Pioneer pushing the boundaries of Blu-ray ane consumer attitudes towards Blu-ray starting to change?
For Sony, winning the next-generation DVD war against Toshiba has been a mixed bag - while defeating HD-DVD was clearly a good thing, the delay in getting Blu-ray to market has meant that there are a lot of devices out there currently that are using legacy DVD for portable media support. Would Blu-ray be further ahead if Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii supported the player? Definitely.
Two quick news items in this area.
First of all, Pioneer has demoed a 400GB Blu-ray monster that use a 16-layer Blu-ray disc and could see Blu-ray discs move to sizes above 50GB. These disc sizes could be useful in working with more HD content and particularly for the creative community, though likely very much overkill in the near-term at the consumer level.
Turning back to Blu-ray adoption, the glass at present appears to be half-full, with just research firm NPD indicating that just 10% of HDTV owners looking to buy a Blu-ray player over the next six months. On the plus side 87% of PS3 owners are watching Blu-Ray movies on their console, according to the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) - an indication that the increasing availability of Blu-ray titles at online and bricks-and-mortar rental locations is having a positive impact on the consumer.
While Internet downloading of content should win out over packaged movie content over the long-run, the near-term equation is showing that Blu-ray is beating out legal downloads thus far. With some 300 titles released in 2007 on Blu-ray, the industry generated hi-def revenues of $260 million, compared with just $123 million in Internet downloads. Ultimately, the biggest problem with Blu-ray may be content, with the studios yet to make a dedicated retail push for Blu-ray - last year, the 300 odd Blu-ray titles released pales next to the more than 12,000 releases including all packaged media formats.
While Sony may have won the battle versus Toshiba for next-gen DVD, missing out on the opportunity to get even more Blu-ray players built into the north of 19 million Xbox 360 units out in the field was an opportunity missed, in my view.
In summary, while things may be looking up for Blu-ray, the expectations are deservedly low out there with respect to Blu-ray being a huge driver for Sony through 2008 and 2009.
