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Not so good news for Blu-ray according to recent poll.

Posted by Audiophilander (A) on May 20, 2008 at 02:25:05

That caption header alone should have Jazz Inmate dusting off his pompoms! ;O)

Seriously, this is an issue worth discussing and analyzing even though it's doubtful that high tech savvy consumers, as many of us are, can have much impact on the final outcome. This post isn't intended to disparage Blu-ray format advocates (well, I'm teasing JI, but he deserves it), but rather get some feedback on a topic of interest to us all and opinions about the poll linked below.

As I've said many times before, I don't really have a dog in this hunt (even though Old Red which I originally picked up and still occasionally feed no longer has anything to chase), and FTR, I have Blu-ray and HD-DVD (and the Oppo DV-983H on order, just in case standard DVD continues to rule the roost! -grin).

I don't know how many folks here are early adopters, but after being singed a few times over the years I have a simple rule: if my interest is tweaked by a new video technology I usually climb on board a format by around the third generation, after a few of the more critical bugs are worked out of the players and media.

Having read the linked article polling Blu-ray's market impact I have to concur, somewhat begrudgingly, with the assessments and add, that as long as the price of the players and media remain so much higher than standard DVD (especially inexpensive upscaling players), Blu-ray will probably remain a niche product with little hope of wide acceptance in the foreseeable future.

I suspect that Blu-ray's window of opportunity is between seven months and a year to grab wider market acceptance as the next generation high resolution format (my opinion); the holidays will be crucial.

That doesn't necessarily mean that Blu-ray's backers would pull the plug at that point (especially after such a long war of attrition and coming out on top), but if the format settles into something comparable to the LD (laserdisc) niche status, which is where it seems headed at the moment, we'll probably never see the kind of lower prices on media required to make it competitive.

Worst case scenario: If it reaches a point where only the most popular titles are released day and date of standard DVD releases Blu-ray will lose even more ground. It also means that many sought after back-catalog titles may never see the light of day outside of standard DVD release or, if they do, they'll only appear as expensive imports.

Best case: the economy gets a little better, the Blu-ray prices get more competitive and folks feel a little less antsy about spending those big bucks on home entertainment.

Food for thought.

Cheers,
AuPh

• New Poll Finds Consumers Not Wild About Blu-ray...   (Open in New Window)

Edits: 05/20/08

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