The first sign I've had in a while that Blu-ray sales are still underachieving...

BLOT: (19 Oct 2011 - 06:17:32 PM)

The first sign I've had in a while that Blu-ray sales are still underachieving...

This is not scientific, but when I got the following email from Best Buy...

...the first thing I thought was "Oh, Blu-ray is still underachieving." When we were early into the second stage (third stage? fourth?) optical disk formats, i.e. Blu-ray or HD-DVD, I remember reading whispered hints that most of the showdown was just show, that both formats were being severely beaten by continued DVD sales. Now, people being slow to rebuy is one thing, that makes sense. You just spent, say, over a thousand dollars on DVDs in the past couple of years, you are not going to turn around and spend twice that on the same collection on DVD-pluses. But, the story they wanted to tell you was that hogwash and poppycock, because people were buying the new media formats in DROVES. IN DROVES. Look at all the media stores pushing all the DVDs into corners and converting half their space to Blu-ray. The. Future.

According to Wiki, three-quarters of physical optical media products are still DVDs. New sales. Not people refusing to rebuy old stuff, but they are still three times as likely to buy new stuff on DVD, as well. I sure am. I like old and indie things. A Blu-ray treatment, for me, would only be higher definition graininess. In fact, if I was to watch old Doctor Who eps on Blu-ray, if that existed, it would probably look worse unless some serious digital tweaks were at play.

There are many reasons this could be the case, but I'll offer two: a) getting higher definition is a package deal. That already +10 dollars to get the hi-def version goes alongside a thousand dollar cost to get the equipment to make use of it. Drop the price of the players and TVs and you'll sell more. Listen up, Sony. b) The Media Geeks that really like the higher definition stuff are also the more tech savvy sorts. And while I hate to generalize, tech-savvy sorts are also the ones who hang out with other tech savvy sorts and you get disk-swapping, torrenting, Netflix/etc streaming, and so forth. More on this last bit, in just a second.

I suspected my theory, by the way, that Blu-ray's prominence was largely a myth when they started stripping special features from DVDs to push Blu-ray sales. I can see only putting as many on a DVD as it can hold, but they went a step beyond, which said to me: they had reason. See Also: the new combo packs that are a big thing around Christmas times.

It is mostly moot, anyhow. Unless the Blu-ray hurries the hell up, by the time it hits its stride (at the rate it is going, at least four or five, if not more, years to go) physical media will be left behind. In the past couple of years that I have been using it, streaming media has become impressive. I can now watch decent if not great quality stuff (and often it is great quality) without having any additional clutter in my house by an Internet connection that is nice, but in no way is outstanding. And that's not including OnDemand stuff, etc, that comes with cable subscriptions.

But at any rate, give up your DVDs and get a five dollar coupon off select titles. Meh. Your mileage may vary.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: October 2011