We went to the HDTV Conference and today's podcast is all about what we heard. We heard from Warner Brothers, ESPN, and CBS. We also listened to two panels, one that was comprised of retailers and the other had representatives from Blu Ray and HD DVD camps. We went long with this one because there was so much information. We hope you enjoy it!
HDTV Conference Facts
By 2010 90% of the homes in North America will have HDTV (60% worldwide)
The audience was asked, "How many HDTVs do you own?"
(corrected)
- None - 53%
-
One - 30%
- Two - 11%
- Three - 6%
If you don't own one why not
- Prices too high - 53%
- Not enough Content - 11%
If you own a HDTV are you satisfied with it?
- No - 6%
- Some what 40%
- Enthusiast 53%
If not satisfied why
- Not enough programming 52%
Warner Brothers
They are looking for a way to get more mileage out of their
library. They feel HD makes good business sense to get you to spend
your money on older shows. They showed a clip from Gilligan's Island
that was scanned from the original negative. It looked very good. You
could see that the plants looked like plastic. Then they showed a HD
transfer of friends tat did not look like much of an improvement. The
basic theme was that HD could generate more revenue. They showed that
there was demand for the content on illegal download sites so somebody
wants it. They are worried about piracy though. Having pristine copies
in the hands of pirates could cut into revenue. Simple solution, in our
opinion, sell it cheap!
As far as Warner's take on the HD DVD vs Blu Ray debate. There
is no difference in quality from a spec point of view. So any quality
issues are due to the process. When asked what would cause Warner to
stop releasing in both formats their reply was. The Market. If there is
a clear cut winner Warner will stop releasing both formats.
ESPN
They
showed the open "Are you ready for some Football" for Monday night
football. It was very cool! You can tell ESPN is all about HD now. They
feel HD brings viewers and with more viewers they can charge more for
commercials. So by the Transitive property of equality. HDTV equals
more money! They had some cool stats to back that up.
22% of non sports fans watch more sports because of HDTV
22% of sports fans watch sports they normally would not watch because of HD
They
want to see sports bars get HD feeds to put on their flat panel
displays. They feel that watching standard definition programming
stretched does HDTV a disservice. Patrons will say, Whats the big deal
about HDTV not realizing that they are not watching SDTV.
Every college and pro football game on ESPN will be in HD this year!
They
are building a west coast studio for late night sports center primarily
as a redundant studio but also to counter that the west coast thinks
ESPN has an East coats bias.
CBS
CBS has a
provision in their contract that cable and satellite operators carry
the entire 19Mb digital signal. No compression is allowed! They are all
about quality of picture. They reiterated that starting in September
Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy will be distributed in HD. No word on
who will transmit it in HD though. Also, starting in September CBS
owned and operated stations will begin to do news in HD. They estimate
it will take 18 months for all stations to go HD.
CBS is all about 1080p. They feel watching there picture on a
720p TV is a reduction in quality. People forget that there are 1920 X
1080 pixels to fill. On a 720p TV you lose horizontal pixels because
they are at 1280 X 720. At a frame rate of 24 frames a second, which is
what movies and dramatic series are shot at 1080i OTA scales very well
to 1080p.
A cool fact that they stated - Shooting on film costs $70 a
minute when you include film, processing and converting to HD. Shooting
on HD Video is much cheaper ( they did not specify by how much) and its
all digital. Most TV series are going to shoot on video for the cost
savings.
Retailer Panel
My
biggest take away from this panel is that the retails are upset with
the quality of Blu Ray DVDs. They have seen the potential of what Blu
Ray can do but the first crop of BR discs look bad. We have said the
same thing in the past. They say there is not much of an improvement
over regular DVD. In their opinion the biggest reason for the poor
quality is a rush to get the product out. They feel that by 2007 you
will start seeing Blu Ray live up to its potential. Until then its a
hard sell for them.
They feel that the new movies coming out, we mean new
material not library, will be better because it is mastered with HD in
mind. The older stuff needs to be remasters and quite frankly they feel
that the original negatives were not used.
Next Generation DVD Panel
A question was asked of the audience - What is the most you would pay for a next gen DVD player
- $600 - $800 5%
- $400 - $600 21%
- $200 - $400 54%
- < $200 20%
Will you wait for the format war to end before buying?
Who will win the war?
- HD - DVD 3%
- Blu Ray 28%
- Both 68%
Both
camps were given time to talk about their solutions. Nothing new was
given. It was we are better because. The bottom line is most people
(not you reading or listening to this) won't care about who has the
better specs. The quality issues will be resolved very soon so then it
comes down to content. Who has more and better titles. Bottom line. A
dual format player will rule.
