世論 What Japan Thinks

A few months have passed since Blu-ray emerged as the victor from the next generation high capacity optical disk format wars, so this recent survey from Marsh and reported on by japan.internet.com on digital television program recording also had a look at people’s purchasing plans.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of July 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I went digital a couple of months ago with a Panasonic DiGa (I was going to link to the official US site, but it’s broken…), which is rather nice except for a slightly slow boot-up time; it’s about 30 seconds from power on until it’s ready to go. Mind you, I don’t really use the thing myself, leaving it mostly up to the wife to record. We’ve not filled up the hard disk yet; the super long-play mode gives us 400 hours, so we’re only half-full so far, even though we record two or three programs per day.

Blu-ray is still far too expensive, and as we don’t have a handy video shop (and more than enough movies queued up anyway!) there’s no real appeal.

Research results

First, from the sample of 300, 137 people, or 45.7%, had digital recording equipment. They were when asked the following.

Q1: What kinds of video recording and playback devices do you have? (Sample size=137, multiple answer)

Hard disk and DVD recorder	59.1%
VHS video	48.9%
DVD player	48.9%
Hard disk recorder	19.7%
HD DVD recorder	5.8%
Blu-ray recorder	5.1%

As shown in a previous survey, HD DVD outsold Blu-ray in Japan.

Q2: About how often do you record digital broadcasts? (Sample size=137)

Every day	21.9%
Once every three days	21.9%
Once a week	16.8%
Once every two weeks	4.4%
Once every three weeks	2.2%
Once a month	2.9%
Almost never	29.9%

Q3: How do you most often save recorded digital broadcasts? (Sample size=137)

Save to internal hard disk	47.9%
Copy to DVD	30.2%
Save to television hard disk	7.3%
Copy to Blu-ray	2.1%
Don’t save recordings	12.5%

This means keeping them around for a second viewing, not the first time-shifting save.

This final question was asked to those 163 who did not have digital recording equipment. It’s not clear from the question wording if people were being asked about a playback-only device or about a full hard-disk recorder system.

Q4: Up to how much would you pay for a Blu-ray based-device? (Sample size=163)

29,999 yen or less	56.4%
30,000 to 34,999 yen	11.7%
35,000 to 39,999 yen	6.7%
40,000 to 44,999 yen	3.1%
45,000 to 49,999 yen	11.0%
50,000 to 54,999 yen	7.4%
55,000 to 59,999 yen	2.5%
60,000 to 64,999 yen	1.2%
65,000 to 69,999 yen	0.0%
70,000 yen or more	0.0%