The State of Home Video study predicts a Blu-ray Golden Era of 2014-17
By Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 5th 2009 12:35PM
posted Feb 5th 2009 12:35PM
Want to know when, or if Blu-ray will overtake DVD? SNL Kagan's analysts went back to the crystal ball for The State of Home Video report and see high definition DVD (hey, that might include CBHD or HD NVD) taking 59.7% of the market in 2014, peaking in 2017 at 73.8% before video on-demand finally takes over. Still, Blu-ray will start picking up the slack on DVD sales (apparently slowed from earlier predictions by the current economic state) as early as next year, with player sales rising to $1.3 billion and finally reaching the mass market, before spiking in 2013. Unfortunately it appears we're in for quite a few more years of VOD services figuring out their technology and content packages, you ready to hang onto optical formats for a while longer?
I remember analysts predicting Blu-ray taking over by 2012.. now moving to 2017? These guys have it easy..they just move their predictions every month. It feels more like shots in the dark. Totally trustworthy, I bet I can do it. :)
Here we go, by 2015 every TV will have Netflix and digital downloads without the need of any other device and completely eliminating packaged media by 2018.
I should totally start my own research study company. :)
Well seeing that Blu-ray didn't make the projections for last year and probably won’t make them for this year either BDA probably paid off another analytical firm to make a statement giving them a few more years to meet the market penetration projections. What was the end of 2008 20% unit sales?
4.5% at the end of 2008.
Let me try perdicting the future..
"I perdict Bozster will be within the first 5 posters in the next news about Blu-ray on engadgethd.com and say something negative about Blu-ray".
Hmm.. Probably cant sell that information to anyone - anyone can perdict that..
:-)
I never said anything negative about Blu-Ray, it just seems that way to you probably when we discuss facts about certain things like numbers and stats. I have issues when people BS me, not with Blu-ray. But I wouldn't expect objectivity, anything that raises questions about validity of numbers in Blu-ray penetration is obviously a "Blu-ray hater".
This is what's truly fascinating, instead of people actually working for their own interests as consumers they pledge allegiances to a corporation or corporations. You do realize that if you were more critical about anything Blu-ray you would actually get things cheaper and faster resolved. As long as there are yes men for BDA they'll keep doing things the same way because they find approval.
Think about that for a little bit.
If you were only as critical about streaming services as BD and was able to produce unbiased posts about HD technology in generel it would be great - And that is not BS.
I am for HD in all forms and shapes. I think BD has a great future, but my HD-DVD collection probably wont grow anymore. I also think DVD will own a substantional portion of the market for a couple of years more.
I think streaming services will gain momentum in the next few years on rentals, but hasnt matured yet to a state where I think it is interesting yet. When they have all studios available on the same provider, quality as BD (no, Vudu isnt there at all), multiple QUALITY players available working on multiple providers and the comming war on bandwidth and traffic shaping with the ISP's is settled I will consider it, but personally I will not settle for less quality, so they have a produce something alot better in order to compete with BD at this house (as in higher bitrate and lossless sound).
Thomas said: "If you were only as critical about streaming services as BD and was able to produce unbiased posts about HD technology in generel it would be great - And that is not BS."
Actually I am.. I'm very critical of streaming services. If you bother to read my posts in news about digital services you would notice that. I praise good things and criticize bad things, unlike hardcore Blu-ray fans here that simply see no bad thing in Blu-ray, when there's a lot to criticize as well.
Of course there are issues with digital downloads as well. I'm not pretending it's ready now either. It will be in a few years without a doubt and up until that time I'm glad to buy Blu-ray for movies I love. I don't represent the majority of people though. My household and home theater is combined of all technologies today including Vudu, multiple Blu-ray players, Netflix etc, and even though I still find quality to be absolutely best on Blu-ray, digital downloads are approaching it. Every time I rent a movie on Vudu I am seeing less and less difference with Blu-ray couterparts. So it's not hard to imagine digital downloads/streaming reaching Blu-ray by 2014 in quality, but with much easier mass distribution.
These facts (to me) are not making me blind nor less critical towards digital downloads as well (I'm active on AVS Forums in discussing with Vudu and Netflix representatives and pointing out things that don't work) but it's hard to imagine, when digital downloads do get every piece together, for packaged media (be it DVD or Blu-ray) to survive in the long run.
Imagine how I laughed.
( I better not say anymore in case I get accussed of being to negative & repetitive)
DVD was ddown 15% in 2008 and BD was up 350%
What a bunch of bull. So it'd take so many years for Blu-ray to reach its peak? At the fast pace technology moves, I think that number is way far down the road. If Blu-ray has a future, it should see it within the next two years. There are a lot of competitors to Blu-ray. So, it's either now or never.
All I want to own are Physical Formats. VOD is fine for rentals but if I'm going to watch it again I rather own physical media.
Shoeboy you know how many time you have to rent a movie VoD to equal the same price as a DVD? About 4. You know how many times the average consumer watches a movie a year? 1. You know how often a movie has to be replaced? About every 5 years. That’s with DVD. People need to accept VoD and Digital Downloads are going to take over the market, there’s no way around it the distribution companies want it, ALL OF THEM. VoD and DD are cheaper to distribute and the price of the movies are more affordable to the consumer without reducing the profits received to the studios. Display and Playback technology has already passed what Blu-ray can handle, and without developing a whole new transfer media, which is very costly and will require new equipment, optical media will die.
I guess I'm different, I watch movies pretty often and I own a nice collection of DVDs which I will never replace. Sure there is occasionally a movie that warrants a HD version but mostly DVDs are fantastic.
