By Greg
Tarr, STAFF
(TWICE) _ Beverly Hills, Calif. The launch of high-definition
blue-laser optical disc formats has been a disappointment. That was the
consensus of a panel of mostly specialty A/V consumer electronics retailers
speaking at the DisplaySearch HDTV Conference here, Tuesday.
"This whole HD or high-definition DVD is probably
the worst execution of a new technology release this industry has done," said
David Workman, PRO Buying Group executive director. He cited software glitches,
a format war, future compatibility issues with the delivery of the HDMI version
1.3 spec "right around the corner," and a hasty push to get players into the
market, for pouring water on early efforts to seed the HD disc
market.
"We've stacked this thing up as far as you can to
try and create a failure for what should have been the best new technology
introduction," he continued. "As an industry there are so many competing
technologies out there for consumers' share of wallet and discretionary income,
we have to do a better job on this one. It's been a race to see who can string
the tightest noose," Workman quipped.
He said that some more recent titles have looked
more promising, adding that "with the right content we can move more
product."
Casey Crane, CEO of Southern California A/V chain
Ken Crane's, attributed the sputtering launch to sub-par title releases in the
Blu-ray format making for weak demonstration material and less-than-spectacular
picture quality.
"The source material is not what it could be,"
Crane offered. "The future will be strong for 1,080p DVD. The consumer does want
it, but their expectations are higher than what we are delivering."
Bjorn Dybdahl, president of the San Antonio, Texas
A/V specialty store Bjorn's, said he was "somewhat disappointed" in the launch
of the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats thus far, also citing below-par software
encoding in early Blu-ray releases for dampening the enthusiasm among
salespeople and consumers alike.
"Sales have not been anywhere near what I thought
they would be for this new category," Dybdahl said, adding that many early
Blu-ray Disc releases appear only marginally better than standard DVDs. He later
offered that HD DVD software, which is output in 1,080i format and not the
1,080p purported to be output from Samsung's Blu-ray Disc player, had looked
better than most Blu-ray Disc releases.
Dybdahl said a Samsung demo disc, which offered
material encoded in high quality, showed the true potential of the format and
the player, and the imperfections of the early movie discs.
To complicate the issue, Dybdahl said salespeople
are "becoming lazy and are not demonstrating the material over and over and over
again."
Jim Pearse, Ultimate Electronics senior
merchandising VP, agreed that the HD disc introductions have been
"disappointing" thus far, adding that "it will be a 2007 product as more
manufacturers bring it to market."
Countering the testimony from the specialty
dealers, Noah Herschman, Amazon's A/V for the Americas director, said the
e-commerce retailers has done very well with sales of both blue-laser format
players and software.
Mark Knox, a technology evangelist for the HD DVD
Promotions Group, said the apparent disparity in picture quality between early
Blu-ray and HD DVD titles can be attributed to a decision by most Blu-ray
backing studios to encode titles in the MPEG-2 compression format instead of the
VC-1 or MPEG-4 formats used for many HD DVD titles on 25GB single-layer media.
He offered that additional problems could be related to firmware issues in early
releases of the Samsung Blu-ray players the only Blu-ray Disc player currently
on the market.
Knox said studios including Disney are starting to
encode Blu-ray titles in MPEG-4, and the picture quality advantage HD DVD has
enjoyed thus far, may be short lived.
Meanwhile, Ross Young, DisplaySearch president,
said his company's parent, The NPD Group, recently conducted a survey of 2,000
consumers, showing growing awareness of HDTV.
He said that among people planning to buy a TV, 63
percent wanted an HDTV-ready set, second only to large screen size (68 percent),
according to DisplaySearch research.
Young said that HDTV will be a popular commodity
with most consumer segments by the end of the decade. DisplaySearch forecasts
North American HDTV shipments, which now account for 51 percent of all sets sold
to dealers, to reach 90 percent market share by 2010.
However, Young said 40 percent of those polled in
the NPD survey were not clear on HD's benefits. Another 23 percent said that
they wanted HD, but it wasn't a top priority, and another 23 percent felt that
HDTVs were still too expensive.
The survey also found that 81 percent of all dollar
revenues for TV sales in June were from HDTVs, compared with 59 percent a year
earlier. In the same time period, the average cost of an HDTV set fell from
$2,223 to $1,893, DisplaySearch, Young said.
Continued price cuts have been "very helpful" to
the success of HDTV sales to date, he continued. "You were able to buy an
eight-inch larger set in 2006 than in 2005 at 720p and in the case of 55 to 56
inches you were able to get double the amount of pixels at a lower
price."
He said 50-inch plasma TV prices were down "37
percent to slightly above $3,000, while 37-inch LCD TV prices are down 50
percent and 32-inch LCD TV is down $1,300 and will soon be at $999. In warehouse
clubs it is already at $799 and we will see it at $699 for
Christmas."
DisplaySearch expects to see 26-inch HD sets for
below $500, 32-inch sets for below $700 in national chains, 37-inch below $900,
40-inch below $1,000 for an HD set and 40-inch 1,080p for slightly above $1,000,
Young said.
Source: CEN
