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Hi-Def Media Lovefest: The war is over and we can all go home.

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mckmas8808

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
borghe said:
This is a bullshit argument created by competition. No one has ever been scared away by drastically falling prices. The argument has always stemmed that lowering prices drastically causes the consumer to think fire sale and back away. The truth is that cases where drastically lowering prices has been followed by disinterest or even greater atrophy has always directly correlated with an inability to follow through.

People love to cite the DC mass price reduction, but then fail to mention the serious new release drought that immediately preceded it. People love to mention the GCN $99 price drop but then conveniently leave out that Nintendo never followed through with any sort of marketing or 3rd party push.

What happened when the first $50 DVD players were released when most name brands were still selling at $120? What happened when the first $99 players were released when most name brands were still coming in closer to $250? The Wii is mentioned here, yet nothing is said about the fact that the Wii has some seriously killer apps lined up behind it.

Fire sales don't kill products. Fire sales with nothing propping up the price tag kill products. And while HD-DVD is certainly lacking some big names this fall, they have a few of their own big names to counter it. I'm not defending or supporting the format war, but this talk of Toshiba hurting HD-DVDs position by positioning affordable hardware is just outright stupid. Being able to walk into Best Buy and grabbing a player plus 3-4 movies and going home to watch them for under $300 is in no possible way a bad thing. And having to pay $500 to say the same thing about a blu-ray player and movies in no way shape or form makes it inherently better. Let's at least try to use some common sense in this argument.

.
Click to expand...

I know it's a good thing for us (consumers). I was saying that's the reason why these companies typically don't want to lower prices too fast.
 
M

mollipen

Member
DarthWaiter said:
ony; however, has a worst track rate of failed formats. UMD, Mini-Disc, Beta, etc
Click to expand...

I know people love to beat up on Sony for their "format failures," but a few of those really aren't fair.

Beta was part of the first real push for home video formats, and there was absolutely no clear cut "standard" early on. Plus, if we're going to bash Sony for trying to push their own format, let's also bash MCA for LaserDisc, RCA for CED, Philips for Video 2000, and hell, JVC for VHS.

MiniDisc, I'd argue, wasn't a failure. Sure, it didn't become the next cassette tape like I'm sure Sony wanted, but it was rather popular in Japan, and the format still actively exists to this day.

UMD, as well, isn't really a failure, at least for its main purpose: video games. (Though I'm sure I'm not alone in arguing that Sony should have gone with a revised version of MiniDisc for the PSP.) As a means of pushing portable movie sales, yeah, it was quite a disaster, but most of the blame there is due to stupidity on the part of content providers in terms of pricing. With memory stick prices now low enough that owning a multi-GB stick is quite possible, the idea of pushing movies on UMD versus some sort of digital download solution may seem silly, but at the point of the PSP's release, such an idea wasn't completely feasible.
 
C

Christoff Yurievich

Member
shidoshi said:
I know people love to beat up on Sony for their "format failures," but a few of those really aren't fair.

Beta was part of the first real push for home video formats, and there was absolutely no clear cut "standard" early on. Plus, if we're going to bash Sony for trying to push their own format, let's also bash MCA for LaserDisc, RCA for CED, Philips for Video 2000, and hell, JVC for VHS.

MiniDisc, I'd argue, wasn't a failure. Sure, it didn't become the next cassette tape like I'm sure Sony wanted, but it was rather popular in Japan, and the format still actively exists to this day.

UMD, as well, isn't really a failure, at least for its main purpose: video games. (Though I'm sure I'm not alone in arguing that Sony should have gone with a revised version of MiniDisc for the PSP.) As a means of pushing portable movie sales, yeah, it was quite a disaster, but most of the blame there is due to stupidity on the part of content providers in terms of pricing. With memory stick prices now low enough that owning a multi-GB stick is quite possible, the idea of pushing movies on UMD versus some sort of digital download solution may seem silly, but at the point of the PSP's release, such an idea wasn't completely feasible.
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I also feel that Sony should have kept the MD for the PSP. They had 1GB discs available so it's not like the tech wasn't there. I think the problem was that Sony felt people would have been using MD burners for pirating games.
 
