Quote:
Originally Posted by
addabox 
Again, percentage increases don't tell you much unless you account for what they're increasing from. The fact is that digital already pulls in way more money than BluRay.
Digital distribution includes PPV (including cable and satellite), downloading, streaming, on demand services, etc. This market has been around longer than even the DVD format, and its current 10% share of revenue is not all that different from the PPV/on-demand market share back in the VHS/early-DVD era. Blu-ray's barely a three-year old format, and it currently accounts for 4% of all home video revenue, which is not an inconsequential growth base.
Also, Blu-ray is strictly an HD optical format, while digital distribution is primarily SD. I have yet to see a breakdown, but I would venture to guess that Blu-ray's revenues already far outpace the digital distribution revenues for HD content. Digital distribution is playing to a very different market because most of the revenues come from rentals and one-time viewing, rather than purchases. Blu-ray and DVD revenue primarily comes from sell-through.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
That seems like a very convoluted and somewhat conspiratorial way to account for what's being reported. An easier way to explain it is that the tech press is aware of the misleading nature of talking about rates of increase that doesn't acknowledge absolute numbers.
The tech press has had it out for Blu-ray from the very beginning, and largely ignored the market data time after time as the writers pushed the downloading angle. I mean, how many more "make or break time for Blu-ray" articles are going to come out between now and Christmas? I would guess about the same number that came out last year and the year before that? An optical format is simply not exciting to tech writers, yet it remains what the vast majority of consumers are buying and renting.
Unlike with the computer market where changes and shifts can occur relatively quickly, the consumer market moves much slower and tech writers generally don't acknowledge that. Remember that it took the DVD format almost seven years before it finally surpassed VHS, and the DVD was the most successful consumer electronics debut ever. It also took the CD format about 12 years before displacing the cassette; and despite the growth in the music downloading market, CD sales still commanded 65% of the music market during the first half of THIS year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Of course it's doing "fine", the question is what's going to happen in the near future.
In the near future, Blu-ray will simply find its way into living rooms by attrition as more households replace broken or otherwise worn DVD players with Blu-ray players, and more households purchase HDTVs. For the NEAR future (i.e., the next couple of years), Blu-ray will be the fastest growing segment in the home entertainment industry. How fast that growth occurs will be up to the studios, who can build up Blu-ray's market share by simply lowering disc prices. Industry analyst surveys I've read about indicate that consumer interest in Blu-ray increases significantly once the player price point goes below $150, and the typical selling prices have not yet reached that point (probably will go below $150 either around the holidays or early next year).
Six or seven years down the line, who knows where things will be at that point. By then, the Blu-ray format will be close to a decade old and probably past its growth phase. But, that's pretty much the same trajectory that the DVD format took. The DVD's growth trend leveled out only about three years after it finally surpassed VHS in 2003.
For all the hype that online video gets, the vast majority of video viewing still occurs on TVs, and most of those are not networked. The killer app that finally creates a simple seamless bridge between online media and the home living room has not arrived yet. When that time comes, (and more households have sufficient bandwidth for HD streaming) then we can talk about digital distribution as the dominant market force. That time just isn't here, and probably won't be for the short term.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Look at what you wrote-- you start by citing Blu-Ray's increasing percentage of optical disc market share as evidence of the format's success, then follow up by dismissing the slump in the DVD market as inevitable. So...... Blu-Ray gets a bigger percentage of a decreasing market.
Try reading what I wrote. The DVD's growth was spurred on by marketing to both the catalog and new release markets. The huge catalog sales for the DVD format is a one-time stimulus that the format will not be able to repeat. The lack of compelling catalog titles and the maturing of the DVD format (from a high margin growth product to a commodity) would have made a sales decline inevitable under any circumstances, and the current economic slump made things worse. It's the same one-time phenomenon that spurred the huge growth of the CD format, and contributed to its subsequent decline.
I doubt that Blu-ray will have the same kind of traction with catalog titles that the DVD format did. The DVD format created a whole generation of video collectors, and completely shifted the video market from a rental-driven market to one driven by sell-through. Most collectors will not repurchase their DVD collections for Blu-ray discs if for no other reason than most movies are not worth purchasing more than once. Blu-ray will not have that same kind of seismic effect, but it will continue to make inroads with the new release market (where the majority of sales come from) and to some degree will drive growth in the home video market for at least the time being.
