I have a good friend who works for a local audio retailer, and he in turn has several friends in the business who have collectively made an interesting observation.
It seems that a fair number of HD DVD disks are being returned as unplayable ... by Joe and Mary Six-Pack who have seen the commercials for movies, might have an HDTV, and don't realize that these disks won't play on their DVD players ... even if they "say" they are "HD" because they upscale DVD playback over HDMI connections. This doesn't happen with Blu-ray disks because the format name is totally different ... with no reference to DVD at all.
DO NOT take this as format-bashing or cheerleading. It is intended solely as a marketing observation. Whether or not Joe and Mary are morons is not the issue. The issue is that consumer confusion contributes to product failure.
Many DVD-Audio and single-layer SACD disks got returned to retailers because they wouldn't play on conventional CD players. This became apparent whenever I carried disks to Best Buy checkouts and was sternly warned that these were NOT regular CDs. Did this result in retailer resistence? Not sure, but it couldn't have helped the cause.
Mike.
It seems that a fair number of HD DVD disks are being returned as unplayable ... by Joe and Mary Six-Pack who have seen the commercials for movies, might have an HDTV, and don't realize that these disks won't play on their DVD players ... even if they "say" they are "HD" because they upscale DVD playback over HDMI connections. This doesn't happen with Blu-ray disks because the format name is totally different ... with no reference to DVD at all.
DO NOT take this as format-bashing or cheerleading. It is intended solely as a marketing observation. Whether or not Joe and Mary are morons is not the issue. The issue is that consumer confusion contributes to product failure.
Many DVD-Audio and single-layer SACD disks got returned to retailers because they wouldn't play on conventional CD players. This became apparent whenever I carried disks to Best Buy checkouts and was sternly warned that these were NOT regular CDs. Did this result in retailer resistence? Not sure, but it couldn't have helped the cause.
Mike.