Another Opinion - The High Cost of Saving Money

[Dale]

At least HD DVD players have a standard feature set for all players.

This has been a highly promoted feature for HD DVD and it was repeated so often that it was accepted as the supreme winning value. "You get everything the format has to offer from the get-go". But all that means is that they either adopt no further innovations which are not completely compatible with the first iteration of machines and let the competitor who makes no such promise pass them by or they adopt new features as the innovations come and drop this promotion that they are a "finished work "without need of further progress.

[stevekaden]

Dale, I have to argue your point. Lots of innovation could occur within a good specification. DVD for all I percieve has not changed at all since inception in ways that are not compatible with the past - until HDM. Yet there are lot of systems with lots of new operational features. One could say SACD, DVD-Audio were improvements that were compatible with the original DVD spec, even if not usable by older players. Within the context of DVD - nothing changed that made any DVD not compatible with even the cheapest player. And everyone has been happy.

Now, with BR, we have an entire "birth" generation of machines that will not be able to use what in the future might be considered the baseline feature set for the format. You could call them BR 2 and declare it a new format, but that is really pushing the definition here.

I would hope for at least about 5 years that BR settles down enough to not generate cynical commentary about changes. It would be nice if they finished the spec and we all could move on in financial confidence.

[free2speak]

Dale you can't argue with HD DVD as a complete standard because you know it is true. Was it the end of the standard? No probably not because there is always room for refinement. But the core feature set is there for all HD DVD owners. HD DVD owners were not one software update away from becoming a limited player.

BD on the other hand left out parts because they were behind on development and needed to ship BD before the market was lost. It's like the consumer paid Sony to become test pilots for early development. Samsung is now involved in a lawsuit for this very reason.

[jawadsworth]

You are right about the public being uninformed.

I work for a small privately held a/v company. We have four stores in the georgia/sc area.

As manager of one of the stores, I deal with the public daily.

A typical secenario goes like this.

I want to buy a HDTV.

Fine, what do you currently have?

I have an emerson I got from my parents about 5 years ago. They had it about 15 years and it still works fine, but with this changeover to HDTV i have been hearing about, I think it is time to get a new set.

(so the first thing I explain is that the changeover is not to HDTV but to digital signals, instead of analog. Which then causes an explanation of the difference between the two signals and what can be done with his emerson tv.)

Once that is explained, we start talking about the tv's on display, and the question is always, "which one is best?"

At this point, I have them step away to the counter (about 15 feet away from a wall that has 15 sets on in ranging in size from 26" to 55") and ask them to pick out the one that looks best to them. Which they do.

We then get into the urban legends about having to replace the gas in the plasma displays every year (honest, I have been asked that question numerous times), then the burn-in issues, lcd vs plasma vs dlp, and all the other things they don't know or understand.

We discuss sd, ed, and hdtv sets and what each is. (I show them the same source on each of the type sets so they can see the difference.)

Then we talk about size vs the room where they are going to use it. (A 55" in an 8x10 room is a little overkill, don't you think? especially when they will not be moving to a larger place for several years.

Finally we get to price. One of our selling points is we will beat the price advertised online by circuit city and best buy, for the same make and model.

Most of the time, at this point, I have to pick them up off the floor, since they thought they get get a 50" flat panel for about $500.00.

You can see what I mean about uninformed. Most of the time, they don't buy on the first visit. They have so much new, accurate information that they need to desiminate it.

I normally sell on the 2nd or 3rd visit, because they have done some research, and are now much better informed.

I also agree that balance the componets in the system (dollar wise) makes more sense for newbies. They can bet reasonable performance within a moderate budget, that is somewhat futureproofed and is totally upgradeable as they progress.

[free2speak]

I sympathize with you.

I love the part about recharging their plasma HDTV.

The upgrade to HDTV is complicated. It used to be simple to choose a TV, but HDTV comes in many flavors and resolutions. It would be tough to explain to the average consumer all the things they need to understand so they get the most of HDTV.

[stevekaden]

Well, reading all this I see that there is confusion with the customers, obviously we have too many TV formats.

So, the only answer is to crush the marketability of all the ones not selling the most and we will have one TV, one resolution, with one set of features. (And it should be LCD to solve the gas perception problem.)

While we're at it, there's too many choice of sources - air/sat/cable - with more than enough confusion in those choices to be sure!!. So, we should shut everything except Comcast down and then there will be no confusion with that.



(sorry, it was just too obvious).