Nielsen reports: 23% of US households have an HDTV
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 11th 2008 11:29AM
posted Dec 11th 2008 11:29AM
[Via AdWeek]
posted Dec 11th 2008 11:29AM
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It's probably more like 40% have them, but only 23% of them have them hooked up properly.
I see it daily, hell what is the most mind boggling thing is when I see an HDTV with a HD-DVR for it connected with composite cables!!! Better yet I've seen the same thing with regard to blu-ray players too, it saddens and hurts me at the same time.
The linked article says:
"Nielsen’s estimates are based on a field staff review that identified TV sets capable of receiving and displaying high definition pictures, as well as those that are actually receiving those signals."
Which means
a) it has nothing to do with hookups
b) you should read the linked articles before you make assumptions.
But I like assumptions...
I know what you're saying, all i'm saying is that i'm in homes from 1-3 times a day, 3-5 per week looking at these setups. I see lots of homes with sometimes 3-4 HDTV's, and only 1 hooked up to any kind of HD service, let alone a OTA antenna. Most are just hooked up to a dvd player with cable directly from the wall going into them.
No wonder Blu-Ray sales are minimal. DVD is here to stay and by the time we hit at least 50% of people owning HDTVs, digital downloads will be in full swing. This is very clearly one of the reasons why Blu-Ray will never replace DVD in it's lifetime.
9-10% of disc sales with peaks as high as 20% for big releases like the Dark Knight are hardly "minimal". There are tons of companies that would LOVE to have the kind of revenue stream.
Minimalist said: "9-10% of disc sales with peaks as high as 20% for big releases like the Dark Knight are hardly "minimal"."
It's very disappointing that you are one example of falling and using some quasi number as Blu-Ray not being just a ding in the DVD sales.
Please.. 20% of what? 9-10% of disc sales of what? I would suggest you do the math and look at what is in comparison and how those high percentage markers are done and then go and see how many copies of Dark Knight were sold on DVD worldwide and compare that to Blu-Ray.. that's THE ONLY real number you should be looking at instead of that garbage BDA PR that they use to masquerade REAL comparison.
Blu-Ray with a few million players and a few million copies sold in a year is MINIMAL in comparison to hundreds of millions of DVD players and billions of copies sold.
Try to actually understand what you are reading and interpreting before you defend it with your life and enthusiasm.
And even if Dark Knight is being sold at 9-10% or even 20% of DVD version it doesn't mean squat as proof of Blu-Ray growing because DVD audience is so diverse and large that comparison of titles sold that only work for Blu-Ray/PS3 target audience and then doing the chest thumping as getting close to DVD is utterly ignorant and ridiculous. While Batman might've sold a few percent of DVD version of Dark Knight, DVD sold 100x more of different titles as well so the whole comparison is completely retarded.
Yes, I'm aware its US, Canadian and UK sales. 10% of those markets is still a hell of a lot of money. You can play fanboy games, skewing the numbers to support your theories that "blu-ray is dead" all you want.
Meanwhile, the studios are laughing all the way to the bank because 10% of any market is still a healthy profit.
Digital Downloads will never replace physical media in our lifetime. Movie studios like physical media because they can justify a premium for content, consumers like it because virtual assets still freak people out, bandwidth is still a major issue for most consumers, capacity to store a movie library with the same fidelity as Blu-ray is not practical nor economical.
Think about, say for simplicity sake that each movie to have the same features and quality as blu-ray needs 50Gb disc/space. If you have a 100 movie library, that's 5000Gb or 5 Terabytes storage requirement. Now I know HD prices are coming down and you probably could get a 5 TB storage rack for $1000 or so (just guessing). That's just for 100 movies!!! Perhaps compression would get you some extra space but that's not the point. The point is 50 Gb of HD storage space costs far more to purchase and then maintain than 50Gb of BD Disc space especially if you consider HD's are far more likely to fail than a BD disc, so now we're talking about a backup strategy or if possible redownload from the source (which takes up more bandwidth requirements over time).
All this is moot though when the download cheerleader is willing to compromise quality for convenience and that's the crux of the problem. Download is fine for rentals, but if I plan to buy a movie, I want it perfect quality and I want to physically own the source.
The only solution I see for downloads is the ability to download and then master your own 100% quality BD copy but why spend the money on bandwidth, BD burners, PC, etc when I can spend $15-$25 for the nicely packaged and decorated originals at Walmart!!!
Enough with the Digital Download fantasies!!!
You say composite, I say component. Tomato/tomatt-o. Potato/potatt-o.