O

Oni Jazar

Member
Ignatz Mouse said:
I am certain of it. What on that list could possible cause them to?

We'll end the year with the YTD ratio equal to or better than it is now. I'll bet it moves a couple of points: 63:37.
Click to expand...

Well Bourne would be the only major threat, although I agree it's a slim to none chance.
 
F

Flo_Evans

Member
borghe said:
This is a bullshit argument created by competition. No one has ever been scared away by drastically falling prices. The argument has always stemmed that lowering prices drastically causes the consumer to think fire sale and back away. The truth is that cases where drastically lowering prices has been followed by disinterest or even greater atrophy has always directly correlated with an inability to follow through.

People love to cite the DC mass price reduction, but then fail to mention the serious new release drought that immediately preceded it. People love to mention the GCN $99 price drop but then conveniently leave out that Nintendo never followed through with any sort of marketing or 3rd party push.

What happened when the first $50 DVD players were released when most name brands were still selling at $120? What happened when the first $99 players were released when most name brands were still coming in closer to $250? The Wii is mentioned here, yet nothing is said about the fact that the Wii has some seriously killer apps lined up behind it.

Fire sales don't kill products. Fire sales with nothing propping up the price tag kill products. And while HD-DVD is certainly lacking some big names this fall, they have a few of their own big names to counter it. I'm not defending or supporting the format war, but this talk of Toshiba hurting HD-DVDs position by positioning affordable hardware is just outright stupid. Being able to walk into Best Buy and grabbing a player plus 3-4 movies and going home to watch them for under $300 is in no possible way a bad thing. And having to pay $500 to say the same thing about a blu-ray player and movies in no way shape or form makes it inherently better. Let's at least try to use some common sense in this argument.
Click to expand...

You could not be more wrong! http://www.killianadvertising.com/wp3.html

For an established brand, discounting can have an adverse affect on value.
Quality and price do not exist as isolated concepts in consumers’ minds. They are interrelated. Research has shown that deep discounts do cause the consumer to believe that something is wrong. Frequent discounting serves to lower the value of the brand because of an almost subconscious reaction by the consumer who believes that quality also has been lowered (remember shirts with alligators on them?) Or, in a “value rebound,” consumers begin to perceive the everyday price as too high. The brand is then bought only on deal.
Click to expand...
 
O

OokieSpookie

Banned
Oni Jazar said:
Well Bourne would be the only major threat, although I agree it's a slim to none chance.
Click to expand...

Not even honestly.
The week we are in is the only chance that HD has to win a week.
Blu has nothing worth noting , no real sales, and the hd forum has attempted to do one of their buy days this week.
If they can not win this week it is honestly pathetic.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
I doubt that the sale at Walmart hurt the brand much. However, it didn't do anythign to adoption rates, either, and it certainly doesn't make any room for other manufacturers to make other models.
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
Sony's ATRAC and their memory stick stuff is also in the junk pile. In a world of compact flash and SD I don't think Sony needed to create their own format.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
Oni Jazar said:
Well Bourne would be the only major threat, although I agree it's a slim to none chance.
Click to expand...

Bourne impact will be lost in the HP volume. And that will probably be another 2:1 split for Blu-ray.

Ook: What's out on HD-DVD to make a "buy week" have any attraction?
 
O

OokieSpookie

Banned
Ignatz Mouse said:
Bourne impact will be lost in the HP volume. And that will probably be another 2:1 split for Blu-ray.

Ook: What's out on HD-DVD to make a "buy week" have any attraction?
Click to expand...
From what I could make out in the drivel it is not the fact that red had anything coming out, it was the fact that it was the only week blu seemed vulnerable.
Bourne is a great movie but between week 2 of Pirates plus Harry Potter it will get destroyed.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
OokieSpookie said:
From what I could make out in the drivel it is not the fact that red had anything coming out, it was the fact that it was the only week blu seemed vulnerable.
Click to expand...

