and yet, blu ray adoption rates are higher than DVD adoption rates. Why is that? "It turned out to be a phenomenal year for Blu-ray," said Tom Adams of Adams Media Research. In the fourth quarter of 2008, which is only too important for tech companies, U.S. consumers bought up 28.6 million Blu-ray titles." http://news.therecord.com/printArticle/469824 http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/16575.cfm http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090109/ap_on_hi_te/tec_gadget_show_blu_ray According to Videoscan 22.7 million DVDs were sold for North America in 1999 as a whole. Older news: - Blu-Ray bestseller Dark Knight sold 1.7 million units its first week in 2008. - For comparison Matrix DVD bestseller in 1999 sold 780K units its first week.
Harris Interactive's survey doesn't seem to paint a rosey picture for Bluray (to this point, anyway), but who knows : http://hothardware.com/News/Bluray-Adoption-Still-Sluggish-HDTV-Sales-Up/ ---------------------------------------------- Blu-ray Adoption Still Sluggish, HDTV Sales Up Sunday, June 21, 2009 - by Shawn Oliver It's a tough time for Blu-ray to be really hitting its stride. Many consumers are still wary due to the battle with HD-DVD, and frankly, many are still content with DVD. In too many cases, upscaled DVD looks "good enough" for consumers, and only those with oodles of disposable income are willing to fork out for Blu-ray. Blu-ray player prices are still relatively high, and the actual movies are way expensive compared to the same titles on DVD. Plus, the install base of DVD is so high, it's tough for many to start building another movie library on another format. Those reasons and more are what is keeping the interest in Blu-ray rather low according to a new study by Harris Interactive. Currently, 11% of Americans own an HD-DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player. Crazy, right? More Americans own HD-DVD right now than the "winning" format, Blu-ray. To be totally honest, we aren't so shocked by the news. When HD-DVD was around, it was far and away the "budget" format for high-def. The players were cheaper, the films were cheaper. In other words, it was a format more ready to thrive in a down economy. Blu-ray was always viewed as a niche format for those absorbed in A/V, not the common man's format. Today, BD is still fighting that stereotype, but the prices aren't helping it win many folks over. Of course, many folks own a Blu-ray player in that their PS3 will play them, but people are still not jumping to join the BD bandwagon. The lag in adoption can't totally be blamed on the economy, though. During this same time period, HDTV ownership is up. In the survey, nearly half of respondents stated that they own an HDTV, which goes to show that HDTV ownership isn't necessarily a prerequisite for Blu-ray adoption. With HDTV stations becoming more and more the norm, many folks are spending their TV watching time on high-def programs, not Blu-ray. Compared to May of 2008, some 12% more people own HDTVs. The survey also found that on average, consumers purchased approximately 6 Standard Format DVD’s in the last six months compared with 1 in HD format (HD-DVD .7 vs. Blu-ray .5). Take a look at these PS3-specific findings below to put an even clearer spin on things: Source: Harris Interactive When Blu-ray player or PS3 owners are asked specifically about standard versus Blu-ray format purchases, the results suggest a mixed bag of behaviors with some price sensitivity indicated: •Only one quarter plan to switch to Blu-ray completely (25%), while one third of Blu-ray or PS3 owners claim that most of their movie purchases are now on Blu-ray format (32%); •Two in five are waiting for Blu-ray format prices to come down before they buy more (43%) – and a quarter buy Blu-ray regardless of price (25%); and, •Only 1 in 5 appear to be replacing or duplicating their existing standard format DVD library with Blu-ray format (21%), and over a third say they only buy movies on Blu-ray format that they currently do not own on standard definition (37%). All told, we still see Blu-ray adoption a long ways from taking off. The economy isn't helping matters, and Blu-ray just doesn't provide a good enough incentive to convince users to switch from DVD. We'll ask you: have you switched to Blu-ray? Are you holding off? Do you think DVD is "good enough?"
How many of those include PS3's? Bluray having a gaming console helps it a great deal, so the term "adoption rate" is used a bit loosely. Would those people have bought a standalone bluray player or did they say "well, hell, the thing plays bluray movies, so why not buy some?". For example, consider the numbers in the following excerpt from roughly the same time period you used. It's a June 2008 article : http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6572676.html ------------------------------------------ Of the 15 million Blu-ray drives owned by U.S. consumers at the end of last year, 4 million were stand-alone set-top boxes, compared with 5 million standard-definition players installed by the end of 1999, said Youn.
BD is pricing itself out of the market. The difference in picture quality for most people is worth the premium they are charging even on just the media.
I have a PS3 also, and own 1 Blue ray movie. Got it for my gf, but she already had the movie on dvd.....
What are the number on rentals? I know it doesn't really help but for someone like me I own 4-5 Blu-rays but rent 2-3 per month.
In all honesty, I have trouble watching a regular DVD now that I'm used to Blu-Ray. Not that DVD looks like sh** by any means but last gen is last gen. It's just not at all comparable.
Many of the blu-ray players have the ability to download and play streaming audio as well. So either way they may be covered.
2007 numbers are still somewhat affected by the format war though. I know early on, some studies that tried to compare the HD formats to DVD would attempt to combine them. Or just look at disc sales across both formats since that would be a better idea of what adoption was like (if 800K Blu-ray copies were sold, and 400K HD DVD copies were sold, then HD adoption would be ~1.2M). Focusing on disc sales can help solve a lot of problems involving the format war and the PS3. Regardless, I think it is pretty impressive that Blu-ray player (excluding PS3) sales were roughly on par with DVD. Personally, I certainly don't see Blu-ray coming close to putting up the numbers DVDs do. But I think sales will gradually increase over time, and eventually be pretty substantial (assuming it isn't already). I still see the format as being in the early adopter stage, so it surprises me a bit that people are surprised that it isn't owned by 50% of Americans. I think adoption has been relatively good given the circumstances. Of course, it will be much harder to improve adoption over the next few years, but I'm not sure there's much point in looking at current market conditions to predict that performance (e.g., prices will possibly drop further). As for my personal preferences, I don't really have that much interest in Blu-ray movies, but I don't exactly have much of a DVD collection either. Given the choice of spending $20 dollars for DVD and $25 for Blu-ray (or $10/$15 depending on non-MSRP prices), I'd probably go for Blu-ray.
Well that still makes no sense because the difference between BD and DVD is pretty huge. Even more so for a large TV and a decent AVR.
I don't know what all the complaints about high prices are about. Everytime I stop by at Fry's, Best Buy or Walmart, I always see good to decent deals on select movies. I own about 15 Blu-Ray movies and out of those, maybe 3 of them I paid full price of about $30. Some movies I got great deals on, Reservoir Dogs $10 at Walmart, $15 Hellboy at Walmart, I found 3:10 to Yuma for like $16 bucks. New DVD releases are about $20-25 so it's not like its that much more. Amazon, has GREAT deals on Blu-Rays often.
Agreed. I watch it on my big 67" TV and it is simply fantastic. I had to get the UK version for David Attenborough's narration.
Because its half CGI. Those wolves from above? FAKE. That great white jumping into the air? FAKE. Prove its not FAKE