The fact is that I have no problem with VOD being offered especially since most movies are crap. However when a movie warrants it I want the high quality physical copy like a Blu-Ray or maybe a DVD for a comedy.
You need to get over what happened to VHS. That format was not worth owning. DVD and Blu-Ray are technologies that are here to stay. Don't be surprised if people are still buying new Blu-Rays 10 years from now.
BTW I have no objection to Optical Media dying, the fact of the matter is that I want physical media and IMO there will always be some physical format available. Digital distribution is fine but I have no interest in buying the same movie 10 times.
Amen, brother. I shudder every time I see another tech website getting all giddy about ditching physical media and going to digital downloads.
I have yet to see a downloaded movie with the picture and sound quality on par with Blu-Ray (or even DVD in most cases). Even if quality does begin to improve, ISPs here in the U.S. are giving us less and less bandwidth to be able to take advantage of this.
That, and call me old-fashioned, but I like having my movie somewhere other than floating around in cyberspace with some service that could go belly-up; or stuck as a file on my hard drive.
Brad said: "I have yet to see a downloaded movie with the picture and sound quality on par with Blu-Ray (or even DVD in most cases)"
Based on these "research" results, they have plenty of time until 2014 to match the quality and services. They've improved video quality through streaming and digital downloads services several times over the past year or two, it's pretty silly to say they won't match or outdo Blu-ray quality by 2014.
So don't worry you have a couple of more years to use packaged media before mainstream starts switching to fully digital downloads/streaming territory.
Agreed, I'm limited to download 60GB a month. Just with my PS3 I can easily exceed this limit via free demos& online gaming.
I have a bad feeling that what the industry is trying to do is move us all to digital content and have us pick up the bill for downloading there content and then paying them too.
I meant the projected sales, right after Blu-ray won a company stated that since there would be no more consumer confusion they expected HD video to take off and penetrate by a specific amount.
This was in reply to Bozster's reply to my earlier comment.
VOD can replace BLU-Ray only when the quality has reached the level of Blu-Ray. As fas as I can tell, we don't have Dolby TrueHD VOD streams, and they're certainly not over 40mbps. Maybe someday...
40mbps bitrate is not necessary to reach those qualities. We've seen Blu-ray movies with DTS-MA tracks and great 1080p transfer hovering at 20mbps. It's hard to imagine that compression technologies and streaming speeds won't go up in the next 5 years.
I can freely say that even though I do miss HD audio on Vudu movies, their HDX versions are pretty much identical or unnoticeably worse then Blu-ray versions in PQ. I did numerous tests downloading movies on Vudu that I had on Blu-ray and they were pretty much the same on 106" screen and it took me 4 hours to download a movie in HDX. I have a small Vudu app on my iphone, I schedule movies for download during the day and by the time I'm to watch a movie it's all downloaded on my Vudu box.
I know it's off topic, my point was that the quality is close today and it's not hard to see that it will match BD in the next 2-3 years easy. There are other issues that plague digital downlaods today that are more connected directly to studios' decisions then anything else.
People who quote the 40-50Mbps rates tend to forget that:
1. Those are maximums. Indeed, Blu-ray would have a capacity of eighty minutes per layer if movies were actually encoded at that rate.
2. The rates were spec'd for 50Mbps back when it was assumed Blu-ray movies would be MPEG2. Nobody in their right mind encodes H.264 or VC-1 at 40-50Mbps. It's just unnecessary.
Real Blu-ray movies are encoded at an average of around 10Mbps, with a theoretical peak of around 30Mbps, but that includes not just the primary video, but secondary video (PIP) and all audio streams put together. Essentially, if your cable or DSL connection is 10Mbps or better, then you're more than capable of receiving Blu-ray quality video, and probably audio too. You're only going to be having one video stream sent, and one audio stream, and your computer can buffer enough content to ensure that the stream can easily "peak" at 25-30Mbps when it needs to while averaging 10Mbps.
Seeing as we are all going to perish in December 2012, I guess this isn't really going to matter anyway. Godspeed Blu-ray.
SNL Kagan?
(Voiceover) (Singing) McBluray! He's hooked up to your plasma. McBluray! He's some kind of high definition. McBluray! You can't him to play because you need some kind of firmware update! McBluray!
Scene: Anonymous looking building
CAPTION: Sony Headquarters
Scene: Small gray room with "BDA CONTROL ROOM" sign
April: Oh no McBluray! This bomb is set for fifteen seconds!
McBluray: Ok everybody don't panic. I have instructions on how to disable this bomb on this Blu-ray disc. April, turn on that Blu-ray player!
April turns on the Blu-ray player
McBluray: Ok, wait for it, wait for it...
April: Ten seconds McBluray! The Blu-ray player is still booting up!
McBluray: Ok everyone, don't panic, as soon as the Blu-ray player shows the "Welcome to Blu-ray" logo on the screen we...
April: Five seconds McBluray!
McBluray: The screen should be coming up any moment now. There's no need for alarm. And this disc should tell us everything we need, it uses BD-Live to get the latest information..
ROOM EXPLODES
(Singing) McBluray!
These guys don't know what they are talking about. High-definition video discs will only have 73.6% of the market in 2017. I mean, 73.8%? Are these guys fucking retarded??
By 2017 I plan on buying blu ray2 or ultra HD DVD. Not only do some like their favorite movies available to watch when they want..a lot of people like to give them as presents.
I think "on demand" and digital services are going to take over much sooner.
The vast majority of people will prefer the convenience of streaming services to the relatively subtle advantages in image and sound quality that blu-ray provides.
Since when is TV a right? I think they should have went ahead with it. No TV you will survive.