More big titles are being released on Blu-ray at the same time as to DVD.
According to a recent report by Futuresource, a consulting company that did a survey on how many of us copy DVDs a while ago, the high-definition disc markets in both the U.S. and Europe continue to perform very well, thanks to the fact that the world shifted to one format--Blu-ray--at the beginning of the year.
Currently, taking only big titles into account, the share of total sales being taken by Blu-ray has already hit 5 percent to 6 percent. By the end of the year, this share is estimated to be more than 10 percent. With many hot title releases planned, it is expected that by the end of this year, consumers will purchased to up 45 million Blu-ray Discs in the U.S. alone (a 400 percent increase from last year).
In Europe, on the other hand, awareness and uptake are still lower overall, although in the key markets the retailers and the studios are reacting to an uplift in interest this year and are gearing up for a good end to 2008.
The latest analysis from Futuresource suggests that by 2012, between 40 percent and 50 percent of consumer spending on video discs will be allocated to Blu-ray thanks to the fact that Blu-ray players are getting more popular and more affordable.
It's software like Nero that makes copying optical media content so easy.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)Yeah, I know, it hit me as a surprise too. However, that's one of the findings found in a recent Consumer Home Piracy market research study carried out by Futuresource Consulting and sponsored by Macrovision.
The study was done in May 2008 in the U.S. and the U.K. with the sample size of more than 5,000 people. As it turns out, one-third of all the respondents in both countries admit to having made copies of prerecorded DVDs, on average about 13 titles each, in the last six months, up from just over a quarter of respondents in 2007. At this rate, before you know it, most of us will be copying DVDs.
The survey goes deeper and analyzes other information about the copiers, from their age, the kind of entertainment they would copy, to the method they use to get the job done and so on.
One of the motivations for the study is to find out the reason for the studios' decline in sale revenues of DVDs since the end of 2007. (Though the sale of Blu-ray media already largely offset it). It's interesting, though, the fact that the study didn't ask any questions about the consumers' renting habit (apparently they have to do this in order to make copies), but focus mostly to find out why the consumers would not buy more DVDs. What the studios want us to do is go see the movie in the theater, then rent the movie again to watch it at home, then go buy a Blu-ray copy of it, and while we are at it, buy a DVD copy of it, too. And they seems somewhate reasonable as most of the study's respondents indeed did admit that they would go buy the DVDs if they couldn't copy them.
In conclusion, the study showed that as studios' revenues from DVDs are in decline, protecting revenues is even more vital than 12 months ago. This basically means they don't feel like they are making enough money, and there's no definitive definition to what enough is.
So, who's to blame and what's the solution? I don't know and leave the answer to those who are directly concerned by the matter. If you are one of them, you can get the full report of the study by contacting Macrovison at cmurphy@macrovision.com.
In the meantime, the rest of us, guys, please either stop copying or be not so honest about it when it comes to filling market research questionnaires. Personally, I would rather see you do the former, but that's just because piracy is against the law, not because it has anything to do with me making enough money or not (which I don't, by the way).
Is $499 the Netbook sweet spot?
If computer stores were like supermarkets and had a rack of impulse purchase items right by their checkout lanes, we could easily see the $399 Asus Eee PC sitting next to the candy bars and magazines. After all, for about the same price as a current-generation video game console, you get a smart, reasonably useful 7-inch laptop, for much less than the traditionally inflated prices of other ultraportables.
Of course, we always want a little more, so the Eee PC had to grow, adding a larger 9-inch screen and more SSD hard drive space. Now that we have got our hands on the new version, called the Eee PC 900, it's a definite improvement over the original (check out our full review here), but we're left wondering if the new features are worth the trade-off in price that's driving Netbook-style laptops higher than the $500 mark and blurring the lines between them and traditional bargain laptops.
The Eee PC 900 is $550--still cheap, but a big jump over the original model's $399. We could see picking up a $399 minilaptop for a trip or a birthday gift on the fly, and even $499 might work if we're feeling particularly flush that week, but once you pass the psychological barrier of $500, it stops being something you can justify on the go and becomes a major personal infrastructure upgrade that must be weighed, considered, justified, and often, submitted to the spousal approval process.
Is the $550 Eee PC too far over the line? Is the $500 mark an important psychological boundary? What's your price limit for impulse tech buys? Use the handy commenting system below to let us know.
- prev
- 1
- next
