As long as Blu-Ray gets support from the studios and I get to watch the movies I want (and eventually pirate them when the cost isn't prohibitive, you didn't think I cared about Blu-Ray THAT much did you...), then I am happy. It doesn't really matter if it becomes as big as DVD was as long as it still passes DVD.
I have bought probably over 50 Blu-Ray movies, so I don't think I would feel that bad about pirating in the future.
@Aiemond: Who adopts any kind of new technology first? And Iron Man on Blu-Ray had 500,000 sales in the first week, which I think is safe to say is no longer in the niche category. Hell, a lot of big 360 and PS3 exclusives don't even sell that much in their first week.
But you are right that early adopters/technophiles are still a large part of the market. This is made pretty clear by the fact that the Iron Man Blu-Ray numbers get so much higher when you look at online sales only.
But sales are sales, and the studios can't really complain when they get sales numbers like this, especially because they have to sell around 1.5 to 2 times the number of DVD's to make the same profit as they would on a given number of Blu-Rays. Obviously the more Blu-Rays that are sold the better the margin becomes as the higher replication costs are offset.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
