Inception on Blu-ray Breaks Sales Records

[Woochifer]

4th-5th...10th-12th??? wow!!! I have had nothing but outstanding performance from all of the DVD players I have purchased over the years (total of 3) and I still have two of them, the other was handed down to a family member. (still works, last time I asked, brought it in 98)

I'm currently on my third and fourth DVD players. One replaced an eight year old Denon, while the other replaced a seven year old Toshiba in the spare/play room. In both cases, the drives simply quit reading the discs reliably. I still use a dedicated DVD player in my main system to take the load off my PS3.

The one thing we must still look at is the ability of Blu Ray players. Yes they play blu ray and also upconvert standard DVD's. So the average consumer will see this as a win-win deal for he can still buy both formats and use the same machine and get a better picture on both formats. Now HDMI plays a big part in this too, for now the average joe only needs to know where to put one cable in to get the picture and sound instead of running 5/7 analog and optical/coax. The numbers are driven by the ease of use by the masses and the easier you can make it for people the more they will buy into it. I say just be happy that the new technology improves the quality of picture and sound and the ease of use/hookup is no big deal for people like us.

This is exactly why Blu-ray players have outsold DVD players for at least the past year. Nearly all TVs sold nowadays are HD, and I think the message has finally sunk in that Blu-ray is the only real HD disc format, despite all the confusion about what 1080p upconversion actually does.

IMO, the purported benefits of upconverting DVD players got way oversold when Blu-ray player prices still cost hundreds of dollars more. But, now with the price gap narrowed down to as little as $20, it just makes no sense to invest in a 480i optical format. And pretty soon, the rest of the market for dedicated DVD players will disappear, in much the same way that Blu-ray players have completely supplanted DVD players at the higher end.

And I also think that the media center and streaming functions getting built into many of the current Blu-ray players is yet another incentive that will spur sales. Even for people who don't intend to watch a lot of Blu-ray movies, a $130 Blu-ray player that can connect to a home media server, and stream content from Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Pandora, and others, is actually very price competitive with other set-top boxes that don't play any disc media.

Well we're up to two BlueRay players here if you count the PS3, in addition to two HD-DVD players and about a hundred HD-DVD's I haven't had the time or inclination to watch.

BlueRay would really have to LOWER the price of the software to beat DVD into the grave. In this economy asking $20-$25 for a movie is too much. Heck, I payed over $35 for the "collectors edition" of Avatar!

Agreed. The list prices (and presumably the wholesale costs) on Blu-ray discs haven't really changed since last year, and that's probably the biggest reason why Blu-ray's market share stalled for much of 2010 after that post-holiday bounce in January and February. The current quarter has seen Blu-ray's market share increase to about 19%, which will probably increase with the return of deep discounting on new Blu-ray releases.

With all the new Blu-ray players sitting under Christmas trees, Blu-ray's market share will inevitably increase even further in January and February. The only question is how high it will go, especially if the price points return to their pre-holiday levels.

$35 for Avatar ... wow, prices really shot back up after all that week-of-release discounting (bought mine for $20 at Target).