Digital Consumer

A heads-up that we’ll be publishing a press release shortly on a recent report on Europe’s transition to HDTV and video. In summary, European sales of high definition TV and video devices will reach 28.1 million units this year, a 158% growth rate. We also predict that 70% of European homes will own at least one HD-capable TV by 2012, up from 8% in 2006. Most of these homes will also buy a high definition set-top box, disc player, games console or digital media player.

Here’s a forecast that will go with the release:

Samsung has joined its Korean rival LG in announcing a dual-format high-def disc player. Dongsoo Jun, executive vp of the Digital AV Division at Samsung Electronics, is quoted as saying: “Our main concern is not technology but consumer choice. Consumers are hungry for more HD content but are currently confused about competing formats.”

I’m sure a few consumers may be “confused” but I suspect the vast majority are still completely ignorant, in the nicest possible way, of any video format that isn’t plain old DVD. And those that have the faintest inkling that a DVD successor may be around the corner have either not bothered checking it out yet, or have taken fright at the player prices and made a mental note to come back next year. I’m just not convinced that many of today’s DVD owners are saying “this format war thing looks pretty nasty, I’ll hold on spending $500 on a new machine until peace breaks out.”

As I noted recently, player prices are set to tumble. We take the view that Blu-ray is a sure-fire winner in this “war”, as we noted in our recent report: “There is overwhelming evidence that Blu-ray will win the race to replace DVD. We can see very little prospect for HD-DVD surviving as a high definition video publishing format.” Samsung and LG will continue to offer their dual-format players, but history will likely view them as oddities.