DTV Will Fail Without Promotion

A new consumer study released by market analysis firm Forrester Research indicates that digital television will fail without manufacturers and broadcasters promoting the system to the public.""DTVís short-term prospects are limited by high prices and low awareness,"" according to the Forrester announcement of the study. ""Faces with a saturated market for TVs and lack of consumer pull, manufacturers and broadcasters will need to make a concerted effort to ensure DTVís success.""According to the new study, which followed on the heals of one last year conducted by Forrester Research that was criticized by the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) for failing to take consumer surveys into consideration, consumers donít see an obvious need for the new television system and they donít understand why the product costs so much.The studyís findings were based on more than 17,000 consumer surveys and reflected the knowledge and attitudes of respondents toward the new digital system. Another finding is that DTV ""will sputter until prices fall to 5 percent of todayís household median disposable income ñ around $2,000,"" which Forrester says is pricing that is 60 percent below current first-generation product prices.While pricing of DTVs is showing signs of coming down, there is still the undecideness of DTV standards. It is a virtually overwhelming task, thanks to an inept FCC, who failed to set meaningful DTV standards, for consumers to sort out just what quality of DTV they are buying. Combined with misleading sales tactics using such weasel words as ""digital,"" ""16x9,"" ""improved resolution"" and other trick language, consumers are finding themselves purchasing TV sets with no information on the actual display characteristics. The result consumers are confused and have no idea of what image quality theyíre actually going to get. So the industry already is operating at a huge handicap with no assurance that set makers wonít use every trick in the book to confuse and confound consumers as they ""promote"" DTV sets of varying image quality.