Acceptance: Blu-Ray may have finally hit the big time
May 6, 2009 by Derek
Mass market acceptance for Blu-Ray format may have been a pipe dream a year ago, but now it may finally be on its way to that elusive goal. NPD’s tracking service found Q1 sales of players up 72 percent over the final quarter of last year, moving over 400,000 units in total. That’s a huge jump, folks. That’s a medium entering mainstream consciousness.
The format’s future was very much in doubt as prices were high, it was battling with HD-DVD as a competing HD disc platform, and players were expensive. That problem seems to be fading as average player prices plummeted from $393 last year to $261 in 2009 so far.
Many reports suggest that player average prices could drop to $200 or less in the next year or so, and when Vizio’s player finally gets here, that could start to tip the scales away from DVD as the dominant platform, albeit slowly. As an HD, 1080p medium, we couldn’t be more excited about that prospect.
