世論 What Japan Thinks

Having looked earlier at television recording habits, here’s an interesting look at what people do next from iShare, when they asked people how they consumed recorded television.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 24th of August 2009 591 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.0% of the sample were male, 35.2% in their twenties, 31.3% in their thirties, and 33.5% in their forties.

Since we got our hard disk DVD recorder the amount of recorded television has increased, but my watching has decreased! At least blank DVDs are reasonably-priced and don’t take up quite as much space as the millions of VHS tapes lying around the house…
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There’s a lot of interesting data in this short survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into recording television programs, although I’d like to have seen a larger sample size and a more detailed look at some of the data.

Demographics

Between the 27h and 30th of August 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 2.0% in their teens, 18.0% 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.

The more detailed information I’d like (perhaps I’ll get it some time from goo Research’s regular digital TV survey?) is to see if people are currently buying either DVD or Blu-Ray recorders for their digital terrestrial decoders or for their recording capabilities, as it can be seen in Q1SQ2 that the recorders based around the dead HD DVD format are just as popular for time-shifting as Blu-Ray devices. With the analog switch-off less than two years away (24th July 2011), many of the almost one-in-three still using tape are going to find themselves in some trouble, I suspect.

I watch more real-time television – I use the weekends to catch up on stuff I’ve missed.
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goo Ranking recently conducted their 10th regular survey into digital terrestrial television, a survey reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Betwen the 17th and 22nd of July 2009 1,079 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 1.1% aged sixty or older.

I don’t believe that having the greatest reason for dissatisfaction being DRM, Digital Rights Management, is in itself a condemnation of copy control on digital broadcasts, as I would guess that the vast majority of people are either (or both) unaware of the presence of DRM or never do any activities that run into these restrictions.

Note that analogue broadcasts stop on the 24th of July 2011. One thing that has struck me as odd is that there is very little advertising for converter boxes in Japan; a few thousand yen gives a new lease of life to any television. When visiting my parents back in the UK last year they had a cheap box that produced a very acceptable picture on their 15 year old telly.
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Recently, iShare looked in detail at how people view celebrities on television, but as it features a lot of names that may not be very well-known to my average reader (nor even to me!), I’ll skip over most of the survey and highlight one very frequent complaint from many foreigners about food programs here:

Why do they all scream “Delicious!” all the time?

Watch any Japanese variety program with a food section and you’ll soon see that every mouthful of even the most mundane dish sends the gourmand (or just plain old glutton) into orgasms of delight, leaving many foreigners screaming “What’s the point?” at the television, especially as I at least find the table manners rather off-putting.

One of the survey’s questions was seeing which one celebrity eating made you hungry, and number one choice was Hidehiko Ishizuka, or Ishi-chan, or the “Ma-iu” guy, depending on how familiar you are with Japanese C-list celebrities! He is a rather sweaty and obese lump with a cavernous maw, yet one third of men and one quarter of women chose him as the person who gets their stomach rumbling. Second up was professional big eater Gal Sone, a waif of a woman who wears far too much make-up and eats by… ah, even thinking about how to describe her turns my stomach! 6.7% of men and 14.4% of women picked her. Conversely, and happily from my point of view, 48.1% of men and 39.0% of women had no-one who made them hungry.

For those who chose someone, they were asked why. The top reason was the way they ate made the food look delicious, with over nine in ten saying so. Next, just 13.1% liked the person, 9.9% felt their comments while eating were easy to understand, 7.7% said seeing the person eat made them want to eat, and just 2.7% found their comments trustworthy!

Here’s perhaps a rather ordinary survey on terrestrial digital broadcasting from goo Research, their seventh time of conducting this monthly survey, as reported by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of April 2009 1,087 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.6% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

In order to try to spice up this survey just today there was a very interesting development regarding the government’s “image character”, Mr Tsuyoshi Kusunagi of the popular beat combo The Smaps, who appears on their advertising promoting, to use the common Japanese abbreviation for terrestrial digital, “chi-deji”. He was arrested in the early hours of the morning chin-deta – a corny pun that I will make no effort to explain – looking for digital adjustments to his antenna, if the rumours about him and the park are to be believed. The government, and just about every other organisation that he advertises for are now busy ripping up their contracts with him, although permit me to offer the above police mugshot as an alternative. (Yes, I know I suck at Photoshop!)