People who think like this are right up there with the "I went to Walmart to talk people out of buying a player" folks.
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Flo_Evans said:
You could not be more wrong! http://www.killianadvertising.com/wp3.html
Click to expand...
the entire problem with the article is that they are just putting a wide blanket over "consumers equate price to quality." This completely discounts situations where consumers were adversely dissuaded because of high pricing, or where the market for a particular product generally spans a large range of pricing to begin with not to mention the discount being talked about. It's easy to say "When everyone prices their widgets at $500, the manufacturer pricing their widgets at $75 will ward consumers off due to fear of an inferior product."

But by taking that site's theory to the extreme, When everyone prices their widgets at $500 and one company prices them at $450, that's discounting and the second company will be hurt by it, when in practice any retailer knows that the $50 will typically lead to better sales.

This is way to grey of an area to come in with a sweeping generalization, and I think in a market where consumers are already used to having $50, $99, $150, and $199 players, spanning 400% pricing difference, that they understand prices will be different. Is the $199 price going to scare away a techie consumer? Of course it is... in that respect the price drop is disadvantageous.. but for every techie consumer scared off by perceptible low quality, how many more consumers will it bring on less concerned about quality than the techie?

There are definitely exceptions to what I was saying.. I was more or less directly talking about the $199 players. The same as there are PLENTY of exceptions to what that marketing site claims. I mean it makes no clearer statement to what I'm saying than the fact that the $99 players sold out instantly and the $199 players have seen a sustained increase in sales. There is no "brand" here. The HD-DVD player isn't the brand and arguably neither is the format which it plays. It's the content. People want the movies, not the players. The players are just a means to play those movies, and as long as Shrek 3, Bourne Ultimatum, Knocked Up, Harry Potter, Transformers, etc are available to be purchased the less the consumer has to pay to get access to these movies the better.

The only problem that exists with Toshiba's blowout pricing is on their bottom line.. but that's their problem. If they can sustain the subsidy, more power to them..

Warm Machine said:
Sony's ATRAC and their memory stick stuff is also in the junk pile. In a world of compact flash and SD I don't think Sony needed to create their own format.
Click to expand...
Memory Stick was created because at the time Sony started on it there was no good flash standard on the market with built in security. IIRC the main problem was the SDCA made it cheaper and/or easier (don't remember which) to license SD use than sony did to license mem stick use not to mention SD was just usually flat out cheaper for the consumer. Still the memstick was needed just as much as SD. Just SD did better at execution.
 
F

Flo_Evans

Member
Ignatz Mouse said:
I doubt that the sale at Walmart hurt the brand much. However, it didn't do anythign to adoption rates, either, and it certainly doesn't make any room for other manufacturers to make other models.
Click to expand...

ah but it does... Now instead of going out and buying a HD-DVD player for $300, joe blow is going to wait until they are $99 again at walmart.

This has been show time and time again, esp in the case of luxury products like HD media players.
 
V

VanMardigan

has calmed down a bit.
Buy days have never worked. Not even when the market was smaller. Now that the top movies are routinely going over 100k, buy days are more irrelevant than ever. On both sides.
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Flo_Evans said:
ah but it does... Now instead of going out and buying a HD-DVD player for $300, joe blow is going to wait until they are $99 again at walmart.
Click to expand...
it's like saying no one is going to buy a BRD until another bogo deal hits. while there will always be people who hold off looking for THE deal, most make decisions much more spontaneously, especially when prices dip below $200, $100, and $50.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
Borghe, I mostly agree with you, but there is some reason why the $500 Blu-ray players outsold the $300 HD-DVD players for a while earlier this year. The PS3 effect may explain some of the differences in movie sales, but it doesn't account for why people would buy a higher-priced player-only model. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. People *do* care about which format they're buying, not just which player is the cheapest.
 
