Retailers Dissapointed In HDvideo/Disney Mpeg4! - Blu-ray Forum

BTBuck1 · 08-17-2006, 05:08 PM

Retailers Disappointed In HD Video’s Launch

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 8/16/2006 6:56:00 AM

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.

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/twice.r...4602142009856?“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.

Original Article here:
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6362995.html

BTBuck1 · 08-17-2006, 05:10 PM

By late 2006/early 07 the only reason to own HDDVD could be Universal Pictures.

JTK · 08-17-2006, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

By late 2006/early 07 the only reason to own HDDVD could be Universal Pictures.

Maybe.

marzetta7 · 08-17-2006, 05:15 PM

Sweet. Please be true...the use of MPEG4. I hope Disney comes out droppin haymakers with quality with the use of MPEG4. Couple this with the use of 50 GB disc, and I think we have a winner. October/November will be sweet indeed.

BTBuck1 · 08-17-2006, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marzetta7

Sweet. Please be true...the use of MPEG4. I hope Disney comes out droppin haymakers with quality with the use of MPEG4. Couple this with the use of 50 GB disc, and I think we have a winner. October/November will be sweet indeed.

theres should be no excuse for Eight Below or Dinosaur to look anything but perfect.

JTK · 08-17-2006, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marzetta7

Sweet. Please be true...the use of MPEG4. I hope Disney comes out droppin haymakers with quality with the use of MPEG4. Couple this with the use of 50 GB disc, and I think we have a winner. October/November will be sweet indeed.

What makes you think BD50's are coming out from major studios THAT soon?

I sure would like to see it, but I just haven't seen any concrete indicators to make me believe that it would be so.

Of course, they don't necessarily NEED BD50's if they use more efficient codecs like MPEG4 or VC-1.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

theres should be no excuse for Eight Below or Dinosaur to look anything but perfect.

You're right.

marzetta7 · 08-17-2006, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTK

What makes you think BD50's are coming out from major studios THAT soon?

I sure would like to see it, but I just haven't seen any concrete indicators to make me believe that it would be so.

Of course, they don't necessarily NEED BD50's if they use more efficient codecs like MPEG4 or VC-1.

Even with the more efficient codecs, preferably with MPEG4 is my hope, HD movies are closely hitting that maximum as we have seen on some movies reaching 27 GB using VC-1 on HD DVD, and were just scratching the surface as to the types of interactivity that will come with these next gen discs (both Blu-ray and HD DVD)--so in my opinion, the 50 GB discs are still needed.

I think all the indicators for 50 GB disc are there, that is why I think studios will be having 50 GB movie discs sometime in the 4th quarter. We're already seeing 50 GB discs shipped from Sony, Panny, and others now, thus why I don't find it out of the realm of possiblility that the 50 GB discs with pre-recorded material on them a far fetched possiblility.

BTBuck1 · 08-17-2006, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTK

What makes you think BD50's are coming out from major studios THAT soon?

I sure would like to see it, but I just haven't seen any concrete indicators to make me believe that it would be so.

Of course, they don't necessarily NEED BD50's if they use more efficient codecs like MPEG4 or VC-1.

Kunfu Hustle & Black Hawk down (both rumored to be BD50's) have release dates on bestbuy.com as 11-21-06 now. Both have suffered delays previously. Im not good at math...but it's looking like 1+1=2 here...if the values are indeed 1 & 1 ofcourse

we shall see!

Ditto to the comment regarding mpeg4 & Vc-1. But heck, i'll take vc-1/mp4 & 50gb as then it's like a huge playground for studios to run wild in.

JTK · 08-17-2006, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marzetta7

Even with the more efficient codecs, preferably with MPEG4 is my hope, HD movies are closely hitting that maximum as we have seen on some movies reaching 27 GB using VC-1 on HD DVD, and were just scratching the surface as to the types of interactivity that will come with these next gen discs (both Blu-ray and HD DVD)--so in my opinion, the 50 GB discs are still needed.

I think all the indicators for 50 GB disc are there, that is why I think studios will be having 50 GB movie discs sometime in the 4th quarter. We're already seeing 50 GB discs shipped from Sony, Panny, and others now, thus why I don't find it out of the realm of possiblility that the 50 GB discs with pre-recorded material on them a far fetched possiblility.

That would be great! I hope it happens that way.

Now obviously, NONE of this matters a hill of beans if they take certain movies that are sorely in need of facelifts and remasters and rush them out before doing so.

Like Robocop, for one example?

phloyd · 08-17-2006, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

By late 2006/early 07 the only reason to own HDDVD could be Universal Pictures.

Heheh - there is one other reason (however obscure).

It is possible to master an HD DVD image on a DVD-R or DVD-R DL and play it on the player.

