A few months ago I was convinced that Blu-ray would make it to mass acceptance. Today, I'm not so sure. While the PlayStation 3 - the most common Blu-ray player out there - continues to sell well, I'm less convinced that the video-only discs will follow suit.
When the PlayStation 2 launched with the capability to play DVDs, it played a major role in the uptake of DVD in this country. But DVD was a massive improvement over VHS. The gap between Blu-ray and DVD is far less marked, especially on smaller screens and those without digital connectors. With the economy as it is, and DVD prices falling, in the short term I think people will largely continue to choose DVD over Blu-ray when buying films.
That presents a big problem for Blu-ray. DVD had plenty of time to reach wide acceptance. Blu-ray is up against a hard deadline. It needs to reach critical mass before its market is eaten up, not by another format but by something altogether different.
The threat to Blu-ray is not another format, it's a wire. Why would you buy/borrow a disc, when all the HD content you could want is at the end of a broadband connection?
Our puny broadband speeds today mean that downloading HD content takes days: not very spontaneous. But within ten years a large number of us should have very fat pipes into our homes, delivering tens of megabits per second: enough to stream HD content to multiple devices at once.
DVD has had a healthy 14 years of primacy. I don't think Blu-ray will be as long-lived. In fact I think it is likely to be the last major 'shelf' format for media: The Last of the Media-hicans...
Forgive the rubbish film pun. Best I could come up with.
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