Uh, Wolverine earned around $180 million. I think that qualifies as a blockbuster?

"Sadly, Tosh doesn't bother to mention exactly what kinds of BD-capable wares it hopes to produce, nor is it ready to disclose product launch time frames. ."

Actually it does. From the press release:

"Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including *BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives*, in the course of *this year*. "

Well the first thing he should do for his company's sake is dump that "Net Player" contraption they just unveiled

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/feature/toshiba+unveils+net+player+and+2009+lcd+tv+range+says+it+was+right+bail+out+blu+ray+14+03+09

and start work on a proper Blu-ray player.

Individual sales ratios are revelatory.

Comedies now selling on BD around 10 percent of DVD (and action movies doing upwards of 20 percent) is quite good.

Last year, movies such as First Sunday or The Bucket List were doing 3%.

National Treasure 2 or Vantage Point were doing 7-9%.

Now we see figures that are 2-3x that.

"We have two examples of sub-$200 players, one a mistake (the Samsung offer was removed from the website within an hour of EHD going public), the other a discontinued obsolete model on close-out."

That is not true. If you buy a Sony BDP-S350 (which goes now for $224) with four Warner titles, you get a $100 discount.

So for example you could get:

Sony BDP-S350 224.00
I Am Legend 17.95
300 17.95
Batman Begins 17.95
Goodfellas 16.95
Subtotal 294.80

Discount -100.00
Total 194.80

Yep- a Sony BD-Live player with PiP and high-resolution audio bitstreaming, for under $200 with four free movies.

Confirmation by Paramount themselves:

“We’re so happy to finally bring Michael Bay’s true vision to life with this release,” said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. “Because of Blu-ray’s expanded capacity, we are able to elevate the bit rate used for the picture as well as present uncompressed audio in the form of Dolby True HD.”

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?article_id=12858

So 4% have a dedicated Blu-ray player and 9% intend to buy one.

Therefore, installed base will triple (4% to 13%) inside of a year. And that's not counting the PS3.

Is that bad news?

- The Orphanage is a SPANISH movie, not Italian.

- Paramount has announced it is going to re-issue its entire back catalog:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Paramount/Disc_Announcements/Paramount_to_Re-Issue_Entire_Blu-ray_Back_Catalog/1715

"Actually only 6 of the 32 titles are being re-released on May 20th. So the asterisk will live on."

Actually not - go to dvdempire:

http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_preorderpage.asp?userid=99366234616558&site_id=69&site_media_id=0&swit=3&sort=2&display_pic=1&week=5%2F20%2F2008

They're all there (except Norbit and Freedom Writers which for some reason are already in stock!)

Confirmation here:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/15/technology/wal-mart_blu-ray/index.htm?postversion=2008021511