Re: Question the Governors AGM 19th July - London

John Gilliver wrote:
> DAB sounds worse than FM (dab.is@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote (Wed, 20 Jul 2005
> 16:54:19 GMT): []
>> There's a strong element of right time, right place about new
>> technologies. For example, introducing HDTV when there were no
>> displays that could display HD resolution would have been the wrong
>> time.
>
> But isn't there a significant proportion of the larg(ish) displays
> that have
> been sold in the last few years (and even of those that are still
> being sold)
> that _can't_ display HDTV?


True. But there will still be a large number of people with HD-Ready
displays.


> Anyway, I was really wondering what
> percentage of
> those likely to be interested in FreeView, FreeSat, or whatever, who
> would
> actually consider the availability of HD to be an important factor -
> I suspect quite a small one.


Not necessarily. People with Freeview tend to be richer than average,
and if people do start raving about HD, and assuming that HD-Ready
displays do come down in price then it's obviously the better off people
that will be able to afford to get it.


> However, you I think think it might be
> otherwise, and since
> I am not going to go digging for statistics, we'd better agree
> amicably to
> drop it (-:!


Fair enough.


>>> The "raving" tends _not_ to be
>>> technologically based, unfortunately.
>
>
>> I think it's more a case of "wow, can it do that". A recent example
>> would be MP3 players.
>
> I don't quite get what you mean here. (I'm not disagreeing: I just
> don't quite
> get the point you're driving at!)


MP3 players allow you to store hundreds / thousands of songs on a very
small device, and most MP3 players allow you to choose what to listen to
from a menu with artist / song album. Before they came along all we had
was MiniDisc players (74 minutes of audio on one disc) or walkmen, so
MP3 players were a significant improvement and certainly had a "wow"
factor about them.


>> But lots of "normal" people already have large displays; if this
>> wasn't the case then I'd be inclined to agree with you, but that in
>> itself would only make the introduction a bit slower than it
>> otherwise would be.
>
> Again, we have different perceptions of statistics, and I at least
> have no
> hard facts; I happen to think that the proportion of all viewers (let
> alone
> those likely to be interested in "free" services" who have a display
> capable
> of displaying HD (whether they have a large display or not) is quite
> small.


But you're just going off the current situation, and I agree that
currently there is only a small percentage of people that have HD-Ready
displays and are not interested in paying for TV. But you're ignoring
the fact that Sky will probably heavily advertise their HD service, and
the BBC have said that they're planning to launch Freesat, so if they
include HDTV on Freesat (which is the assumption that this whole
discussion hinges on, because otherwise it's purely academic) then HDTV
will receive a lot of advertising from the BBC as well.

So, with all the advertising HDTV will get, this is bound to increase
demand for HD-Ready displays; the people with HDTV should rave about the
picture quality, and the press probably will do too. The increased
demand will lead to lower prices, which will increase demand further,
which will lead to even lower prices which will lead to further
increased demand and so on.

I'm not saying it will take off as quickly as Freeview took off, but
it's got every chance of becoming successful by the time digital
switchover occurs for the majority of the population (digital switchover
starts in 2008, but in 2008 it's only relatively sparsely regions areas
that are changing, and the Granada region is the first region to
switchover with a large population in 2009, and the South East doesn't
change until 2011).


> For that matter, I rather think that the proportion of all viewers
> who have _any_ display other than a CRT-based one is still quite
> small, HD-capable or
> not.


At the moment maybe, but take-up of consumer electronics these days can
be rapid. Large, flat displays will become popular as prices fall.


>> PC technology hasn't been largely game-driven - people prefer games
>> consoles for games.
>
> Well what _has_ been driving it then?


Just normal stuff like the internet, email, word processing, audio,
video, digital cameras, the fact that people use PCs at work.


> Even allowing for the software
> (including operating system) manufacturers accepting every bit of
> extra
> processing power you can give them, the power of the average PC
> exceeded what
> most home users could do with it quite a few years ago - more or less
> until
> home video processingcame along, I'd say; so, in that time, what
> drove the manufacturers (especially of graphics cards) to keep
> developing at the pace
> they did, rather than (say) developing for lower cost, or even just
> taking it
> easy for a bit? I can't really see there would have been that many
> users
> wanting powerful number crunchers.


Faster speeds create the new applications that become popular. Audio and
video on PCs is now popular, and some video processing still takes ages
today.


> However, I don't actually _know_
> it was
> games - I just couldn't see what else it could be!


First and foremost I think it's the internet that's made PCs become as
successful as they are. For about a decade now we've been seeing URLs at
the bottom of adverts or on TV.

Although this doesn't necessarily mean that it was the internet that was
the main driver for take-up of PCs, I think it's 30% of all UK
households now have broadband, compared to 0.1% in 2001, and 60% of all
UK households have internet connections from virtually none in 1994/5.



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Find the cheapest Freeview, DAB & MP3 Player Prices:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/freeview_receivers.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab_digital_radios.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/mp3_players_1GB-5GB.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/mp3_players_large_capacity.htm


.

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