Christmas shopping not looking so much 'Blu' as dismal
It's the first holiday season since Blu-Ray put a stake in the heart of the rival HD-DVD format, but if Sony and friends thought that would mean a clear field of fire on shoppers' wallets...sorry, wrong year.
One would think that the looming digital TV deadline in February 2009 would drive the purchase of at least the new television equipment. According to most statistics so far, one would be wrong about that -- even though HDTV prices are on the decline.
Panel members at this week's HD3 conference in Century City, California were in accord: The slow economy won't speed up adoption of the high-definition format, which requires, in addition to discs that cost $25 or more apiece and players that can't seem to break the $200 mark, HD television with all the trimmings.
Yet Hollywood is a land of boundless optimism, and the mood at HD3 was generally one of "yeah, recession, whatever, tech adoption will happen." (Confidential to Sony head Sir Howard Stringer, fretful that someone might have carved the words "Betamax 2" on his tombstone had the format battle gone the other way: I will send you a shiny quarter if any of the following elicits a wince from over 50 percent of your staff: Newton, Rocketbook, Yahoo Internet Life, Tesla Motors mid-range vehicle. Any tech product seems as if it can't fail when you can't remember all the worthy ones that did.)
Certainly the retailers are trying to move units; Amazon on Wednesday announced a 3-for-2 sale on various Blu-Ray titles and players along with other deals designed to get players, discs, and if necessary, HDTV sets moving.
But Hollywood optimism and Amazon moxie pale in the light of Monday's announcement that Circuit City is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and Wednesday's declaration from Best Buy that "in 42 years of retailing, we've never seen such difficult times for the consumer." Credit crunches are particularly murderous on high-ticket, big-box-bought items such as HDTV sets and high-end players.
And perhaps those among us who prefer the wait-and-see approach aren't so wrong. A glance around Best Buy's site on Wednesday afternoon found that if we were in the Blu-Ray market, the least expensive player available would set us back $230 (no sign of the $199 promo unit Best Buy was recently touting), after which we'd have 1,171 discs from which to choose.
In contrast, we could hook up with a $30 DVD player (if the ones in our various computers didn't suit us), and the selection of titles available numbers a staggering 77,682...not counting all those we already own. Sure we know we can play those DVDs in a new Blu-Ray player; we just want to be sure we can keep the electricity on while we do so.