Consumer confusuion now that a HD format is available.

[zak88lx]

I ran into a Mother and Daughter at the Future Shop the other night.
They were standing in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD section holding 2 HD-DVD movies. They saw me browsing through the Blu's and asked me for some help.

They first asked me if the HD-DVD format was the one used by HD TV's?
They wanted to buy movies for someone who had a HD TV and assumed that they needed HD-DVD to properly play movies on HD TV's.
I told them that either Blu-ray or HD-DVD could be viewed on the HD TV as long as they had a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player.

They then asked me if HD-DVD could be played on PS3.
I explained to them that only DVD or Blu-ray could be played on the PS3.

They put the HD-DVD's back on the shelf and walked away looking totally confused.

After seeing this I can see a lot of people getting Blu-ray or HD-DVD titles on Xmas that they will not be able to use.

Zak

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by zak88lx

I ran into a Mother and Daughter at the Future Shop the other night.
They were standing in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD section holding 2 HD-DVD movies. They saw me browsing through the Blu's and asked me for some help.

They first asked me if the HD-DVD format was the one used by HD TV's?
They wanted to buy movies for someone who had a HD TV and assumed that they needed HD-DVD to properly play movies on HD TV's.
I told them that either Blu-ray or HD-DVD could be viewed on the HD TV as long as they had a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player.

They then asked me if HD-DVD could be played on PS3.
I explained to them that only DVD or Blu-ray could be played on the PS3.

They put the HD-DVD's back on the shelf and walked away looking totally confused.

After seeing this I can see a lot of people getting Blu-ray or HD-DVD titles on Xmas that they will not be able to use.

Zak

i saw some girls in wal mart the other night and they picked up chuck and larry on hd dvd, they looked at the box kind of strange and walked off. i think there is going to be massive returns on hd dvds after xmas. ppl are going to get pissed off about this. i believe there is a lot of confusion about hdtv, hd dvd, and blu-ray with the public. blu-ray shouldn't have near the problems with the returns because of the big difference in the name. who can blame these people though if i have an hdtv and a 1080p HDMI dvd player, why shouldn't i be able to play an hd dvd?????

[CptGreedle]

The name is misleading, and I think it was part of the strategy they used. Get them to buy it and eventually they will buy a player to go with it when they realize they can't watch it as is.
Despicable.

I can understand HD confusion though. And having 2 formats just makes people even more confused.

[cartier]

I had a similar experience in a Best Buy a few weeks ago. A woman was looking at getting 'Knocked Up' an HD DVD exclusive and was asking one of the sales associates if they had it in Blu-ray and if not would it play on her son's PS3. The sales guy could not understand why it was not on Blu-ray and was unsure if the movie would play on a PS3. I was happy to intercede and informed the woman and the sales guy of the two formats, studio support, etc. The woman picked up the SD DVD version instead and made a comment about it upscaling the image, which I informed her that she was correct that the PS3 would upscale, she thanked me for my help and went to purchase Guitar Hero III.

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by CptGreedle

The name is misleading, and I think it was part of the strategy they used. Get them to buy it and eventually they will buy a player to go with it when they realize they can't watch it as is.
Despicable.

I can understand HD confusion though. And having 2 formats just makes people even more confused.

i agree. i think it was intentional to decieve the consumers. they figure that they are stuck with a 30 dollar movie, sometimes a 65 dollar box set and that these people have the money for an hdtv, so hopefully their screw up will just make them shell out a couple hundred for an hd dvd player.

i think toshiba has had a lot of complaints and that is part of the reasons they started combo releases.

[sj001]

HD-DVD, just sounds to similar to DVD.
Blu-ray is far less likely to be incorrectly purchased.
I can't wait to see how many returns happen on Planet Earth after the holidays... they will have a small mountain.

[SpikesBluBlooded]

Originally Posted by CptGreedle

The name is misleading, and I think it was part of the strategy they used. Get them to buy it and eventually they will buy a player to go with it when they realize they can't watch it as is.
Despicable.

I can understand HD confusion though. And having 2 formats just makes people even more confused.

Exactly. They claim the marketing stratedgy was to provide the public with something that would make it easy to understand, but I think Cpt has it nailed: this was simply done to confuse the general public and hope for adoption out of ignorance.

It stands to reason, for the layman, that an HD DVD must be the higher-quality DVD to play on your HDTV. Kind of like how Hi-def channels won't play on a standard TV, but they will if you have an HDTV. It's a logical line of thinking to the less-than-tech-savvy. And that' the majority out there.

It's just one more reason why Blu-ray has an advantage. There's very little confusion, as it's a completely different sounding type of media. I think that there will be an awful lot of returns after the holidays when people get "DVD"s that they can't get to work that they got in this odd little red box...

[WickyWoo]

To me, the problem is "HD DVD" says to Joe SixPack that it'll work with their upconverts

But Blu-ray isn't descriptive of what it does to me. It doesn't say "High Def", which is why they've started putting that on all the ads

[Jim L]

I was in Target the week that FF:ROTSS came out.

While standing in line, I noticed that the family in front of me had the Blu-ray of Silver Surfer in their cart. I thought: "Cool, another Blu-ray fan!"

When the cashier rang it up as $29.99, the father looked disapprovingly at the mother and asked the cashier to take it off their order. When she took it off, their son started crying. In response, the father said "OK, let's get it."

That's when I interjected: "You do know that is a Blu-ray Disc, don't you?"
"A what???" he asked. I continued, "It's a High Def disc that requires a Blu-ray player or PS3. If you meant to buy the DVD, they're back there for $10 less."

The cashier looked at me amazed. I guess she had never heard of Blu-ray just like this family. The father told her he wanted the DVD, so she sent someone to the back to get a DVD copy.

Even though the the Blu-ray name and packaging is much more distinctive than HD DVD, people are confusing them with regular DVDs.

I just spared them an unpleasant experience of having to return it. What surprised me was that the Target employee didn't even know what it was!

[181]

I hope that the BDA can educate the masses before HDM enters the mainstream market. Most people have no clue what the heck this new stuff is. The average consumer probably thinks an HD DVD is a regular DVD with HD content. The smarter consumer thinks that HD DVD is next step (purely because of its name and logo) in digital media and Blu-ray is a competing format. The smartest consumer knows that there is a format war, Blu-ray is winning and Blu-ray is superior to HD DVD.

The BDA needs to pound consumers with more Blu-ray advertising so that the market becomes so saturated with Blu-ray, the average consumer will think that's where everything is headed. Unfortunately, it is not the early adopters these corporations want. They want the J6P's since there are millions more of them. I think the BDA needs to get to these guys first. More ads during sports games and prime time.

[milou6]

People didn't have to learn anything about TVs for several generations. "Color TV" was the "HDTV" of 2 generations.

A wholesale change in technology has taken place and j6p isn't even aware -- when computers came it was something new they didn't assume they understood. But everyone thinks they understand TV.

Just remember, some people still don't understand what those black lines are when they watch widescreen... people have DVD players hooked up via composite to their HDTVs... whole families have trouble switching video inputs to go from TV to DVD (or VHS!)...

People watch stretched SD on their HD sets and think it's hi def.

In a few years, once everyting's HD and the hdmi cable lets the sets and the players and cable boxes all talk to each other the problem will be solved. Until then we're in for a long wince of ignorance...

[qz3fwd]

At least the HD-DVD's actually have a sticker on the front saying:

You need a HD-DVD player to watch this movie.
It WILL NOT play on a regular DVD player.



So should BD's.