Blu Ray Sales Double in the Past Year

[hdtvfan0001]

Blu Ray movies are certainly gaining alot of traction...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10222241-1.html?part=msn-cnet&subj=ns&tag=feed

[Mertzen]

I hope " Blue Ray movies prices cut in half" is the next press release. :D

In the end they'll have to come down in price still.

[Stuart Sweet]

Please, look at frys.com (or Frys Electronics) or amazon.com... the prices for blu-rays are excellent!

[BattleZone]

A year ago, there were endless threads all over the 'net asking "Will Blu-Ray survive?" This despite the fact that Blu-Ray was being adopted faster than DVD was when it was released. No one seems to remember that DVDs were $30-35 for new releases back in 1999, or that DVD players started at $1000 when they came out.

With players at the $200 mark and a growing library of titles, many $15 and less, Blu-Ray is doing just fine. My average price per movie is $13 if you exclude the 5-disc Blade Runner that I paid $35 for. That's hardly outrageous.

Amazon has lots of discounts and 2-for-1 or 3-for-2 deals on catalog titles, so it isn't hard to build a collection for fairly small amounts of money.

[hdtvfan0001]

Please, look at frys.com (or Frys Electronics) or amazon.com... the prices for blu-rays are excellent!
Absolutely....they have a buy-two-get-one-free sale of 300+ titles alone this week at Amazon, making for an average of $14-$18 per disk.

[LarryFlowers]

Shoot... Netflix and Blockbuster could account for most of the increase by themselves:lol:

[ARKDTVfan]

Please, look at frys.com (or Frys Electronics) or amazon.com... the prices for blu-rays are excellent!

Indeed
amazon has plenty of my blu ray cash :D

we really your avatar (The Shadow) on Blu Ray
great movie yet the DVD is foolscreen :nono:

[Stewart Vernon]

A year ago, there were endless threads all over the 'net asking "Will Blu-Ray survive?" This despite the fact that Blu-Ray was being adopted faster than DVD was when it was released. No one seems to remember that DVDs were $30-35 for new releases back in 1999, or that DVD players started at $1000 when they came out.

I don't want to turn this into one of those threads from last year... but my stance was always that the marketplace is different today than it was for DVD.

DVD offered a lot more than just better picture when compared to VHS. DVD offered no rewinding, better pause/skip features, smaller storage requirements, more reliable future playback... so while there was a choice between VHS and DVD, VHS had not been so truly absorbed that the masses weren't ready for something better.

Now there's no arguing Blu ray is better than DVD in terms of quality... but that's about it. The other jump in convenience is virtually the same as DVD technology. Also, Blu ray is only better than DVD if you already have an HDTV.. and since folks were waiting for HDTVs to drop in price, that market hadn't been fully realized yet either.

So Blu ray adoption had more dependencies than DVD. DVD just required you to have the TV you already had for other reasons.

Blu ray required you have a newer HDTV.

Also, for the folks just getting the "bargain" HDTVs that were finally affordable, they didn't want to go spend another $400+ on a Blu ray player on top of that... and the simple fact was that DVDs looked better on the new TVs too, and many were seeing widescreen for the first time at home.

All that said... as long as the companies stick with it, Blu ray was going to succeed eventually. I was just never sure in today's "instant gratification" society if companies would be willing to grind along until Blu ray caught hold.

And it doesn't hurt that prices on players and movies have come down a little in the last year.