As the domino's begin to fall....

[davygee]

Right firstly, to anyone in this post that has stated that the PS3 has not seriously helped out Blu-Ray...what are you thinking?  In my honest opinion, the PS3 has been the catalyst for the surge in Blu-Ray and the single most effective element in Blu-Ray's short history that has made it outsell HD-DVD in disc sales for over 12 months and effectively secured the demise of HD-DVD.  It's quite simple.  People buy the PS3, buy Blu-Ray movies and hence, there is more Blu-Ray disc sales than HD-DVD, which basically made up Warner's mind on their preferred side.  Which has in turn, made other companies go Blu and now we are at the end of HD-DVD.

Right, will Blu-Rays dominance help the PS3.  Of course it will, but not in such a huge way seeing as prices of the standalone BR players are now coming in below the cost of the PS3.  Unless Sony decides to drop the price of the PS3 again in the near future.

HD-TV?  Well people are buying into the LCD and Plasma scene at an alarming rate.  They have reached an affordable level, where people are buying multiple screens for their homes.  Pound for Pound, you are certainly getting more for your money, screen wise than when DVD was started.  I bought a 28" SDTV when DVD first started appearing for £650, the DVD players were around £200 at the time as well.  Now I can pick up a 40"+ screen for the same £650, although BR is a bit dearer at £250-£300, so it's very similar IMHO.

Digitial distribution of movies is not going to happen properly for a very long time.  We still don't have good enough broadband speeds, so an HD disc or other hard copy medium is certainly going to be the standard for quite some time yet.

Although all this said, it WILL take a good few years for BR to take off (if it really does).  But I can see no reason why we can't still be using BR in 5-10 years time.