Leaving the gossip behind, let’s get back to the business on hand, the survey.
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It’s now about a year since acTVila launched, a facility for using your television as a media centre, allowing download of movies (and other contents) on demand for both free and pay contents. This recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com looked at this subject of acTVila.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 15th of February 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 14.l7% in their fifties, and 5.3% aged sixty or older.

I’m very surprised to see that a quarter of all digital television watchers have plugged their television into the internet. Although my HDD player is network ready, I’ve never had the urge to plug it in as I don’t really see what the point is. It would enable me to program it remotely from a mobile phone, but I’ve never been in the situation where I thought this might be useful.

On the other hand, I have got a bunch of ideas about what features might encourage more people to plug in which I plan to talk about at work next Monday, so I’d better not say anything here as my employer will no doubt want to bury them in the patent process.

Oh, and sorry for the delay in posting, but I’m in Athens on a business trip, and I couldn’t get my internet to work in the airport lounges along the way!
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With now just over two and half years until the analogue switch-off in Japan, this recent survey from goo Research and reported by japan.internet.com into digital terrestrial television broadcasts (the fourth regular survey) shows usage almost reaching the half-way mark.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 12th of December 2008 1,083 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.7% in their forties, and 28.1% aged fifty or older.

Compared with last month’s survey,　viewing rates are up 2.5% percentage points. If we subtract the 11 people who don’t have televisions, digital (excluding one seg or digital satellite and cable, etc) is now past 50% of viewers.

In Q2, the restrictions discussed are called Dubbing 10, a system that allows up to 10 copies to be made from one recording, but the copies themselves may not be recopied. All broadcasts have such a restriction by default.

For Q3, here is some background on the B-CAS Card issue.
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Even on my quite old analogue tube television, digital looks very, very nice, and this is the main reason for nine in ten being completely satisfied with terrestrial digital television broadcasting in Japan, according to this survey on the topic, goo Research’s third regular look at digital TV, and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 31st of October and the 4th of November 2008 1,044 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

I remember when I bought my television they were showing full digital-ready televisions alongside (with a decent markup at that time) at Yodobashi Camera and the picture quality between the two was incomparable. However, I noticed that the sample DVD they were playing on the set we eventually bought was a DVD encoded at a quite low bit rate, and I wouldn’t have put it past them to have been deliberately tampering with the signal to add a little noise.

Conversely, I’ve noticed on large-screen full digital LCDs and plasmas any flaws in the source material are crystal clear and… I feel I sound like an old fogey declaring that vinyl beats CD!

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Perhaps the headline is a little misleading, given that so much television in Japan can be found on the internet, and places like Nico-Nico Douga can make it interactive (but lets ignore the copyright issues), so perhaps the results of this survey from JR Tokai Express Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into television and internet are not as cut and dried as they seem.

Demographics

Over the 16th and 17th of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.5% of the sample were female (a surprisingly, if not suspiciously, high figure for JR Tokai) 17.9% were in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 12.4% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

When a similar survey was conducted two years ago (which I am sure I translated, but I cannot find it!), television won in the fun stakes, but despite the wider availability of digital television with more interactivity and One Seg becoming a standard feature on most mobiles, and despite digital video recorders allowing users to watch television when they want to, broadcasting has lost out to computers. I’d love to know what exactly people found fun or not fun about both media and what has become more or less fun in the last two years; perhaps that information is available in the full survey.
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With the analogue switch-off only three years away, this recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into television finds that there are still a awful lot of old televisions still in circulation.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 9th of June 2008 1,001 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 9.0% in their teens, 23.0% in their twenties, 24.2% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

The Japanese for CRT is ブラウン管, buraun kan, which I thought referred to the colour of initial devices, so it meant a “brown tube”, but just last weekend I learnt that it’s so named from the German inventor Braun; in Germany also the CRT is usually called a Braun tube (or whatever the German for tube is).
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