Thoughts on HD sales spread ...

PeterWright wrote on 5/5/2006, 7:23 PM
I have practically finished a 30 min program on signed language development for deaf children. It was shot in HDV on a Z1. I used Gearshift DV proxies to edit, then rendered from the original m2t files to a widescreen DVD.

Yesterday I had a viewing with the client on their brand new 48" Panasonic widescreen TV and the SD DVD looked, well, "absolutely fabulous".

It made me think that from the average client/viewer's perspective, there is very little reason to get hot and bothered about being able to view programs in HD, so unless the hardware and media get extremely cheap, it could take a long time before HD spreads as a common output format.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 5/5/2006, 7:47 PM
It made me think that from the average client/viewer's perspective, there is very little reason to get hot and bothered about being able to view programs in HD, so unless the hardware and media get extremely cheap, it could take a long time before HD spreads as a common output format.

Yup, especially given the incompatible players.
rmack350 wrote on 5/5/2006, 9:40 PM
I think a lot of things will have to come together before it becomes compelling, at least here in the SF Bay area. Little things will nudge people along.

Case in point. Personally, I haven't had any interest in getting an HDTV. However, we were shooting some training material of a network appliance that gets your photos and music off of a computer and onto your TV. It could do it over ethernet or wireless network. All you had to do was install Windows Media Connect on the PC you wanted to be a server.

Now, I was pretty skeptical, but the photos looked great, I have a bunch of music on my PC already, and you can even stream videos at 720p over the wired ethernet connection. I liked the product and someday, maybe in the next five years, I'll feel a little more enthused about getting an HDTV. Maybe I'll have had to get a tuner or set-top box by then anyway so I'll have inched that much closer to buying one.

Not every client will want to pay you the extra you should charge for HD.

Rob Mack
farss wrote on 5/5/2006, 10:33 PM
Demand for the HD DVD players currently exceeds demand in the USA. At USD 500 they're pretty cheap, bearing in mind these units have a HDD in them. I saw at least 10 titles already released at the uStuff stand at NAB. Thing seems to work as advertised, image looks gorgeous using VC-1, even zoomed in 4X.
Note that you can put over 40 minutes of HD onto a 9GB $3 DVD and it'll play.
The players are cheaper than DVD players were when they first came out.

Bob.