Blu-ray Holiday Sales Missing Mark Before Start

With the slowdown of the global economy, it's no big mystery that sales of the Blu-ray format are flat as a pancake aren't exactly living up to expectations.  With the players price's finally coming out of the stratosphere, and the Blu-ray discs still commanding a premium, it's seriously no mystery why Blu-ray remains stuck in first gear.

However, given all these factors, I'm really not sure what the folks at Sony were smoking when they came up with their estimates of sales.  According this this, the sales were expected to be 10 times of what they actually are!  Are they serious?  I'm pretty confident that no amount of Black-Friday-Blu-ray-pricing is going to be able to save those sales numbers!  About the best we can hope for is that Blu-ray gets more firmly established before digital downloads become more practical with real broadband for the majority of Americans.

Comments

[darby]

Here’s my read on this current tech situation: Once you own an HDTV, you become used to the high def pictures of TV shows and movies you receive that way. You prefer them. Then when you see Blu-Ray 1080p movie playing in a store, a light goes on–I have an HDTV that would really show new movies with this incredible picture and give me awesome sound too if I got a BR player and maybe a BR ready HDMI receiver and surround package (HTIB) to go with it. Price will hold some back, but those who want that best quality will spring for it now, or soon, to enjoy that crisp picture, etc. The problem with assuming that downloaded films will displace BR is that the downloads are low resolution and will not look that good on today’s HDTVs, not even as good as a standard DVD. Upconverted DVD’s look better than the downloads on HDTVs, but none of these look and sound as good as the Blu-Ray technology. The big negative about BR is not that BR players cannot show DVD’s because they can and they even upconvert them. The big minus is the price of a Blu-Ray movie. Even when you get a good deal on one, it still seems expensive. I guess it all just depends on your budget and how much you care about the HD performance of your entertainment. I just got the Sony BDP-s350 BR player and the HTIB Sony HT-ss2300 receiver and surround to go with my HDTV Sony KDL-46XBR4. All the items were bought with deals and discounts. HDTV was $1999 delivered. BR player and HTIB receiver/surround were $225 and $240 delivered. They all synchronize together with Sony’s remote and HDMI 1.3 cabling bought from monoprice for $15 delivered. There are deals out there, you just have to work on finding them, then you have to spend the cash. Expect to see prices on BR players to fall on these days: Black Friday, Dec, 26, and Jan. 2.