for X-Files because I'm not convinced it's good enough to spend my time on...but hey, it's there.)
I also watch quite a bit of TV (most of it network TV - woo-hoo!) and live sports (go Red Sox! - and for the record, my wife can be even more into sports TV than I am...but we both dig it.) No Blu-ray equivalent unless I'm willing to wait a looooong time.
I've talked about this often enough in other posts (follow the tags), but this is the first time that my instincts about the mainstream have been confirmed, as follows:
HD = good.
HDTV = will spend many hundreds, if not more, to buy one.
Blu-ray = yawn, even for $200-300, if not less
What do you think, kids? Given that I choose to write about this stuff on a regular-ish basis, and that EVERYONE who does so is mostly wrong...am I wrong this time? Why do YOU think that interest is Blu-ray is so low relative to HD TV buying, and waning?
Posted by: Tim Wilson on Jun 25, 2009 at 12:35:11 pm
Kathlyn and I were in Costco the other day and it had been a while since we were last there. There was a drastic difference in the size of the Bluray Disc section between the two visits. The most recent visit, the Bluray section was about half the size that it was in the previous visit. Even Target and Wal-Mart seem to be the same story -- with Bluray occupying less rack space than it used to have in previous visits. I think the marketplace is speaking and the retailers are listening.
DVDs are dead dude. And the only reason HD TV sales are up is because everyone thought that their sets with Rabbit ears would be cut off from TMZ and Big Brother Season 4. My mom went looking for a TV at Best Buy California, and the sales smuck scared her so much about being behind the times with her rabbit ears that she walked out with the most expensive HDTV flatscreen on the lot. And she's got glaucoma, so I doubt she can see the difference. If she is typical of the American elderly, then I say that DVDs are dead, as she only watches the ones she gets as gifts for Xmas. And for younger Americans, they seem happy enough with movie downloads on iPods and iPhones, what would they do with a boat anchor blue-ray player, unless it's the one in their Xbox. Here in Nepal we are not interested at all, as all the DVDs come from China/Russia and were once HD quality, but are now mostly pixelated moving blobs from being pirated so many times over. I suspect the rest of the underdeveloped world is in the same boat. My pal in Seattle was also telling me that these days him and his crowd all get downloads from NetFlics right into their DVRs, and have no need for something as arcane as a plastic disk that scratches like my dog does...constantly. So what brainchild thought that Blueray would ever sell in the first place! Cheers,
Jigs
...we have used it about a dozen times or so over the last year. If you take away the David Attenborough BBC nature specials like Blue Planet, Planet Earth, etc., we have used it two or three times.
Hardly anything to write home about.
I am shocked that Blu-ray "won" out over HD DVD, but then again VHS took the high ground over the much better Beta format, so at least there is some consistency in the market.
I think the reason why you can *mostly* only buy HD sets is because that's all that people want to buy. A TV is a big enough investment that they'd rather get it (at least mostly) right.
That said, it still amazes me that the rate of purchase of ANYTHING is up 30% over the past year. Is bubblegum up 30%? Shoes? Diet cola? Take your pick. I can't think of ANYTHING.
Except TVs, where an $800 dollar model is the bestseller. This is absolutely unparalleled anywhere in retail. Forget the part about "it's the only kind of TV you can buy." The point is that people have increased their rate of spending on HD television at virtually the highest rate of anything that they can possibly spend money on....because they want HD...and they DON'T want Blu-ray.
I'm doing a little more research for a future post, but two more things jump out at me in all this.
--HD DVD disks continue to outsell Blu-ray disks. The big reason why is obvious: sell-off of remaining stock. Don't forget: HD DVD was well outselling Blu-ray before Blu-ray "won," and kind of still is.
--Blu-ray players have only recently passed HD DVD players. Blu-ray players represent about 12% of DVD players, and that's only if you count PS3 (about 7% on its own). I'm not convinced that you SHOULD count 'em...but there you go. The number of HD DVD players -- 11%. Only 1% different.
The BDA has responded that Blu-ray is still ahead of where DVD was at the same point after its introduction...but I'm not persuaded that the pattern will hold over time....
When you go to buy a tv these days, you can buy a tube television, but it will still be digital, probably HD. The digital transition does not, of course, gurantee HD television, just digital. This technicality is some of the best vague language to come out of Congress in years!
So a new TV in 2009 WILL be HD - how much you want to spend if your choice but you need to buy an HD tv.
If non-blue ray players are taken off the market, since blu-ray players will upconvert non-blue-ray DVDs and I assume also attach to analog sets, then at least the saturation of blu-ray players will increase. However the industry may then claim to have a large market share, but that would be inaccurate since there would eventually be no other choice.
Then eventually non-blu-ray DVD titles would be taken off the market, as you can today not buy a VHS copy of anything.
In other words, if the market wants to change things they will need to CHANGE things. In other words - force the issue.
No body is really complaining about the HD tv being the only tv available.
As for me, I have my upscaling DVD player, no HD cable or DirecTv and a working SVHS player because my letterboxed VHS Star Wars Trilogy pre-Special Editions doesn't look half bad.
