Blu-ray won’t catch on for a few years and is overpriced. That’s the gist of a new Associated Press article that has few revelations but is a good overview of the state of the high-def disc format that beat out rival HD DVD. Among the points of AP reporter Ryan Nakashima’s write-up, with my comments:

Blu-ray players cost too much. The cheapest new player is a Magnavox for about $300 and it’s, well, a Magnavox. The best full-featured Blu-ray player is still a PlayStation 3, and it starts at $400. Until Blu-ray players with all the bells and whistles are available for at least half that and aren’t a video-game system, the mainstream public won’t bite. One thing the article doesn’t mention is that Blu-ray discs themselves are still overpriced at an MSRP of $35 to $40 on average. I don’t care about Amazon sales that often cut some of those prices — on selected titles — in half; that’s still way too much.

People are happy with standard DVDs. This continues to be true, even though DVD sales have declined. What surprises me is that consumers are springing for high-def big-screen TVs but then aren’t buying into a product, Blu-ray, that makes the sets look their best. Part of the problem is that people simply don’t care or can’t tell the difference in quality. Just by having a high-def set, they feel they have “gone high-def,” even if they really haven’t. The other part of the problem is that standard DVDs can look pretty good on an HDTV, thanks to progressive-scan and upconverting DVD players — devices that cost well below $100.

Only limited movies are available on Blu-ray. This might be true from a pure numbers standpoint, but I don’t think this is part of the problem. More than 500 titles are out on Blu-ray and more than 100 are coming in the next several months. They include most major new movies from the past few years, the genre that drives the market.

Special Blu-ray features, such as BD Live (Web-enabled extras), will help push the format, just as Snow White helped push DVD. Snow White didn’t help push DVD as a format, although it was a fantastic title. Sure, people like extras, but the movie itself is the driving factor with a new format.

Blu-ray is growing at a faster rate than DVDs. There are twice as many Blu-players (including PS3s) in U.S. homes two years after the format’s debut as there were DVD players at the same point in the older format’s life cycle.  I don’t know if that matters. Blu-ray has grown so fast largely because it has capitalized on people’s familiarity with a disc-based home-video format; the new format is just an upgrade. DVD was an entire changeover from the previous tape home-video format, so it faced a bigger challenge. A Blu-ray player can play a standard DVD, but a DVD player couldn’t play a videotape. That’s why Blu-ray has had it easier — initially, at least.

Will Blu-ray eventually replace DVDs? Maybe. We’ll know a lot more after the next holiday season.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under DVDs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.