Quote Originally Posted by Eric Z
I think these next few months to a year are going to be very interesting regarding HD formats. I was at Barnes and Noble last night and was flipping through some audio mags and some census/stats periodicals. The estimate of HDTVs in the U.S. household was 8% as of 12/2004 and increased to 10-13% as of last month. Not sure of the accuracy of these stats, but that tells me over 80% of U.S. households still don't have HDTVs. The prices are still too high (eventhough they did fall a lot of the past 8 months) and the technology is still too fresh.

After reading those articles, Woochifer's last post makes more and more sense- maybe firms are going toward a high margin, low volume product. At least in the beginning.

Has anyone else heard other stats of HDTVs in households? The 10-13% at first seemed a bit low, but then again not one of my friends/relatives/coworkers have an HDTV.
How does a format survive as a high margin, low volume product? SACD and DVD-A couldn't do it, how will this?

If Toshiba is really banking on those early adopters, they are in a world of trouble. There is a huge thread at hometheaterforum.com about HD-DVD and BlueRay, and more than 90% of the people that responded in that thread say they are going to wait this one out until either one is adopted for the standard. Even the most ardent of early adopters say they are not going to buy until one wins the war. There are a few that say they'll buy a player when they become available, but they are definately in the minority. Even here not many are going to early adopt either format. Hometheaterdiscussion. com has pretty much the same response as everyone else. Every site that I have visited that had discussions about these formats, the consensus was about the same.

I have been early adopting just about every audio and video format for the last 20 years. I have been burned many times from this, and have many a heavy paper weight as a result. Toshiba cannot count on me this time, even though I have the necessary inputs and outputs for the video side of these formats. ONE FORMAT PLEASE!!!!!