C

Christoff Yurievich

Member
Gary Whitta said:
I think the kid's full given name is something like Toshi Darklighter Yavin. Poor bastard.
Click to expand...
mind = boggled.
borghe said:
it's like saying no one is going to buy a BRD until another bogo deal hits. while there will always be people who hold off looking for THE deal, most make decisions much more spontaneously, especially when prices dip below $200, $100, and $50.
Click to expand...
what you guys are talking about is similar to what is happening with cars right now. people are being conditioned to buy only during sales and the sales data backs this up. It doesn't happen all the time but it does happen most of the time. It is a problem with Detroit and it could be a problem with HD-DVD.
 
O

OokieSpookie

Banned
scan0001.jpg
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Ignatz Mouse said:
People *do* care about which format they're buying, not just which player is the cheapest.
Click to expand...
we actually agree almost 100%. they care about the movies available, and the bottom line is that BRD has a more overall appealing slate to the mass market. that is why they were buying $500 BRD players over $300 HD-DVD players. Not because they perceived a better quality in the BRD players but because at the end the players were just a gateway to pass through to what they really wanted, the movies. If HD-DVD and BRD had the exact same content day and date, I guarantee HD-DVD would have won this war already on the backs of $299, $199, and $99 players.

As for the $500 BRP vs. $500 PS3... again this comes down to brand perception and nothign to do with price. Mass consumers view video game machines as inferior media players. The SegaCD, PSX and Saturn were crappy CD players, the PS2 and XBox were crappy DVD players, and the PS3 is a crappy BRD player. Of course we know this not to be the case, but after this being ingrained into the consumer mindset for the past, oh, 15 years it's a hard track record to get over.

edit - and yes I realize that BRD outsells the same movie on HD-DVD, but the studio damage has already been done and the perception is there. I am simply saying that if both formats had ALL movies available day and date from day one, the format with the cheaper player would have won already.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
Warm Machine said:
Sony's ATRAC and their memory stick stuff is also in the junk pile. In a world of compact flash and SD I don't think Sony needed to create their own format.
Click to expand...

ATRAC existed as the actual audio format on Minidiscs, it wasn't conceived as a general format to compete with anything. It also goes back to 1991 or so, so it's not like they trotted it out to trump wma or whatever.

Memory Stick has been covered.

And again, you have to balance their failures against their successes, which include Compact Disc and a part in DVD.

Borghe: Yeah, I think we agree. I do think there are some ill effects of the $99 player, but overall, it helped them in that it got them mindshare and a lot of players out there. It just doesn't seem to have been *enough* players to counter similar increses in Blu-ray player sales (from price drops on PS3 and other players).
 
A

acklame

Member
Ignatz Mouse said:
Good god, they cite the Walmart excuse! The clearer the divide, the more silly things people will come up with to try to counter it.
Click to expand...
:lol
If they included Walmart, Blu-ray's percentage would've been even higher. Walmart had 10 free blu-rays deal with purchase of PS3 during black friday. That would've skew the Blu domination to even more ridiculous level.
 
C

Christoff Yurievich

Member
OokieSpookie said:
scan0001.jpg
Click to expand...
oh why do they use that horrible cover for Fight Club? it's just awful. and Ghostbusters? yes.

after reading that Rob Liefeld thing earlier, it looks like he was responsible for the Fight Club cover since the arm is coming out of nowhere.
 
F

Flo_Evans

Member
borghe said:
it's like saying no one is going to buy a BRD until another bogo deal hits. while there will always be people who hold off looking for THE deal, most make decisions much more spontaneously, especially when prices dip below $200, $100, and $50.
Click to expand...

