More people in US with a HD DVD player than Blu-ray

[Wyku]

ViolentPhlegm said:

Among other nonsense, their survey results say that 23% of XBOX 360 owners also have the HD DVD add-on. Whatever. Microsoft had sold 300,000 units worldwide when the add-on was discontinued.

Their results are a combination of poor sampling and ambiguity in their questions. How should you answer if you own a PS3? Do you say "yes" to owning a Blu-Ray player or "no" because that's supposed to mean standalone players? Their questioning method doesn't explain it. Does the average consumer even know there were (note past tense) multiple formats? If someone owns an upconverting DVD player do they think that's considered HD DVD because it's a player that plays movies in (supposedly) high definition? If they own a Blu-Ray player do they think they're supposed to answer yes to the same question because they have a player that plays movies in high definition?

You have to ask these questions because it's the only way you'd come up with their ridiculous results.

The survey was done in April (more than a year after HD DVD threw in the towel) and yet implies that HD DVD adoption almost doubled during that period. Even with the sell-off last year, these numbers are just ludicrous (and Harris Interactive's conclusions do not attribute the supposed HD DVD growth to a sell-off at all).  And did they not think to verify their findings against actual sales data? If they looked at home video sales in the month of their survey they would have seen that for the top 20 titles, 12% of units were Blu-Ray (up from 6% a year prior indicating a doubling of market share yoy) and 0% were HD DVD.

Finally at the very end of their report they have a disclaimer saying that they don't provide an error margin because it's impossible to determine one based on their surveying method. Convenient.

This survey was obviously meant to shake consumer confidence in Blu-Ray. It even calls Blu-Ray the "unofficial" winner of the HD disc format war. My question: Who commissioned the survey?

Actually, they said 3% did, but what's 20% amongst friends?