They both have some interesting paralells, they both came with the idea of being a superior quality format, both had some new functions previously unseen, and both failed to get mass market point but still were relevant due to appealing for a niche group that praises quality.

Blu-Ray has more adepts than LaserDisc ever had, but, it is also a far cry from the kind of dominance DVD had. Blu-Ray never really " killed "DVD, with DVD movies were still selling more than their BD counterparts for years, and when things started to shift streaming came with everything and became the main way of watching HD home video.

BD is still alive and well as media for movies and TV shows, but thanks to enthusiasts that praise quality over anything. Because BD quality is far superior than streaming, for sure, but the practicity of streaming is unparalled. 

And this answer the question, DVD didn`t win from VHS because it had better quality, but because it was more practical. People go for quality good enough and practicity, not super quality only.

Disclaimer: Posting this on Movies session because we are talking about media formats used mainly for movies consumption. I know I have this OCD of explaining why I put my thread at the sections that I put, but people on internet can make such a huge of thing of little things I prefer to certificate.

When the DVD took off, physical media was still king, and the DVD was vastly more convenient than bulky, prone to wearing out VHS tapes, with a manageable cost to boot. The biggest problem the LaserDisc faced was cost. I would imagine that disc based content and players weren't exactly cheap in the late 1970s, and it was hard to justify the price for the quality increase for the average person.

Bluray got introduced at a rough time though. Video streaming was gaining in popularity, with Netflix launching their now immensely popular streaming service only a year after last generation begin, where the PS3 helped to pioneer bluray technology for the mass market. Bluray was still expensive, very expensive, so most people opted to stick with the DVD format until the price dropped. I mean, when the $600 PS3 was considered a budget bluray player, there was definitely a pricing issue. Once the price started to hit a reasonable point for many, suddenly streaming was becoming robust, easy, and with entirely legal services ready and willing to provide content that required little more than your computer.

Bluray continued to gain traction for physical media, definitely. Those who still buy movies physically tend to go for the bluray copies, plenty of people like the bluray versions of TV shows for 1080p watching, and for gaming, the bluray format has been immensely useful for Sony, especially last gen when the bluray made the difference between a multi-disc 360 release, and a single disc PS3 release. The benefit of the amount of memory a single disc can store should not be ignored. For the average consumer, bluray is on par with the cost of DVD at this point, making it an easier choice than it was around nine years prior.

The thing is though, for everything bluray offers for the TV and movie lover, anybody like me who doesn't collect is perfectly content with HD streaming instead. Anybody as adept as me also knows how to find anything online and avoid physical anything altogether. That combines with the fact that many people use their phones more than anything else these days, and notice that phones lack a disc drive. Thus, streaming takes another step above the bluray.

Bluray has its place in the market, and considering it's still around and everybody knows what it is, I doubt it's going to disappear. It beat out the HD DVD and carved out a place in the market. There will always be a hefty number of physical collectors as well, giving bluray shows and movies a pretty permanent place until the next bigger and better thing comes along. It came along too late at too high a price to take the market by storm though, and faces the same challenges as any entertainment that can be offered both physically and digitally.

This isn't even a question. The reason Blu-Ray never decimated DVD fully was because for the first two years the PS3 was the cheapest Blu-Ray player at $400+, and by the time we got to cheap players digital started taking over. That said, Blu-Ray stole a good amount of marketshare and has become the primary platform for almost every major film's home release. Starting this discussion is equivalent to asking if the PS3 is the next Jaguar because it didn't sell as well as the PS2; it still did damn well in spite of market shifts.

Most people are still happy with DVD quality. They don't really care about better visual quality than what comes with DVD. And they care even less about audio quality improvement over DVD. Most people still use their TV speakers for sound output, and Blu-ray audio quality is completely wasted on TV speakers.

And yes, new formats have always been about practicality rather than quality, which is why high def discs were always going to have a much longer transition than past format transitions because there was no practical advantage that justified replacing perfectly functional hardware with more expensive hardware. And Blu-ray movies / TV shows are still more expensive on release to buy than DVDs. That's certainly one way to convince the masses not to convert.

And now that streaming is becoming huge it is likely that Blu-ray will be the last hardware media format introduced to the mass entertainment market. 4K streaming for the mass market is probably not far away, which means movies and TV shows on disc are only for the collectors and the people who want to watch the bonus content, which of course means bonus content becomes extremely important if the industry wants to keep pushing for purchases of content on disc.

Speaking of sound, I'm actually very cheesed that PS4 does not have standard stereo AV output because my PS3 set up was HDMI out to the TV for video and AV out to the stereo for audio. I can't do that with PS4 now, so both games and movies sound worse coming from PS4 than what I got with PS3. I'd basically have to buy a whole new sound system to get a better 8th gen audio experience than what I got with 7th gen hardware. I'm not going to buy a whole new sound system.

The missing breakthrough of the BluRay has nothing to do with the format itself but with the time it was introduced. It never had any chance to develop. DVD only took off because there was no alternative.

Blu-Ray is way more popular than laserdisc but will most probably be the last ODD standard made for mass market. Streaming is the way to go.

Blu-ray has taken most of the physical disc market though.... It's just that that market has shrunk due to digital distribution.

Not really, people have actually bought blu-ray, as opposed to Laserdisc.

I love blu-ray movies.

If you already forgot about the HD-DVD, HD-DVD is actually the 21st century laserdisc.