Is confusion slowing HDTV sales?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jan 16th 2006 7:42PM
posted Jan 16th 2006 7:42PM
That's the question posed by this Mercury News article. The actual title references HDTV's being
available since 1998, which I don't think is really fair because they haven't been priced within reach of the major
audience until the last two or three years. While confusion has definitely slowed adoption, I can't even count the
number of times I've heard people say conflicting and erroneous facts regarding HDTV, the biggest barrier is price and
it is continuing to come down. As the price hurdle falls, yes, consumer education will probably be one of the largest difficulties but hopefully people can find sites like this one, or any of the resources manufacturers and content providers are creating. As more people see high definition TV's in their friends homes and programming increases, they'll want it for themselves and be able to get it. Of course, then we have to make sure they are actually watching high definition TV, but one step at a time.
It certainly is not helping. Most people have no clue what lcd, hdtv, plasma, edtv, etc., means. They really have not made the whole HDTV industry easy to understand to the average person, but Im not sure what they could do at this point to make it much better.
I pretty much experienced this "Paralysis" today at best buy. I went in trying to figure out which tv I wanted for my xbox 360 (yes ive read the how to guide here, thanks). Ive narrowed it down to the sony LCD 50a10 and the Samsung 5067w. I stared at both of them for about an hour, talked about options, stared some more. the sammy is about 400.00 less, but I still couldnt decide. Im terrified of making the wrong choice! And with new and better dlp and other tech coming soon, that makes the second guessing worse!
"As more people see high definition TV's in their friends homes and programming increases, they'll want it for themselves" ... I'm not so sure. 'As more people see high definition TV's in their friends homes and programming increases, they "So what?"
Though maybe the 'confusion' is slowing down sales, knowing their present TVs soon won't work is making up for any possible difference. If the government wasn't forcing standard TV out, people would continue watching standard TV as long or longer than people listen to AM radio or even shortwave. Unfortunately, that's the biggest reason people are switching to HDTV.
Believe it or not, some people just don't care about HDTV. My parents watch Ti-vo analog cable on the lowest setting, and play it back on the crappiest TV imaginable. I think it is unwatchable, they don't even know the difference. Watching my HDTV has had little effect on them.