1. Introduction

Andy Marken's near stream of consciousness pieces on consumer electronics are fun to read and always illuminating. Andy pulls together ideas and information, often from very disparate sources, in such a way that the whole very quickly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Enjoy!

DVD Player Sales Up, DVD Sales Down

"Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive...It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!" Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) - Frankenstein, Universal Pictures, 1931

Despite the fact that DVD players have finally surpassed VCRs in the U.S., industry players see silver disc sales declining.

Why?

Well Dr. Waldman [Dr. Frankenstein's mentor in college], everyone knows!

People are suddenly going to change over and join the video on demand (VoD) and pay-for-view society. What is even better for the Personal Computer/Consumer Electronics (PC/CE) industry is the fact that they will build out their home networks so they can watch their content anywhere in the house.

Sometimes you just never know what your kids are going to bring home to play with, enjoy. They are extremely creative...they can build something out of nothing in no time at all. - Courtesy of Universal Pictures

The home network will be ALIVE! so you can watch the show throughout the house according to a Forrester study. That's right you'll be able to go from room to room (photo 1) to watch it in the living room (80% of the time), dining room (17%), kitchen (18%) bedroom (32%), study (6%).

VoD is going to be huge (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - The more people begin experiencing their own content - audio and video - the more they want. While the volume of video on demand isn't huge today, some analysts believe it will be a huge market by 2010...a lot of Venture Capitalists agree. - Courtesy of iSuppli

Something has to be sacrificed in the name of progress so why not DVDs?

But why then are DVD player sales up?

Why are NetFlix rentals rising, especially in their Long Tail video areas?

Perhaps it is the fact that the content sucks!

Maybe the video is good enough to watch once (rent) but why add it to the library?

Or perhaps it is because consumers have more options and they are becoming more selective.

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