Study: Blu-ray sales struggle, but PS3 sales help

Finally the truth. Hence what I been saying since months as feedback on the overload of Blu-ray positive news and analysis by hundred somehwat companies. I wonder how much money and efforts all these investigations have cost... I would settle for 25% of that money and buy me a PS3... :-)

"Finally the truth"? About what? You are a puzzling guy, Hi-Jack. What exactly is your point? That people are using the PS3 as main vehicle to watch Blu-Ray? Everybody knows that, what's the mystery on that?

If the study data is anything to go by, it does look as if Blu-Ray is doing well:

- 87% PS3 owners watch Blu-Ray on it (over 13 million PS3 already sold worldwide; much more will be sold);

- 23% planning to buy a Blu-Ray player in 2009 (impressive numbers, I would say).

It is also no wonder that the PS3 is the one keeping the format alive. That was the plan, no? Why did Sony delay the PS3? Why is it a lot more expensive than it would be if it carried a DVD player, instead of Blu-Ray one? Because that was Sony's plan: use the PS3 as a Trojan horse, to have the format succeed. And they did succeed.

By the way: again, the title of this news is misleading. It says Blu-Ray sales struggle. It should say: "Blu-Ray player sales struggle". There's no evidence that Blu-Ray movie sales are struggling.

The title should be blu-ray standalone player sales struggle.

But you guys should read Panasonic VP article where he said that Panasonic markets profile 1.1 and profile 2.0 players intentionally, they do not intent to replace profile 1.1 players yet, lol.

Johnzap, with all do/due respect. You discussed with me few times before PS3 has nothing to do with positive Blu-ray disc sales reported while I said if all PS3 owners buy a few Blu-ray disks out of curiosity, 50% of the numbers explain themselves and the real blu-ray success should be measured by people buying blu-ray players and not gaming consoles...

Anyway, Sorry if i'm unclear sometimes.
Fact is, if PS3's would not carry Blu-ray drive or people would not be "curious" like cats sometimes, blu-ray would likely have been showing much worse results. (And it's not enough to say "but it does have a blu-ray drive" so...)

Doesn't look good to me and it looks like "gamers" are keeping it going. Unfortunately, alot of people are not the hardcore "gamers" that would buy the PS3. Alot of the "older" more "seasoned" consumers don't have a clue what a PS3 is much less it being used as strictly a Bluray player. Once the PS3 has lost its novelty, I am sure the sells will taper off and you see the Bluray market become stagnant.

roll on holographic media and players cant come soon enough

Why would need holographic media? 1080p would seem to look pretty good in big screen tv's? How big of TV would you need to be able to take advantage of an even higher resolution? One day there won't be enough room in a living room to expand average tv size.

I think blu-ray will do ok. Its just a niche product right now, it'll catch on with the public when more people have hdtv's, and the prices on standalone players drop. Allthough if I were sony, i'd start dropping them sooner rather then later. If you're going to get royalties from every disc sold, you probably want it to catch on sooner rather then later. If you wait to long, it could just be a niche item like a laserdisc.

Sorry for anyone that feels invested in this, but bluray will be obsolete before it has a cahnce to succeed. Streaming media will will be the thing.

You think streaming media is going to solve it? North American internet is going to need to a severe upgrade to handle that! The average internet connection is around 3mbps, lets say 5 to speed it up. So at about 5, you're looking at roughly 2 gigs an hour! So if its a compressed 1080p movie.. even using x264, maybe compress that down to 12 gigs. So a 6 hour download. The telcos keep finding ways to restrict internet connections. They use throttling, caps, and what have you, to avoid upgrading.

There's no way technology is close enough to stream HD, not in the near future anyways, or not without quality loss, which kinda defeats the point of HD?

@Hi-Jack:

"You discussed with me few times before PS3 has nothing to do with positive Blu-ray disc sales reported[...]".

What? Are you saying that I said that positive disc sales are not due to PS3???!!! Are you serious? On the contrary, I always say that the fact that there are so many PS3s, which double as Blu-Ray players, is what made Blu-Ray defeat HDDVD. Even when HDDVD was still around, I always said for HDDVD fans not to rejoice with the fact that there were more HDDVD standalone sales, because the PS3 would win it in the end. And that's what happened. More Blu-Ray disc sales because of the PS3.

If you are saying otherwise, you are utterly mistaken.

As for your far fetched idea about novelty, etc. Keep dreaming. Give it a little time and what will happen is:

1. Blu-Ray disc prices will keep dropping to DVD price level. Maybe a slight premium but not much. Enough price proximity so that people will see it justifiable and will get the Blu-Ray version.

2. More and more titles will be released on Blu-Ray. Some studios (Universal, coff, coff) have been very slow to hop on the Blu-Ray bandwagon.

3. The PS3 will keep the format afloat for some time. In the meantime, not only, but also aided by more and more development on Blu-Ray technology, leading to cheaper parts, will mean that standalone Blu-Ray players will keep dropping in price. End of this year will see sub $200 players. Next year will see sub $100. Time for the format to move to mass adoption.

That was the plan:

1. Use the PS3s as Blu-Ray Trojan horse and have it kill HDDVD. Result: success.

2. Have the standalone player/recorder market develop and reach mass adoption. Result: in progress.

As for HD downloads to win over Blu-Ray. No way. This is just something that the anti-Blu-Ray mob uses to cling to as hope that Blu-Ray will not succeed. Oh, that and crude oil prices. Not going to happen: the Internet has not enough available bandwidth for that. ISPs are already, in many cases, throttling/"stealing" bandwidth for the end users, etc. Will not work.

A 1080p H.264 version of a Blu-Ray movie easily goes to 8 or more GBs. For a single movie. Need I say more? Will the ISPs subsidize the HD download bonanza?

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I have to agree about internet speeds needing to improve for streaming HD to be successful. I have in the past downloaded HD movies from XBox Live and it is reaaaallllyyyy ssssslllloooowww. I have a 6mbps DSL connection.
Regular SD movies from Amazon Unbox are reasonably quick, and they look OK, just not as good as HD.

First, let me say that the internet is not going to be much of a problem as you may think.You might want to do some research in to FIOS for teleco companies and DOCSIS 3.0 for the cable companies.I think that you will be quite impressed with the speeds that are possible with these two new technologies.Fios currently has the potiential of 622 Mbps/155 Mbsp for upstream.Also with additional WDM (wave divison mutliplexing) has the capability of reaching into the Tbps range.Docsis 3.0 has the potiential of 154 Mbps with four channels bonded and 304 Mbps with eight channels bonded.The speed potiential is available, but the monthly caps may be a concern in the event of downloading HD media. As a computer science student we have some very powerful solutions as we proced in to the future.