Best Buy To Recommend Blu-ray To Consumers

[Ian]

First Netflix and now Best Buy. You gotta wonder how long Toshiba is going to hold out.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080211006384/en

Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is taking a step forward in addressing consumer confusion about high-definition formats. Beginning in early March, the leading consumer electronics retailer will prominently showcase Blu-ray hardware and software products in its Best Buy retail and online channels in the United States.

“Consumers have told us that they want us to help lead the way. We’ve listened to our customers, and we are responding. Best Buy will recommend Blu-ray as the preferred format,” said Brian Dunn, Best Buy’s president and chief operating officer. “Our decision to shine a spotlight on Blu-ray Disc players and other Blu-ray products is a strong signal to our customers that we believe Blu-ray is the right format choice for them.”

Dunn continued, “Best Buy has always believed that the customer will benefit from a widely-accepted single format that would offer advantages such as product compatibility and expanded content choices. Because we believe that Blu-ray is fast emerging as that single format, we have decided to focus on Blu-ray products.”

“With the explosion of HDTVs, customers are hungry for quality, high definition content. We believe our move to feature Blu-ray should help consumers feel confident in their hi-def content choices,” said Mike Vitelli, Best Buy’s senior vice president, Home Solutions. “Best Buy is excited by the next generation of digital products and we know our customers are too. We are excited about helping customers find the right mix of products and services to make the next generation of high definition entertainment technology come alive for them. We believe that Blu-ray is the right solution for consumers.”

Best Buy currently carries a wide array of Blu-ray hardware and software products. The company noted that it will continue to carry an assortment of HD-DVD products for customers who desire to purchase these products.

[Grain]

If Best Buy USA is anything like their Canadian outlets, any advice offered by sales people will be almost worthless. Not a slam on BB, but the whole electronics retail industry. They don't pay enough to attract audio/video geeks who know their stuff, and could actually affect format wars with some good advice for the uninformed.

[dolphinius_rex]

It's not likely to just be advice though... they will be putting Blu-Ray in a "spotlight" and pushing it as the next gen format. Another way of looking at this is that support for HD DVD will be reduced probably. If that happens, then people will be able to see for themselves, without being told anything.

And by the way, in the USA, Bestbuy is the #1 HiDef selling company. I Amazon and Walmart are #'s 2 and 3 (possibly not in that order, although I think it's Amazon before Walmart). So even though techie's don't really care much for Bestbuy or their opinions, SOMEONE is buying from them!

[Grain]

It's not likely to just be advice though... they will be putting Blu-Ray in a "spotlight" and pushing it as the next gen format. Another way of looking at this is that support for HD DVD will be reduced probably. If that happens, then people will be able to see for themselves, without being told anything.

As there's no visual difference between the two hidef formats, I'm not sure what you mean? If your refering to the upgrade from SD DVD, then I see what your saying.

And by the way, in the USA, Bestbuy is the #1 HiDef selling company. I Amazon and Walmart are #'s 2 and 3 (possibly not in that order, although I think it's Amazon before Walmart). So even though techie's don't really care much for Bestbuy or their opinions, SOMEONE is buying from them!

They do a booming business here in Alberta too, but I don't buy anything from them without going in prepared. I've wasted too much time asking questions and getting blank expressions as a response, or worse yet, complete disinformation. To be fair, FutureShop is no better, but they are owned by BestBuy too. A&B Sound in Lethbridge got 10's of thousands from me, as they had extremely competent employees. Unfortunately they closed that store, FS undercut them out of business. I suppose that's the downside of cheap merchandise, with low margins, come low salaries, and less able employees.

[Wesociety]

Even though Bestbuy employee opinions and recommendations are mostly worthless, there are people out there that know even less then they do (J6P). To these people, Bestbuy's recommendation of Blu-ray could be the tipping point for them to jump into high definition discs and completely ignore HD DVD.

And as Dolph mentioned, this probably means that Bestbuy will be shining a much larger spotlight on Blu-ray products (more Blu-ray products in advertisements, more Blu-ray end-caps, more Blu-ray sales & promotions, store employees recommending Blu-ray, etc).

[hoxlund]

best buy is holding a company wide meeting this saturday in geeksquad, probably for every department, im sure for the home theater department they will have training for this

our training will be boring, all about data privacy crap and common sense stuff like that

me for one, i like bluray simply because they tend to hold up better, the discs themselves, hd dvds i don't think coat there discs with no anti scratch layers... am i right?

regardless, our company really does have an impact, hell best buy is the only major electronics store in the entire cedar rapids

[Grain]

Irreguardless of the quality of the info they give, they will certainly affect what consumers buy. Last week CBC Radio 1 interviewed a sales rep from BB and one from FS over the format war, nothing was mentioned about the already old Warner news. The one from FS said BD was better, as HD DVD was only 1080i , the one from BB said HD DVD was better because of it's potential downloadable content .

[dolphinius_rex]

It's not likely to just be advice though... they will be putting Blu-Ray in a "spotlight" and pushing it as the next gen format. Another way of looking at this is that support for HD DVD will be reduced probably. If that happens, then people will be able to see for themselves, without being told anything.

As there's no visual difference between the two hidef formats, I'm not sure what you mean? If your refering to the upgrade from SD DVD, then I see what your saying.

I was meaning that the difference between the products would be obvious. Right now, despite having ~80+ more available titles, Blu-Ray often gets similar or the same shelf space as HD DVD. One of my Futureshop locations actually had their Blu-Ray movie section with the video games department, under the PS3 section.

But the difference in support should be pretty obvious starting in March I expect.