| nightsurge said: Pretty soon Blu-Ray players will hit $99 or less. That's the next big step to making them a mass market item. It still will not get above 20-30% for a long while since only about 1/3 of households in the US have an HDTV, and not all of those purchase a blu-ray player. |
There are even bigger problems for Standalone Players. It is nearly impossible to get an obvious advantage in the Blu-ray playback compared to the competitors. This means Blu-ray will be a Yes/No Feature. You have to use other possibilities to get an advantage compared to your co0mpetitors. One of them will be the quality of SD-playback, DVD and even materials like Divx, external Harddrives and Online streaming. They were forced to use an internet connection fpr firmware updates and Blu-ray 2.0 content, but they will use these features to get the edge around their competitors. In this market the PS-3 doesn't even matter due to the price difference! While thewy play Blu.rays they won't even advertise so heavily with this feature. They will go the route "We play everything, in the best quality".
This is much easier and more efficient for them. To get the Full advantage of Blu-ray you need big displays or beamers and a very good Surround equipment and the customer has to buy new films, while they might get to customners with small TVs. They might use the better capabilities later but this is uncertain or do you use everything that your systems can do?
