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.
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With Toshiba having thrown in the towel on HD DVD leaving the market for next-generation high-capacity optical storage to the Blu-ray consortium of manufacturers, what will the consumer do? This recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into Toshiba’s withdrawl of HD DVD tried to find out.

Demographics

On the 11th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the public or private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.0% of the sample was male, 10.9% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 35.2% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

I’m surprised in Q1 that almost three times as many in this sample bought an HD DVD rather than a Blu-ray player. Was it only overseas that HD DVD died? I’ll have to look into that…
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Earlier this year, the Japan Recording-Media Industries Association announced that last year’s sales were below predicted numbers, and they think it will be 2010 before the market flourishes. One reason for this is the confusion between the standards, Blu-ray Disc versus HD DVD, with consumers delaying their purchases to avoid being stuck with another Betamax. To learn what people thought of the situation, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into next-generation DVD.

Demographics

On the 26th of November 2007 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the public or private sector successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 82.1% of the sample was male, 8.5% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 33.6% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

Another reason is perhaps the lack of clear user benefits from upgrading from DVD; on a good system, the higher quality of the next generation is really obvious, but for those with lower-end television the desire to upgrade just their media player is not present. However, this aspect was not addressed in the survey below. Also missing from the report below is details on how many of the owners have stand-alone players versus PS3, Xbox or computer drive owners.

Personally, I’ve no plans to buy either format, not that I watch many DVDs anyway.
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