This is just anecdotal, but it really seems like the holiday season of 2009 is when Blu-ray really broke into the mainstream amongst people I know. Decent players can now be had for 100 to 150 dollars and the movies are routinely being sold for 19.99 or less via Wal-Mart and Amazon. Previously, it was just a very small group of my friends who had Blu-ray players.
But in the last 2 or 3 months that has all changed. 6 of my 25 coworkers got blu-ray players for Christmas this year and several more have come up to me in the last month and asked me which blu-ray players they should buy. These are not videophiles of audiophiles. They are average, moderately affluent 25-50 year olds who have HDTV's and want to fill them with HD content. They like the bonus add of Netflix streaming too but still find Netflix disc rentals to be the most cost effective way to get the movies they want to see.
Its very easy to lose sight that the average consumer is not as tech savvy as an Engadget reader (nor as bored with last years technology). Some might proclaim that physical media is "dead. But with over half of all music sold still being sold via CD over ten years into the mp3 revolution its clear that physical media still has a lot of life left in it (video even more so than music).
The mainstream (which is where all the money is) changes slowly. Physical video formats might finally "die" in 10 or 15 years but in the meantime there is a healthy amount of money to made off of it. It may never be the singular dominating force that DVD was but I think it may just be the most successful format for the next 5-10 years.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
This is just anecdotal, but it really seems like the holiday season of 2009 is when Blu-ray really broke into the mainstream amongst people I know. Decent players can now be had for 100 to 150 dollars and the movies are routinely being sold for 19.99 or less via Wal-Mart and Amazon. Previously, it was just a very small group of my friends who had Blu-ray players.
But in the last 2 or 3 months that has all changed. 6 of my 25 coworkers got blu-ray players for Christmas this year and several more have come up to me in the last month and asked me which blu-ray players they should buy. These are not videophiles of audiophiles. They are average, moderately affluent 25-50 year olds who have HDTV's and want to fill them with HD content. They like the bonus add of Netflix streaming too but still find Netflix disc rentals to be the most cost effective way to get the movies they want to see.
Its very easy to lose sight that the average consumer is not as tech savvy as an Engadget reader (nor as bored with last years technology). Some might proclaim that physical media is "dead. But with over half of all music sold still being sold via CD over ten years into the mp3 revolution its clear that physical media still has a lot of life left in it (video even more so than music).
The mainstream (which is where all the money is) changes slowly. Physical video formats might finally "die" in 10 or 15 years but in the meantime there is a healthy amount of money to made off of it. It may never be the singular dominating force that DVD was but I think it may just be the most successful format for the next 5-10 years.