My commercial clients want a authored Blu-ray copies of their long form shows and short form commercials. My corporate clients want to impress their bosses with a blu-ray of their latest long form training or corporate communication piece. My clients that make movies say since we shot and edited on HD, they want a blu-ray to show their friends (they HAVE BD players). There are workarounds and tricks but given the finances and resources these days I cant make a nicely authored presentation disk like I have with DVDSP. Thats my only gripe.
"Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens -- televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study.
The study also found that live television in the home continues to attract the greatest amount of viewing time with the average American spending slightly more than five hours a day in front of the tube.
The figure drops to 210 minutes a day of average TV viewing time among 18-24 year olds but rises to 420 minutes a day among those aged 65 and older."
And in practice, I'm watching a lot in the background while I'm working on my computer...where my screen hours are way, way above average.
I never said, and never will say, that Blu-ray doesn't look better than HD TV...although OTA HD (rather than cable or satellite) is a lot closer than you might think. Just that the difference in practice doesn't excite me enough to do anything about it.
I suspect what might make me pull the trigger is when I encounter an experience that I can't get from either an HD movie on cable (the movie) or an uprezzed DVD (the extras, which tend to be lower res than the films themselves anyway)....
While HD broadcast material looks a lot clearer and nicer than SD, it doesn't come close to the clarity of Blu-Ray (which is compressed a lot less than broadcast HD). It astounds me how REAL everything on Blu-Ray looks. Standing up close to the television screen, you can see FAR FEWER artefacts on Blu-Ray compared with anything else.
Do you really watch 5 hours of TV per day??? I find that astounding to be honest. If that's an average American figure, then that's even more scary.
Cable/Direct TV/Etc. Question. What percentage of people are paying the extra fees for HD? It seems to me this might be a key indicator not mentioned in your post.
People on Time Warner (at least in So. Cal.) are paying NO extra for HD. It's just there.
I don't know what happens when you try to watch it on an SD TV, but I know that with my cable system (a regional one called RCN), watching the HD signal on my one SD set produces a gorgeous converted letterbox picture -- a wonderful experience.
I'm barely paying extra for HD service - the price has plummeted, and I predict will soon be free -- and only a few dollars extra for an HD DVR. (I don't watch TV without a DVR except in the direst of circumstances, and haven't for most of this century.)
THAT SAID, after quite a while at around half of people with HD sets watching HD content, a January report points to a number well over half: 22 million yay, 17 million nay.
Some of it has been ignorance. I saw a report in 2008 (sorry, can't find link) that something like 40% of people thought they WERE watching HD content...although in their defense, as you point out Tom, SD looks pretty darn good with a straight up-convert, especially DVDs.
HDTV. "I need a new TV anyway, and the only thing their selling is HD. The fact that I'm buying a TV means I'm buying an HDTV."
I'm still flabbergasted at how many TVs are flying off the shelf. A 30% increase! Also note that while LCD costs more than plasma at the same size, even LCD is up 23% in Q1, from Q1 2008.
This underscores my point that the global economy is not preventing Blu-ray's success. People are spending. the most popular size for HDTVs is 42 inches, and the best-selling model at Best Buy (the top CE retailer, with Wal-mart a close second) is $799. It's "only" 720P, but as people have seen, the extra money for 1080P may not be worth it.
That said, their top-selling 1080P model is a 50-incher at $1299. My experience is that plenty of people will look at the 50-incher and say it's worth it for size alone. Once you see them side-by-side, you'll know what I mean.
THAT said, you can get a projector with a 100" picture, screen included, for about the same price. :-)
I think you're exactly right, Tom: it's the value proposition that Blu-ray offers...or doesn't. Even at $99 for a bare bones player, $225 or so for one with BD-Live, there's more fun to be had, even in HD, by spending money elsewhere.
HD. "High is better than standard. Duh. But do I care? And what is it worth?"
HDTV. "I need a new TV anyway, and the only thing their selling is HD. The fact that I'm buying a TV means I'm buying an HDTV."
SD DVDs. "This looks pretty hot on my new HDTV. Yeah that Blu-ray is nice, but, well, this still looks A LOT better than this same DVD looked on my old TV."
Blu-ray. "Whatever. I'd rather spend that money on a Wii."
Blu-ray. "I've got to pay, again, for another technology that is likely to be dead soon, so I'll have another black box I have to pay to dispose of in three years? To watch stuff I can already watch? WTF. I'm already paying for cable, and the regular DVDs look pretty good. Whatever. Again."
In other words, Blu-ray is not an attractive value proposition to the less tech savy, because they mostly care about the stories – as long as the stories are available at the lower quality, they are just fine. The only reason this crowd is buying HDTVs now, is there aren't any other reasonable options when it comes time to buy a TV.
Also, Blu-ray is not an attractive value proposition to the tech savy, but thrifty – because most of us know on-demand HD over the internet is coming, and how, fast…
Cable/Direct TV/Etc. Question. What percentage of people are paying the extra fees for HD? It seems to me this might be a key indicator not mentioned in your post.
