Blu Ray's Fuzzy Future (NYTimes CES Preview)

[KBG29]

As this was posted to show bad news for Sony I will go at it from that angle.

To start, Blu-ray has a large future ahead of it. There are millions of households in the USA that do not have anywhere close to the speed to download, let alone stream on demand content. In the world as a whole the situation is even a bigger issue. It will of course become less of an issue over time, but no were near as fast as Blu-ray adaption is going to take place.

Now on to why this does very little to effect Sony. Sony has seen the digital future and have already got the ball rolling on being part of it. Many people questioned the idea of a Video Store on PS3 because they thought it was all about Blu-ray. Well the truth is PS3, Sony BR players, Sony TV's, and Sony computers are being built around the idea of both Blu-ray and DD. Last year at CES Sir Howard Stringer layed out the road map to Sony's DD plan for the future, and it started last year with the PS3, and it is supposed to be part of every Sony device by 2010.

Sony dropped the ball big time on musics trasition to DD, and they are making sure they are at least in the running with DD of movies. As they get more devices connected, and more content on their network things will continue to get better for them. The more content they are able to sell the more we should start to see DRM on the content bought over the net, and that is really the best future possible.

So with the Sony stuff out of the way I want to mmove back towards why Blu-ray is going to do amazingly, and why it will reach close to the levels of DVD. The movie industry just likee Sony has seen that the future of the media is not either physical or digital. It is a hybrid of both formats that is going to keep the buisness running nicly fo the next 10 years or so. That is why every Blu-ray player is going to be a hybrid player that can play BRD, or do on demand, or DD. As the prices of Blu-ray players fall to the $50 dollar range DVD players will be pushed out of stores, and consumers will have no option but to by a system that is capable of Blu-ray playback. As the market grows, the prices of Blu-ray will fall in line with DVD, and consumers will start buying the better quality versio, because it will be priced the same.