Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - (Page hghd10) » Continued from page 8 I HM: Are studios/manufacturers/retailers doing enough to promote Blu-ray to the consumer? Gordon: Studios are doing a lot to promote Blu-ray through road shows, retail demos, TV ads, promotions, etc. There will be more announcements leading into the holidays. The DEG is supplementing studio efforts with a grass roots campaign, which launched at the Playboy Mansion last month. Tsuyuzaki: At Panasonic, we have this theme called “Living in High-Definition,” to capture all of the CE products we are trying to do. We are an official sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, which is another HD event. We have four trucks running around the country at retail and certain events that demonstrate HD on 103-inch displays. We’ve worked with Disney on its mall tour and Sleeping Beauty BD Live presentation, and with 20th Century Fox at NASCAR events in California. We will continue to do more, and this fourth quarter will be a critical time because once you see Blu-ray, you get it. Parsons: You don’t want to give your customers the message that DVD is dead — it isn’t — and that the substantial investment they’ve made in that format is now at risk — it’s not. Since all known Blu-ray players can play DVDs, BD manufacturers are clearly acknowledging and embracing DVD’s enormous popularity. The trick is to promote the new format’s powerful advantages without doing so at DVD’s expense. Hopefully, as high-definition video becomes increasingly mainstream, Blu-ray will naturally overtake DVD. Hamburger: Our No. 1 educational resource is our Blue Shirt salespeople. They are the best tools we have to reach out to customers, to have a good conversation with them about Blu-ray, to demonstrate the capabilities of the format, and to answer any questions people may have. Other than that we will also have interactive displays in our stores to let people test drive Blu-ray. We will have educational resources online at BestBuy.com. We also can use our Magnolia Home Theater listening rooms to give demos of the format to customers so they can truly experience the impact of HD picture and sound. Marmaduke: We are doing in-store industry roundtable Blu-ray displays with Sony because we think Blu-ray is that important. We are also working with other CE companies. Keyes: Our focus is on having a conversation with customers to educate them about Blu-ray and inspire them with the possibilities the format has to offer. We will do this in our stores through displays that showcase Blu-ray’s incredible picture and sound. We will also do it by equipping our salespeople with the information and tools they need to have a great conversation with customers about the benefits of Blu-ray. You will also see regular promotions called out on our Web site, in our circular and in stores to help people get into Blu-ray and start building their movie libraries. I HM: Will there be a $250 Blu-ray player on the market by Christmas? Gordon: I know there is a $298 Magnavox player, which is a Philips brand. Each manufacturer and retailer determines pricing. What we do see is that the overall trend holds true like we saw with DVD: Hardware prices come down as volume increases. Volume of Blu-ray players is increasing, so we are seeing prices come following the normal market curve. Tsuyuzaki: The answer is that the retailer is going to decide. What you are seeing already is that at $399, we can’t make enough Blu-ray players. We have been air-freighting players for the last four months straight. The demand seems to be robust. I think we are on our way to sales of 3.5 million players. I HM: Is BD Live the killer app to fuel Blu-ray adoption? Blu-ray as more titles come onto the market. Parsons: I’ve never really agreed with the killer app mentality. What’s the killer app for cell phones? Talking to each other or text messaging? If my kids are any example, it’s both. For Blu-ray, it’s certainly all about the high-def experience, but it’s also about the promise of a much more sophisticated level of interactivity that can deepen the emotional reward of watching a film. The first pass is the linear storytelling that everyone wants. The next pass, if done well, drills deeply into the film through the use of BD-J programming and online BD Live features. This is especially promising — for me at least — with films that take place in historical settings or are based on true stories. It can be fascinating to delve into the real world side of the story. BD Live also brings the possibility of making film watching a “wide-area” group experience, something that’s simply not possible with DVD. If several connected people want to watch a movie together without being in the same room, building or even city, BD Live can enable that, for example. So I think the trick is to make BD Live features both easy and fun — no one will want to deal with a complicated control panel or work too hard to use online features. CE players are not computers, and I think our minds are in a different place when we’re in a storytelling mode. I HM: How do you sell BD Live to consumers? Gordon: BD Live is a key differentiator for Blu-ray. It reflects the marriage between what’s possible with physical media and electronic distribution. Physical media is important because you can’t get the Bluray quality [1080p picture quality, sound quality and storage capacity] anywhere else. BD Live opens whole new creative opportunities the studios are just starting to use to differentiate their Blu-ray releases. Those differences could include building user communities around their releases, refreshing content, adding new features, games, etc. It clearly differentiates Blu-ray from standard DVD. We believe it will drive further adoption of Gordon: Seeing is believing. They really have to experience it to understand it. Tsuyuzaki It depends how quickly we can bring forward this universe called BD Live. If that is not compelling enough, then it is going to flounder. By working with the studios, we think there is a compelling layer, and it is really for consumers to decide whether they really like it or they like their current [DVD] experience. We think you need to push the bar. Parsons: For now, I think it just comes down to two types of Blu-ray players: one that connects to the Internet (BD Live) and one that doesn’t (Bonus View). In the meantime, compelling BD Live content will be needed to show why an Internet connection on a CE player is desirable, as I can’t imagine a retailer trying to explain the benefits of online 10 HOLLYWOOD goes HIGH-DEF September 2008 http://BestBuy.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 Fourth-Quarter Blowout Industry Roundtable High-Def Data Tables Blu-Ray Disc Listings Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 (Page hghd_c1) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 (Page hghd_c2) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 (Page hghd1) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 (Page hghd2) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 (Page hghd3) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd4) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd5) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd6) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd7) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd8) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd9) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd10) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Fourth-Quarter Blowout (Page hghd11) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Industry Roundtable (Page hghd12) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Industry Roundtable (Page hghd13) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - High-Def Data Tables (Page hghd14) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - High-Def Data Tables (Page hghd15) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - High-Def Data Tables (Page hghd16) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - High-Def Data Tables (Page hghd17) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Blu-Ray Disc Listings (Page hghd18) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Blu-Ray Disc Listings (Page hghd19) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Blu-Ray Disc Listings (Page hghd20) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Blu-Ray Disc Listings (Page hghd_c3) Home Media Magazine - Hollywood Goes High-Def - September 2008 - Blu-Ray Disc Listings (Page hghd_c4)
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