No, I mean composite as in the old school red/yellow/white. If they were connecting with component cables at least they'd be getting their picture in HD.
I find this really hard to believe. Everyone buying a new TV at this point has to have at least one HDTV. In my personal experience, all my friends coming out of college bought a new HDTV for their new house or apartment, I have two, and even my grandmother just bought one! The least technically people I know all have a nice 42+" flat panel. I don't get this stat...
Bah. This just proves how out of touch the Nielsen families are.
Let's get some new families to pull your data from instead of letting these stone-agers choose what should stay on tv.
I've got two HDTV's. Both hooked up via HDMI to various boxes (Roku, PS3, HR21) thank you very much. I'm also participate in the Nielsen ratings. I'm pretty sure they're pretty good at running what the do and I'm fairly sure they try to get a decent cross-section of the viewing populace.
I know what a composite cable is. My comment was intended as a joke from the point of view of an uneducated consumer.
Does anyone even know someone who is hooked up to these Nielsen ratings? It's like a political exit poll. No-one has ever been asked anything when they exit the polls.
Sorry, that's my bad...You never know.
I was last summer. But I didn't have HD at the time. Used my 15 bucks to buy some groceries. :)
My guess in the Raleigh/Durham/Cary, Chapel Jill area about 40% have HDTV's.
I know it's pretty darn high. Almost every single neighbor has one in my neighborhood.
Sales are not minimal. And it's quite obvious that sales of HDTVs are only going to rise substantially with each passing year and Blu with it. Sales of SD will be completely dead in 5 years if for no other reason than it will be impossible to even find an SD set.
This was addressed to Bozster
Sales are just a ding in DVD sales still which I was addressing.. That whole ridiculous measurement where they are getting 10% of DVD sales is ridiculous as well. They are comparing only top 20 titles and then comparing revenue of the sales. How can you even say that and not laugh at that comparison in general.
As I answered Minimalist up there, compare total sales of Dark Knight on DVD worldwide and compare it to Blu-Ray. That's the real number for THIS title. It's natural it will be high for Blu-ray because of it's heavy PS3 demographic.
To say that Blu-Ray sales in comparison to DVD sales overall are NOT minimal is laughable really.
And by the time 50% of consumers have HDTVs in the next 2-3 years (at best), digital download services will be at full swing and that leads me to believe that Blu-Ray has absolutely no chance of replacing DVD as DVD will be on the market for A LONG time for those who will not have HDTV and quite possibly some of those who have it but don't want to pay for Blu-ray.
btw, it's not just digital downloads.. in the next few years consumers will have a plethora of choices. From cable providers and satellite providers who even today are starting to offer 1080p HD movies on demand like we've seen, growing digital downloads and who knows what else, Blu-Ray will cease to be the only HD source which is certainly not helping.
Listen, I don't hate Blu-Ray.. I enjoy it thouroughly and have a huge collection myself and 2 players and PS3 but I'm realistic and I know that I'm not regular consumer and neither most people here and that's why I think there's a huge disconnect in logic. Everybody cheers for Blu-ray to succeed but reality is a different story.
You have to be objective in the way things are. All the percentages we've seen for Blu-Ray so far are smudged or specially interpreted to give an illusion of growth but it's not growing as fast as everyone wants.
At the best day again with great releases, Blu-Ray sales even at that ridiculous percentage comparison are at 10%. Anything 10% and under is by definition minimal any way you look at it if it was REAL 10% of sold units and not some silly revenue comparison for only a handful of titles.
Sales of standard def televisions is ALREADY dead.
Bozter,
1080p on Satellite or Cable doesn't mean it is Blu-ray quality HD. I'm still amazed at how much obvious compression artifacts are polluting my HD signals from DirecTV and previously Timewarner Cable. You simply cannot recreate the quality you get from BD with streaming sources with current technology. Both Satellite and Cable have bandwidth issues, internet sources suffer the same. Pushing that much data over existing networks is just not feasible right now in mass consumer market, especially when you have ISP's considering bandwidth caps and metered usage charges.
My parents have an HDTV and have never once, to my knowledge, had any kind of HD signal on it. They watch the same crappy SD Dish network box & VCR/DVD all stretched out and horrible looking and they ooh and ahh at how awesome their "HDTV" looks. I keep harassing them to upgrade but they just don't think there's anything wrong with it and have no interest in spending any more money for an HD package or a new receiver.
How is it possible then that literally 90% of the households that I know personally are rocking HD?