Currently the Samsung player will not play DVD-R discs no matter what the disc format is - the Samsung will play PC burned Bluray discs though as expected.

So... people with HD content that fits on DVDR or DVDR DL have been making 'HD DVDs' from it and playing it on the Toshiba.

This is not a huge advantage but it kinda cool. And also future BD players may work with DVDR media (effectively BD5 and BD9).

BTBuck1 · 08-17-2006, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTK

That would be great! I hope it happens that way.

Now obviously, NONE of this matters a hill of beans if they take certain movies that are sorely in need of facelifts and remasters and rush them out before doing so.

Like Robocop, for one example?

So, So true...

Crap in/ Crap out

love that saying!

My other favorite (something i said the other day)
have to quote myself here:

Quote:

It was a shitty situation, but do you think I gave a crap?

I said this to my brother during a conversation we were having, all i heard was the phone drop and heard him Rolling on the floor laughing his ass off.

you had to be there, I guess

BTBuck1 · 08-17-2006, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phloyd

Heheh - there is one other reason (however obscure).

It is possible to master an HD DVD image on a DVD-R or DVD-R DL and play it on the player.

Currently the Samsung player will not play DVD-R discs no matter what the disc format is - the Samsung will play PC burned Bluray discs though as expected.

So... people with HD content that fits on DVDR or DVDR DL have been making 'HD DVDs' from it and playing it on the Toshiba.

This is not a huge advantage but it kinda cool. And also future BD players may work with DVDR media (effectively BD5 and BD9).

well with the announcement of the AVC camcorders, it was mentioned that the media was 8cm DVD discs and that they would play back in a Blu Ray player.

Shadowself · 08-17-2006, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marzetta7

Sweet. Please be true...the use of MPEG4. I hope Disney comes out droppin haymakers with quality with the use of MPEG4. Couple this with the use of 50 GB disc, and I think we have a winner. October/November will be sweet indeed.

MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka, AVC or H.264) and not mean MPEG-4 Part 2 which is a poorer compression methodology and not that much better than MPEG-2.

I assume most people in this forum mean MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka, AVC or H.264) when they say "MPEG4", but we should be certain when we are hearing studios and others say "MPEG4". We do NOT want to get into some stupid fiasco of the studios saying MPEG4 on the disk and it really being MPEG-4 Part 2.

JTK · 08-18-2006, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowself

MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka, AVC or H.264) and not mean MPEG-4 Part 2 which is a poorer compression methodology and not that much better than MPEG-2.

I assume most people in this forum mean MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka, AVC or H.264) when they say "MPEG4", but we should be certain when we are hearing studios and others say "MPEG4". We do NOT want to get into some stupid fiasco of the studios saying MPEG4 on the disk and it really being MPEG-4 Part 2.

Yup. I mean exactly what's spelled out in my sig.

08-17-2006, 05:08 PM	#1
BTBuck1 Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Jun 2006 Location:Oceanside, CA. Blu-ray collection:507 DVD collection:1	Retailers Dissapointed In HDvideo/Disney Mpeg4! Retailers Disappointed In HD Video’s Launch By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 8/16/2006 6:56:00 AM 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. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/twice.r...4602142009856?“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. Original Article here: http://www.twice.com/article/CA6362995.html Last edited by BTBuck1; 08-17-2006 at 05:15 PM.

Similar Threads
thread	Forum	Thread Starter	Replies	Last Post
Mpeg4 to PS3	PS3	Blinkman987	16	08-27-2009 10:15 PM
VC-1 vs MPEG4/AVC	Blu-ray Movies - North America	Mr. Joshua	28	11-12-2008 07:52 AM
Mpeg4 issues in HTPC	Blu-ray PCs, Laptops, Drives, Media and Software	trshaw	1	06-15-2008 02:40 PM
What Blu-ray you want to see that dissapointed you on DVD?	Blu-ray Movies - North America	robgmun	21	01-14-2008 01:29 PM
Dissapointed by Blu-ray support in Aus	Blu-ray Movies - North America	gamer4eva	38	12-12-2007 10:36 PM

08-17-2006, 05:10 PM	#2
BTBuck1 Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Jun 2006 Location:Oceanside, CA. Blu-ray collection:507 DVD collection:1	By late 2006/early 07 the only reason to own HDDVD could be Universal Pictures.

08-17-2006, 05:15 PM	#4
marzetta7 Special Member Member since:Feb 2006	Sweet. Please be true...the use of MPEG4. I hope Disney comes out droppin haymakers with quality with the use of MPEG4. Couple this with the use of 50 GB disc, and I think we have a winner. October/November will be sweet indeed.

Best Blu-ray Movie Deals