High-Def Has a PR Problem

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/08/npd-only-30-of-.html' target='_blank'>http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/08/npd-only-30-of-.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"...a new NPD report says that only 30% of Xbox 360 owners know it supports HD video output. That's not the percentage of people with HDTVs -- that's the percentage of people who are aware of the capability. Ready for another? Only half of PlayStation 3 owners know that there's a Blu-Ray drive in their machine. And of that group, only half use it."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/samsunghdtv.jpg" /><br /><br />For all of our talk about HD format wars, and the increasing availability of HD content...most people don't know what HDTV is, or if they even have it. In my opinion, HD is as big of a leap for television as color was compared to black &amp; white. It's a shame more money hasn't been put into ad campaigns to show Joe Consumer why it's the next big thing. As it exists now, HD is just a morass of confusion and in-fighting. That's a shame.

[Felix Torres]

No real shock there.

Just yesterday the AP fed an article about the XBOX360 price cuts to ABC and several other online news sites (and presumably TV and radio) that made it sound as if the 360 Elite was the only version that supported HD.
If the mainstream media can't be bothered to get the story straight...

Those NPD numbers also make sense in another area: the HD-DVD vs BD format war. One thing that has stood out so far is that HD-DVD has a 4.7 movie attach rate and BD only 1.0. Odd, given the fanatical nature of BD boosters. Well, the answer is clear, only a quarter of all PS3 users do BD at all. That brings the real-world BD attach rate to a competitive 4.0. And it explains why the "war" is both a deadlock (roughly the same amount of users in both camps) and a dud (barely 400K users on either side).

The problem, I think, is the industry has been focusing way too much on us and nowhere near enough on the masses. ;-)

Early adopters only get you so far; at some point you have to get mass adoption or you end up a niche player. And the only way to get mass adoption is to sell the concept behind your product to the mainstream. So far, too many people equate HD with home theater instead of TV viewing. It is changing but not fast enough.

Of course, with Feb 2009 just 18 months away that particular problem is going to go away real soon now...

[Jeremy Charette]

I don't think February 2009 (the date the FCC will end analog broadcasts) will make a damn bit of difference. It doesn't mean people will all of a sudden get HDTV, it means people will get digital OTA TV. Most homes already get digital cable tv anyway, so it's a moot point. (Digital Cable is crap btw, but that's another discussion). The majority of homes will still have analog SD televisions, or HDTVs displaying an SD signal.

February 2009: same crappy TV shows, on the same crappy TV. Different broadcast method.