But that is also true, I have held off on buying plenty of blu-rays waiting for the next BOGO deal :D

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1790 < good article on long term vs. short term sales

Sales and discounts do work in the short-term, but over time are not really that good for your product. Both sides have lots of special offers and promotions, but toshiba has hit the clearance button far to early IMHO. They can still turn it around, but I think the $99 walmart player will do more harm then good in the 'war' as a whole.
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Ignatz Mouse said:
Borghe: Yeah, I think we agree. I do think there are some ill effects of the $99 player, but overall, it helped them in that it got them mindshare and a lot of players out there. It just doesn't seem to have been *enough* players to counter similar increses in Blu-ray player sales (from price drops on PS3 and other players).
Click to expand...
because at the end of it, pricing is NOWHERE near as important as having Fox, Disney, and Sony exclusively not to mention Warner as a bipartisan. The bottom line is that if you have to go with BRD only you will only be missing Uni and Viacom, whereas if you have to go with HD-DVD exclusively you end up losing Fox, Disney, and Sony which like it or not are just bigger studios individually than the other two.
 
R

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
bune duggy said:
I also feel that Sony should have kept the MD for the PSP. They had 1GB discs available so it's not like the tech wasn't there. I think the problem was that Sony felt people would have been using MD burners for pirating games.
Click to expand...

I believe transfer rate was the main issue. MD was designed for audio, and getting a backwards compatible version that had the necessary specs was more trouble than it was worth.

It would have been nice though.
 
R

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
Warm Machine said:
Sony's ATRAC and their memory stick stuff is also in the junk pile. In a world of compact flash and SD I don't think Sony needed to create their own format.
Click to expand...

ATRAC is better than MP3 at similar file sizes ... so why shouldn't they have brought it out? Plus, it was originally used for MD, not as a general encoding format.

As for memory stick, as mentioned ... there wasn't a secure format available at the time.



It not like Sony brought out these things for the hell of it, just in the hopes of stealing market share. They offered things that were better than the other formats (which you can't really say were standardized at the time anyway).
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
bune duggy said:
what you guys are talking about is similar to what is happening with cars right now. people are being conditioned to buy only during sales and the sales data backs this up. It doesn't happen all the time but it does happen most of the time. It is a problem with Detroit and it could be a problem with HD-DVD.
Click to expand...
ooohh.. didn't see this. It's much different with cars though, given how model years work and the overstock most of these dealers are left with in order to keep a full lot. No area of CE works so timely in either model years nor the regular and expected scheduling of sales (aside from holidays). The practice you're talking about in the automotive industry has been building up for almost 30 years. It has more to do with how our parents, us and our kids have known the industry for our entire lives rather than just how we are trained to respond to sales. hell, I can vividly remember local and national "Model Year Closeout" ads back on Nick at Nite in the 80's when I was a kid.
 
C

Christoff Yurievich

Member
borghe said:
ooohh.. didn't see this. It's much different with cars though, given how model years work and the overstock most of these dealers are left with in order to keep a full lot. No area of CE works so timely in either model years nor the regular and expected scheduling of sales (aside from holidays). The practice you're talking about in the automotive industry has been building up for almost 30 years. It has more to do with how our parents, us and our kids have known the industry for our entire lives rather than just how we are trained to respond to sales. hell, I can vividly remember local and national "Model Year Closeout" ads back on Nick at Nite in the 80's when I was a kid.
Click to expand...
HD-DVD players don't have model years? ;) and yeah, I know it's not a perfect 1:1 example of what's being argued but it's close. Basically, someone is arguing that the low prices will condition people to buy only during sales.

sorry, sometimes I think out loud and I accidentally type it out too. I'll stop adding to the argument. :)
 
D

dallow_bg

nods at old men
shidoshi said:
Beta was part of the first real push for home video formats, and there was absolutely no clear cut "standard" early on. Plus, if we're going to bash Sony for trying to push their own format, let's also bash MCA for LaserDisc, RCA for CED, Philips for Video 2000, and hell, JVC for VHS.
Click to expand...
Hey, don't bash a medium that has been around 30 years and has over 43,000 discs in it's catalog.

We can only hope the same for HD.
 
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