i find it hard to understand why somebody would go to the trouble of buying a Tivo just to record garbage-quality TV.
This speaks volumes to me. Given that most Tivo owners don't have HDTVs, it suggests you don't know what people value in a DVR.
In 1999, I had people at work arguing with me that mp3 songs would never catch on because the quality wasn't good enough. They just didn't understand what the value proposition of portable, quickly transfered, mass-archivable music was. They were focused on mp3 audio quality, which for the average consumer is certainly good enough.
The same is true here. Image quality simply is not the key factor for J6P. Being able to store dozens of hours of shows and use intelligent PVR functionality is.
My opinion, of course, but so far the market bears this out.
i think there's a significant overlap between DVR users and HDTV owners
Well, so far clearly there's decent overlap as both products have been "cutting edge." But going forward, not so much. J6P households have 2.4 perfectly good color TV sets, they are not about to pay $1,000+ to replace those sets. The replacement bulbs for some of these HDTV units cost more than a brand new color tv! Of course prices will come down, but I suppose what I'm saying is that DVR adoption is going to be like DVD player adoption. HDTV adoption is IMO *very unlikely* to have anywhere near as rapid adoption over the same time period, no matter what the electronics companies, cablecos, and FCC want.
Andre |
