People at EMA taking Uni to task

[nhaase]

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6461381.html

Some good excerpts:

Graffeo, Collins and other panelists acknowledged that PS3 owners far outweigh HD DVD player owners. But they argued that Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard are soon releasing a slew of HD DVD drives for notebooks and PCs.

“I don’t watch movies on my computer,” shot back Deganis, which was met with cheers from the audience.

Point to Deganis.

Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt told the panelists about a family friend who bought a Toshiba player quickly after the company reduced prices to $299. The machine was just as quickly returned to the store after the friend’s wife mistakenly bought Blu-ray titles Ice Age and Pirates of the Caribbean, not realizing they were incompatible with the new player.

“The average consumer is just sitting out on the sidelines,” said Hunt, adding that a lot of people are enjoying the advanced quality on upscaling DVD players, not feeling it’s necessary to also buy true high-def players. “How can this ever be a mass market?”

Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt and HTF members also questioned Universal’s and Microsoft’s stance that interactivity gives HD DVD a serious leg up over Blu-ray.

With picture-in-picture, HTF’s Sam Posten bemoaned the complexity, saying “I can’t even explain this stuff to my mom. It makes it harder to get to the actual [film] feature. Who is going to sit through a movie three times to hopefully see a bug in the corner of the screen?”

Hunt chimed in, “And who is to say that a year from now, Blu-ray won’t be able to add these things anyway?”

Points to Bill Hunt and Sam Posten. Nice to see them tell Graffeo the truth of interactivity.