Blu-ray disks haven’t set the market afire yet, but a new report suggests the format’s time is near.
“The State of Home Video,” a study by SNL Kagan, says Blu-ray sales will drive the home entertainment business over the next decade even as High Def downloads make their presence felt with consumers.
SNL Kagan projects Blu-ray will reach a tipping point in sales by 2010 and will attain 59.7 percent market share in 2014. Currently, standard DVD commands 97.1 percent of the market.
Another spanking new study counters the SNL Kagan data.
I still think Blu-ray has too many obstacles to overcome – consumer confusion, higher prices and the coming wave of on-demand movies – before it can replicate the DVD success model.
No related posts.
on 
on 
on 
on 
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
My question is, which media company paid for which study?
Good point. The latter study was funded by a financial market tracking firm, from what I can tell (economics are not my strong suit).
The bullish report is by SNL Kagan, which seems to be another similar firm. But I don’t know who funds either group.
These reports shouldn’t be taken at face value … which is why I posted the opposing view. I suspect in the end its all prognostication … as inaccurate as weather forecasting and sports betting
i have heard about several different reports and i’m not sure what to believe. i heard recently that compared to the first couple of yeard of the DVD format that blu-ray is catching on faster and the amount of copies that ‘The Dark Knight’ sold on blu-ray is very encouraging.
I have had a Blu-ray player for over a year now and i love it. i still buy dvds for films that are not on blu-ray but pretty much anything new or older films that have been re-released on blu-ray. Over a year ago i bought a new HDTV and got a blu-ray player because of what i had seen at a friends house. the prices are a little high but i have bought most of the movies from amazon much cheaper than any of the stores.
What worries me about downloads is that it is likely that they will require some form of software which prevents copying. You can leave it on your DVR hard drive (until the HD dies anyway) but can you burn a copy that will last 30 years on your personal Blueray burner?
Based on past experience, I’d say the media companies would prefer you just pay for each showing. Which is why having product available on Blueray for sale is a good thing.
Agree with you, the Amazon store is the best way to get them
I am unconvinced that downloadable content will surpass buying a pressed movie anytime soon. We just don’t have enough bandwidth to allow anyone to stream a movie to our house that is the same quality as a pressed Blu-Ray movie.
No one is offering for download any HD content that comes close to the quality you get on a pressed Blu-Ray disc. Maybe someday they will, but it will be loaded with DRM and will probably cost as much as a disc. And don’t forget the fact that it will take you a week to download it with that pathetic broadband connection you have at home.
Right now all the services I have tried for HD content (cable on demand, Xbox marketplace, and Apple TV) suck a$$ in terms of quality. My PS3 provides a better image when upconverting a standard def DVD then those three services offer with their HD content.
Besides I won’t buy downloadable content that has DRM. I will buy a disc with DRM, because authentication is tied to the player, but no way will I shell out money for any downloadable content if the company I bought it from can turn off their authentication servers when it isn’t affordable for them to run them anymore.
I’m sorry but downloadable content still has a very long way to go before it begins to take any noticable share of the market. Most households don’t have the bandwith to seamlessly stream it, the knowhow to setup home media centers, or and the willingness to purchase additional hardware for an ultimately inferior product. Current streaming HD offerings are nowhere near the picture or sound quality. It will certainly make strides over the years, but that’s not to say that it will immediately spell the death of solid state (blu-ray) purchases. I’ve been working on some blu-ray projects with Warner Home Video and have been looking into this issue quite a bit and frankly, it has a long way to go.
I forgot to mention in my rant that all the services that I have used for on demand HD content that not a one of them uses Dobly Digital. At best you hope for digital stereo, but typically you get Dolby Pro Logic. This is done to further reduce the size of the file that they have to stream to the user.
For the life of me I can’t figure out where this whole downloadable will be the future talk is coming from and what are they using as as the foundation for their arguments. They have to know what BluFan above knows and you can’t magically fix the infrastructure problem without coming up with a compression methodology that is at least and order of magnitued more efficent than MPEG-4.
Oh well, here is hoping I am wrong and all my friends can say I told you so.