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74 Percent Of Nothing Is Still Nothing
from the hot-air dept
The group behind the HD DVD format in Europe claims that it has 74 percent market share of the next-gen DVD market in a handful of western European countries. Of course, they're not including Sony PS3s, which have a Blu-ray drive, in their count, but the bigger point is that they're claiming 74 percent of a miniscule market. This contrived stat, like Toshiba's claim of 60 percent share of the US market, glosses over the problems that are holding it back: DRM that breaks legitimate customers' players, low perceived benefits and high prices. Apparently, though, the HD DVD folks would rather claim to have a big share of a tiny market than to have any share in a market that's actually meaningful. Update: Just in case anybody cares, the Blu-ray people say they're actually the market leaders.
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Nothing Raised to the Zero Power is Something.
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Why don't they count PS3s?
I understand they are trying to skew the numbers in their favor, but I don't see any reason why PS3s would not be included in the tally of Blu-ray players sold - especially considering that they could represent the majority of sales.
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Market
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The market 'may' be huge, if they don't lock it down with so much copy protection and other schemes that it fails to work for consumers.
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I bought a PS3 as a gaming console (and so far, somewhat disappointed with the game selection, though i'm not disappoint with the console itself) and because of it, I do own a small collection of blu-ray movies (around 10 of 'em) because they do look absolutely fantastic in 1080i (the tv i have doesn't have 1080p). I'd spend the extra couple bucks for extra quality on movies that utilize it (movies with special effects), but I won't spend it on movies that don't have big explosions and stuff.
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Re:
That's not quite true. The public does not "understand" the problems the DRM's are inflicting, but they know they are happening. With such a low number of movies released in HD DVD format and such a high failure rate of play on most players, the public is getting a bad taste in their collective mouth. Why would anyone want to pay more money to buy a DVD that does not work, only to take it back to the store and have them tell you it was intended not to work...
It's not going to be a matter of a bad investment plan when HD DVD's fail, it will be a matter of self sabotage. Right now the HD market has huge potential, but they have trying to enter the market with both hands tied behind their back.
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Makes you wonder what kind of market penetration there'd be if they never went down the DRM path and instead passed all the savings from not wasting millions (billions?) on a technology that will inevitably be foiled on to the consumer?
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Explosions?
Good points. But, I am a little concerned about all the talk about explosions. Sorry, I could not resist.
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The Failure of DRM is
This is a point that I have been making for a long time. I get tired of reading articles touting all the positive bells and whistles while hiding DRM related issues behind a "technical" wall. Specifically, I think the introduction of HD content was delayed for approximately 8 years because of the companies bickering over how they planned to implement DRM. Of course the popular media reported that these companies were working hard to resolve these so-called technical problems. To bad the news media failed to do real investigative work to report that these companies were really obstructing the introduction of HD content.
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Re: Market
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Re: Nothing Raised to the Zero Power is Something.
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Completely and utterly false.
People that read tech related blogs know this, the other 90% of the world does not.
Go in and ask any Walmart shopper if they even know what DRM is. You will find yourself in an hour long conversation trying to explain to them something they don't have the capacity to understand.
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Re:
The point is that they do not need to understand how DRM works, they just know the product doesn't work. You fail at reading comprehension, html formatting, and use of threads. Good bye.
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I don't get the DRM concerns.
There are a few reasons why HD content hasn't been a big hit, but DRM is barely even on the radar.
1) Relatively few consumers have HD-capable sets.
2) Little perceived benefit over DVD, but at a higher cost (especially the players).
3) Nobody wants to invest in the losing format.
It's a bug expense, but a small *value* to the average consumer. And nobody wants to buy into that and then have it compounded by being the next Betamax.
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Re: I don't get the DRM concerns.
1. While it is true that relatively few people have HD capable sets, the reason is that the content industry delayed the introduction of this technology so that they could develop DRM technologies. Had this technology been released eight year ago in an open format, a lot more people would have it now.
For example my computer and monitor can play HD content but this ability is being disabled by the "new" technology so that my computer won't play the HD content. Designing "new" technologies that purposely obsolesce existing equipment to promote sales is ridiculous.
2. While true, the higher cost, in part, is a reflection of all the wasted effort in making a "simple" device unnecessarily complex to "protect" content rather than deliver value to the consumer.
3. True, it is a losing format because it has been designed to lock the consumer into a proprietary format. Consumers do not acquire value from technology that is flawed.
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DRM is DRM
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0 raised to the 0 power
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