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Adams Media Research Defends Blu-ray
June 25, 2009
Shots are being fired against a Harris Interactive poll suggesting the more people currently own HD DVD players than Blu-ray players. I took a look at the survey last week, raised my eyebrows, but then determined it wasn't saying all that much.
Engadget agreed, particularly noting that Harris misleadingly breaks out Playstation 3 and Blu-ray players separately, essentially handing each a weaker score than had they bundled the high-definition hardware types together.
Basically, Harris reports that 11% of those surveyed owned a HD DVD player in 2009. That compares to 9% who have a PS3 and 7% with a Blu-ray set-top. Making matters worse, Harris shows that more people owned HD DVD players in 2009 than 2008, following Blu-ray winning the format war.
But apparently enough of the blogosphere knocked Blu-ray with this study, and that's where Adams Media comes in. The company sent a bunch of Blu-ray defending stats over to the media this afternoon.
Blu-ray, it insists, has clearly trounced HD DVD out of the marketplace:
*As of December 31, 2008 7.8% of US TV homes had either a Blu-ray Disc set top player, a PS3 or both, and by the end of 2009 that number will have grown to 14.8% of US TV homes (17.5% and 26%, respectively, of HDTV homes).
*As of December 31, 2008 0.3% of US TV homes had an HD DVD set top player, and by the end of 2009, that number will have shrunk to 0.2% of US homes (0.7% and 0.4%, respectively, of HDTV homes)
So there!
Tom Adams, head of the firm, goes even further suggesting that respondents can't be trusted to answer correctly.
"The media industry has long known you can't trust the average survey respondent to correctly identify the high-tech devices in their homes; this finding suggesting that HD DVD player penetration grew from 6% to 9% in the period since the Blu-ray victory in the format war simply can't be right."
And here's his overall recap of the craziness:
"Our research on shipments and retail sales of players suggests that some 340,000 homes had an HD-DVD player by the end of 2008 v. 3.1 million homes with a dedicated Blu-ray player, and 9 million homes with either a dedicated player, a PS3 or both. So far, despite the recession, sales this year put dedicated Blu-ray players on track to be in 7.2 million homes by year's end, with the number of homes having a BD-Player, a PS3, or both growing to 17.1 million. Meanwhile, HD DVD machines are long gone from store shelves and household penetration is shrinking dramatically."
I agree that the Harris conclusions seem shaky. But I have to admit the whole thing is making me a little nostalgic for the days of the heated Blu-ray vs. HD DVD battle. So much dramz back then!
Posted by Susanne Ault on June 25, 2009 | Comments (1)
