Survey says: 78 percent want HD
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Jun 19th 2007 10:45AM
posted Jun 19th 2007 10:45AM
We just love surveys with obvious results like people don't like wars and everyone wants an HDTV. What the results should have said was: 78 percent want HD, 22 percent are too cheap to admit it. The other interesting note about this survey is that people are still confused about HDTV, as they should be. Seriously, it is a full time job to keep up, but like most complicated things in life, you don't have to understand it to enjoy it. Asking people about HDTV technology in a survey is like asking people to explain fuel injection in an automotive survey. Since when do you have to understand why your car is fast to enjoy driving fast? In the end, we don't care; just keep buying those HDTVs to help bring down the cost for the rest of us.
I sell TV's for a living. I can't even begin to hear the rediculous things people say.
Customers think anything. Plasmas have to be recharged, refueled, that you have to REFILL the gas because they "leak." I also get the question "So what's the difference between HDTV and plasma?"
The average consumer is absolutely retarded and I can only educate so many people.
Friends don't let friends think retarded things about HDTV.
I agree. I spend a lot of time re-educating my friends who are completely misinformed about HD (or technology in general). And I have to bite my lip every time I'm in a electronics store and hear the salesperson tell another customer something completely inaccurate about the TV or next-gen player they are looking at. Sometimes the information will probably cost them a sale instead of help them make one. I help those I can and pray for the rest.
Yeah, that's what it was like when colour TV came out ... some people cared, but most people didn't feel like buying a new TV. It was hyped to hell, and became the standard. That's what will happen with this ... but those remaining 12% will end up getting low res cheap crap - because they don't care about the quality, they care about the quantity. How many episodes of Dr. Phil can I get each day?
The good part of it, though, is that the people who care about HD tend to have the same taste in TV ... so we get excellent shows like Dead Like Me, Law and Order, CSI: Miami, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, Stargate, Star Trek: Enterprise, etc ... all in HD. We don't have to flip through 45 stations playing Dr. Phil, soap operas and Oprah all day long.
Sort of like it works with bittorrent ... most people who know how to torrent have the same taste in TV shows and movies, music, etc ... so we get access to all the cool stuff we like. Try finding a Dr. Phil torrent ... I dare you. :-)
Um, I don't like any of that stuff. That's probably why I watch mostly SD programming.
I think one of the big things holding HD back is the prevalence of "HD programming" and lack of "quality programming". Watching birds fly over a river in HD was cute for the first week, but I want to watch the shows I watch in SD, but I want HD quality.
the reason everyone is so un-knowing about HD/HDTV/PLASMA/LCD/whatever else there is is because they are all fairly new terms to the population that doesn't have a clue about technology in the first place. All the marketing hype is adding to the confusion.
Keep on teaching because there will never be an end to those who remain clueless.
True, but NTSC has been around for decades. How many people know what NTSC is?
Most people think electricity comes from the wall socket and springs into existence with you flip the switch.
But that's the marketplace and you can blame your customer or you can teach them. And the last person to teach them is a techie who doesn't understand how they think.
What the industry needs to do is forget company advantage and create a learning video that they jointly put in every store. Something that explains things in layman's terms and presents the trade-offs honestly and clearly without getting into brands or formats. Then let them make an informed choice.
The industry could also spend a bit of time integrating the HDTV mess. A first step would be a unified remote control spec. There is no reason to have 8 remotes on the coffee table and the complexity of the setup is the biggest turn-off for the 90% who just want it to work and don't want to think about it.
I've found that most consumers are luddites until slick marketing tells them they have to have something. No one needed a digital music player until Apple told them they needed an iPod.
Think about mobile phones. When things like text messaging and mobile internet came out, all I heard was people saying "I just want to make phone calls, I don't want all this crap". Now we all have Blackberries and Blackjacks and iPhones and we live and die by text message.
Camera phones? Same deal. Nowadays you actually have to go out of your way to find a phone that doesn't have a camera on it. There's a small percentage of people who still complain about that stuff, but they're in the minority.
To most people, HDTV = more money. These are your basic cable subscribers. They want to get their local networks. They don't want digital, they don't want HD, they don't want anything that's going to cost them anything additional. They are perfectly happy with what they have.
However, these are ALSO the same people who come over to my house, see the HDTV, and marvel at the "picture quality". And for some reason, they still can't put the "picture quality" and "HDTV" together.
I bet there's still folks out there who prefer just Black and White TV.
You think you get stupid questions. Try working for Comca....er.... the biggestcable company
SuperChuck, I agree! Ive got a buddy who is really upset at his CRT HDTV by RCA...with a SD cable box. He comes to my house and wonders how I get such crystal clear images on my Samsung 1080p DLP with HD cable box. I tried explaining this to him - but he refuses to shell out the extra $ and now thinks he was 'scammed' into buying the particular TV he bought.
"In the end, we don't care; just keep buying those HDTVs to help bring down the cost for the rest of us."
How does higher demand equal lower prices? I understand the effect of economies of scale, but the price of a High End Sony XBR TV is not dictated by manufacturing cost at this point, it's dictated by the demand.
If you want to bring prices down, tell people ignore the good (expensive) hdtv's and only buy olevia and westinghouse.
My father (68 yrs old, God Bless him!) bought an HDTV about a year ago. I flew home for a weekend and he was so proud of it. He was told that all of his channels would be HD. Sigh. He does have a cable card, so I called up Charter Communications to see if he had any HD programming subscriptions - nope, none, nada. I than ordered it for him at a pretty reasonable $5 since he had the cable card. Than I had to show him where the channels were (in the 800s) on his "dial" and thought to myself "He'll never watch because it's not channel 3, 8, and 13" (his local network affiliates). I showed him the difference and wrote down the channels on a sticky note.
It's amazing, because he will hardly watch non-HD programming any more. He sees the incredible difference and complains about SD programs. How funny is that? Of course this is the same guy who wouldn't touch a PC and now is an internet surfer and sends me scads of "FW" e-mails!
Fundamentally, the networks would do well to craft some 30 second spots on HD and air them regulalry. I saw my first HD set in 1994 at the National Assoc of Broadcasters convention. It was a Sony Analog and it was miraculous.
From the tmcnet.com article:
> “Multiple research findings, including our
> survey results released today, reveal the
> incredible influence women have on home
> electronics purchases,” said Daniel Lee,
> vice president of marketing for the
> consumer electronics unit of Hitachi America.
I REALLY REALLY hope that these companies don't think that women are THAT interested in HDTV's. Those research findings come from married guys...
"Honey, can we get an HDTV?"
"NO!"
"Honey, can we get an HDTV?"
"NO!"
"Honey, can we get an HDTV?"
"NO!"
"Honey, can we get an HDTV?"
"Okay, fine! Whatever!"