MikeB said: @ HappySquirriel It's not really that hard to do a proper survey. First question: "Do you know what Blu-Ray is?" Based on the response you can rule out a lot of things already.

When 80% of people hang up because they don't want to deal with another telemarketer, and a disproportionately large portion of the remaining people are vdeophiles (who are happy someone is finally asking them about something important to them) how do you get a random sample?

Being that it is (rapidly) becomming impossible to survey people between the ages of 18 and 30 because they own cellphones (and its illegal to telemarket a cellphone) how do you have a random sample?

Even after you ask your question "Do you know what Blu-Ray is?" if they answer yes how do you know they know what Blu-Ray is? Do you only listen to people who know what it is, and wouldn't doing so eliminate a large portion of the population from the study?

You're trying to trivialize a very serious problem; in every election (in pretty much every country) there is growing coverage on how inaccurate polling is becomming because of these problems and yet you dismiss them. For months we have seen survey after survey that is trying to support your (or another PS3 fans position) only to have the conclusions from the survey never come true; there was a survey in August which predicted amazing HDTV sales over Christmas, when after christmas there are amazing deals on HDTVs because of how poorly the performed (in comparison to retailer expectations).

 

MikeB said: @ HappySquirriel It's not really that hard to do a proper survey. First question: "Do you know what Blu-Ray is?" Based on the response you can rule out a lot of things already.

I think his point is that there's an obvious flaw, either in the study or in the way the results are presented. Look at this sentence:

Over 60 percent of consumers said they had been put off buying a next-generation disk player due to the presence of two formats in the market

This sentence implies that at the very least, 60 percent of consumers know there were two formats in the market. It doesn't seem realistic to me.

 

@ HappySquirriel

By following with an open question. "Great. Can you please explain the benefits?"



Could also be the other way around you know? But there are ways to entice people into participating, for example there's a small survey firm nearby where I live. For example if they do a cigarette survey, they hand out money or free cigarettes (all kinds of stuff actually), some people stand in front of the supermarket to invite people into the next door building if they smoke, takes only 5 minutes of their time and the bulk of people do participate.

HappySqurriel said: MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel 24 percent said they are going to watch HD movie discs within 6 months, I don't think this survey was done unprofessionally. Especially consindering the article even states: "Over 60 percent of consumers said they had been put off buying a next-generation disk player due to the presence of two formats in the market" So there seems no confusion between DVD and HD media with regard to this survey like you seem to want to believe. Did I say they were using unprofessional methods? Even if you use the most professional methods the results can still be meaningless. Call up 100 people and ask "Do you have a couple of minutes to be part of our survey on High Definition electronics?" and see how many people are willing to be part of the study; in most cases you would find somewhere between 5% and 20% will be willing to take a survey and no matter how random you sellect the initial 100 people, the people who take part in your survey will not be a random sample. Talk to any professional statistician and they will agree with me. On top of that, does 60% of people responding yes to "Did the existance of 2 High definition movie formats prevent you from choosing to buy a HD-Movie Player?" really imply that everyone who took part in the study was well informed? On top of that, if 25% of the people who answered no to that question thought DVD was a HD-Movie format it would have a huge impact on the results of the study.

Actually they keep a cross section of the populace to interview, about 500,000 people total. Who i believe they pay. So it's a selected sample. Which is actually... very unprofessional.

The problem is that the firm that did this survey doesn't specialize in this kind of survey... and only did it to drum up more buisness.

Their actual buisness is to get people to hire them to market media and other things to people. So they'll publish something like this and make it cheery so people send buisness there way by choosing through the cross section those that will help their case.

MikeB said: @ Fastrabbit09 the problem ps3 will face is that blu-ray is only an option for the masses when players are <$100 Blu-Ray spec 2.0 requires the two secondary decoders, 1GB of local storage for updates and content and an Internet connection. The PS3 is the most future proof Blu-Ray player out there. With such specs we won't see sub $100 players soon. Personally I think all the extras (Wi-Fi, Home, PlayTV, PS3 games, webbrowser, large harddrive, MP3/MPG4/DivX/etc media support, etc) will likely still allow the PS3 to have an edge for a long period of time with regard to educated consumers. A future $299 priced slimline PS3 will likely do wonders.

u don't get it...the masses don't care about or know about 2.0 specs...they see a blu-ray player for 99 that says it will play blu-ray movies and they'll get it

 and masses don't care about wi-fi, home, games, browser, etc

 

also, u urself even have to say 'educated consumers'...educated consumers are not the MASSES

MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel 24 percent said they are going to watch HD movie discs within 6 months, I don't think this survey was done unprofessionally. Especially consindering the article even states: "Over 60 percent of consumers said they had been put off buying a next-generation disk player due to the presence of two formats in the market" So there seems no confusion between DVD and HD media with regard to this survey like you seem to want to believe.

this proves it is a biased survey

60% of consumers do not know that there are 2 formats in the market...not even close to 60%

 the fact that they got over 60% shows there is sampling bias present and so this survey will NOT represent the masses

Fastrabbit09 said: MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel 24 percent said they are going to watch HD movie discs within 6 months, I don't think this survey was done unprofessionally. Especially consindering the article even states: "Over 60 percent of consumers said they had been put off buying a next-generation disk player due to the presence of two formats in the market" So there seems no confusion between DVD and HD media with regard to this survey like you seem to want to believe. this proves it is a biased survey 60% of consumers do not know that there are 2 formats in the market...not even close to 60% the fact that they got over 60% shows there is sampling bias present and so this survey will NOT represent the masses

Well to be fair I bet the question was "Has the war between the 2 HD formats caused you to hold off from buying a new player."

To which there are three options.

1. I'm an idiot and didn't know this.

2. Why no. I'm poor.

or

3. Yes. Yes I did. Please contact me in the future to get money and benefits for stuff i know nothing about and keep me in your panel.

It's this side of marketing researches version of a push pull.  Like the one I recently got.

"Ture or False, we should try and stop liberal tax raises in congress that will waste money for programs that will never work."

The percentage of people interested will grow over time, just like it did with DVD. The people who are using it do a good job of marketing for Blu-Ray too, because a lot of them are very satisfied with the product. Surveys have shown that people who have made the switch are very happy they did. The numbers were over 85%-90%.

MikeB said: @ HappySquirriel "Do you know what Blu-Ray is?" if they answer yes how do you know they know what Blu-Ray is? By following with an open question. "Great. Can you please explain the benefits?"

Which only emphasizes another point he was making.  If you only survey people who can explain Blu-ray's benefits, you're going to find a disproportionately large number who are switching to it.  That's because the ones who know about it are the ones who are interested in it in the first place.  The ones who are happy with DVD haven't "done their homework" on the subject because they don't care.

dvd grew due to new FEATURES, not better quality
if dvd had same picture/sound quality as vhs, but all else was the same, it still would have taken over
if it merely had better picture/sound quality, but no different features from vhs, it wouldn't have taken off

(see sacd and dvd-audio)

and obv people who have blu-ray are satisfied...people buying it now are early adopters who care about video quality...blu-ray looks much better than dvd, so they will obviously be satisfied

the problem is that most consumers won't see the value:price ratio at a favorable place until price is